Frugalista
William Safire writes an excellent article each week in the NYTimes Magazine called On Language - where he explores new vocabulary. HIs word this week, frugalista, was particularly timely:
Frugalista, defined as “a person who lives a frugal lifestyle but stays fashionable and healthy by swapping clothes, buying secondhand, growing own produce, etc.” This could become the nom de guerre of the “recession warrior.”
In 2007, when a mild downturn was seen by some as necessary to avert a future bust, recessionista surfaced, coined by the economist Larry Kudlow, and was defined in The Times as “the new name for the style maven on a budget.” It faced a fierce competitor, however, infrugalista, used in 2005 by The Palm Beach Post and The Toronto Star and picked up since in a Miami Herald blog by Natalie McNeal that she calls the Frugalista Files.
I think frugalista has a nice ring to it and is not as obvious as recession ista. The adjectivefrugal is rooted in the Latin for “fruits,” which in the 16th century some found relatively cheap. The word was at first applied to the careful apportionment of food, but Shakespeare in his 1598 “Merry Wives of Windsor” used it as a metaphor to mean “sparingly supplied; thrifty” of anything, as, “I was then Frugall of my mirth.”
Concerned about your budget in this year’s market debacle? Sharpening your pencil and tightening your belt, foraging for bargains but not altogether abandoning good food and good screens? Join the frugalistas!
That last sentence has particular resonance - foraging for bargains but not altogether abandoning good food and good screens. Said another way, this simply means being cognizant of how much you are spending. The act of spending is not bad - as I’ve mentioned dozens of times here, it is in fact a crucially important part of our economy - it is the act of living beyond your means that is destructive.
We’re exiting the faze (at least for the immediate future) of conspicuous consumption - where the biggest house, biggest car, biggest TV were status symbols that had to be maintained, irrespective of their relative affordability. A frugalista, then, is synonymous with being smart with your money. Taking a shrewd perspective on your finances does not mean you cannot enjoy life, or even enjoy the consumption of nice things. It just means you do it within your means.
Let’s look at what I think is a classic example of this mentality: food. We are apt to cast away “nice” or “luxury” items such as organic food when our budgets are tightened. But is that what a frugalista would do? Hardly. Highly processed food is almost always more expensive in the short term, which does not even take into account the long-term benefits of eating well. Take a simple example: potato chips. You can either spend $3 on a bag of chips, or take some time and bake your own for much cheaper (and healthier). The benefit - in terms of cost and quality of food - is obvious. It just takes a bit more thought and planning.
