PRACTICAL VIEW : Excesses of the ‘80s Yield to Frugality in the ‘90s : Consumers: Thrift is the watchword for the decade. Three books offer options for changing your lifestyle.
So your New Year’s resolution was to cut down on your food bills. Which of the suggestions from three new books on thrift seems most practical to you?
* Switch to the less expensive house brands at the supermarket (“The Penny Pincher’s Almanac” approach).
* Start baking your own bread and save the stale slices in a freezer bag for making bread crumbs (the Tightwad Gazette approach).
* Become a vegetarian, which not only saves money and improves your health, but also helps the environment, because raising livestock is a heavy drain on farm productivity (the “Living Cheaply With Style” approach).
It doesn’t really matter what path you choose, says Dara Duguay, education director of the nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service in Los Angeles. What does matter is that you choose something.
Duguay, who evaluated the new books for Practical View, sees personal options beginning to expand as the excessive ‘80s give way to the practical ‘90s, and words like frugal develop a politically correct glow.
“People need to realize that just saving a little bit every day can add up,” says Duguay. Her office on the third floor of a brick building at 1308 W. 8th St. counsels people in “anything related to money,” including many who are over their head in debt.
Some clients have a budget crisis, such as unemployment. But also, “we have Beverly Hills lawyers and yuppie couples from Manhattan Beach who are paying $3,500 rent they can’t afford. You can look down there in the parking lot and see Lamborghinis and Jaguars.”
These are the victims of the excessive spending of the past decade, says Duguay.
The first thing she hands a new client is a formula for calculating personal debt and a brochure listing the danger signals of impending bankruptcy.
But the information is often too late. “Overspending just creeps up on you,” she says, and people tend to deny it. “I’ve been told that people would rather talk with their children about sex than talk with them about money.”
Sometimes families can pull themselves out of debt by getting rid of one item, such as a luxury car or an expensive house. “Many people in Los Angeles are living to support a house,” says Duguay.
But a better approach is a total modification of lifestyle. “It’s just incredible what you can save if you really try,” says Duguay. “Most people think there’s no point in bothering with the little things because they don’t matter. But they can add up to a lot.”
Here are three of the books detailing how the consumers of the ‘90s can enjoy thrift, with evaluation by Duguay:
* “The Penny Pincher’s Almanac: The Handbook for Modern Frugality” by Dean King and the editors of the quarterly the Penny Pincher’s Almanac (Fireside).
New York writer and editor King founded the Penny Pincher’s Almanac a year ago.
“I think the market crash at the end of the ‘80s set the tone for the ‘90s,” he says. “In addition to saving money, people will find that living a frugal lifestyle will be a morally more fulfilling way to live. It’s sort of disgusting to waste resources.”
His nuts-and-bolts handbook is aimed at the consumer who wants to rediscover the “plain old-fashioned joy” of saving money.
“Armed with the right information, you can learn to save hundreds of dollars through traditional American frugality--spotting bargains, recognizing true value, and knowing where to get more for less,” promises the cover.
“Almanac” opens with an “8-point plan for saving $2,000 this year.” (Sample: Replace incandescent light bulbs with energy savers.) Another list outlines “when it doesn’t pay to skimp.” (Sample: when buying a mattress.)
Eight of its 10 chapters cover major areas of family expenditures, including food, clothing, education and entertainment. A section on clothing costs suggests doing laundry in cold water to save on energy bills. A chapter on money management includes help on finding cheap loans, using credit cards wisely and choosing the right insurance policies.
“Today’s penny pincher is not the old curmudgeon who has squirreled away so much junk he can’t find anything,” says the book. “Ultimately this book is about using resources--time, talent and money--more efficiently and living in a more fulfilling way.”
Duguay gives the book high marks for practicality: “It gives you good examples and resources,” she says. “It’s filled with addresses and telephone numbers for everything from buying tires wholesale to getting funding for a college education.”
* “The Tightwad Gazette: Promoting Thrift as a Viable Alternative Lifestyle.” By Amy Dacyczyn a.k.a. the Frugal Zealot (Villard Books).
Dacyczyn of Leeds, Me., describes herself as Queen of the Tightwads and presents these credentials: With six children and an annual income of under $30,000, she and her husband saved $49,000 for a house in less than seven years, made significant purchases (such as vehicles and appliances) of $38,000 and were completely debt-free. How? By top-level tight-waddery.
She confesses that it took years to develop her skill, and she is still learning--”as a self-confessed compulsive tightwad who recycles aluminum foil, then Ziploc bags, and now, I publicly confess, I have become a recycler of vacuum cleaner bags.”
Dacyczyn wastes nothing. She tells her readers how she composts dryer lint, melts crayon bits in a muffin tin to make a “scribble cookie” and uses milk jug rings to keep socks in pairs while laundering. She makes jewelry beads from white bread and glue and produces cookie cutters from tuna cans.
“You can do a tremendous amount if you are willing to modify your lifestyle,” she says.
And she emphasizes that, despite its Spartan overtone, this is not a regimen of deprivation, but a lifestyle of empowerment. “You’re buying what you want to buy, not because of some cultural pressure.”
Two years ago she started her quarterly newsletter, the Tightwad Gazette which now has 80,000 subscribers, and the new book is a compilation of ideas from tightwads around the country. Readers will learn how to cut the cost of baking, stage a budget wedding, stock a tightwad refrigerator and hundreds of other budget-squeezing tips. Tightwaddery is not for everyone, warns the author. “There are budding tightwads who feel overwhelmed and think, ‘How does she expect me to bake bread, make wrapping paper, braid rugs and shop at 14 different grocery stores?’ ”
Duguay agrees that the tightwad approach might not have universal appeal. “Dacyczyn lives in a small town, is a homemaker and has time to run from store to store to store,” she notes. “Time in Los Angeles is very important. Most women have jobs and really don’t have time for a lot of these things, such as making your own Popsicle molds--Popsicles are cheap.”
* “Living Cheaply With Style: Live Better & Spend Less” by Ernest Callenbach (Ronin Publishing Inc.).
This book also evokes the old-fashioned American tradition of thrift as one that is returning to fashion among today’s consumers.
Ernest Callenbach of Berkeley, a longtime editor at the University of California Press who retired last year to write and lecture, is the author of “Ecotopia” and “Ecotopia Emerging.” He describes this update of his book as aimed at “showing people how to analyze their real needs and wants and beat rising costs, while at the same time expanding their pleasures in life.”
He focuses on a thesis he calls the Green Triangle. Its three points are environment, health and money. “Any time you do something beneficial for one of them, you will almost inevitably also do something beneficial for the other two,” he says. For instance, substituting a bicycle for a car will save money, improve your health and reduce pollution.
“This is certainly the most scholarly and philosophical of the three books,” says Duguay. “As a reader, I found it the most challenging--it doesn’t have the illustrations or graphs and charts of the other two. Rather than asking people to give up things, the emphasis is more on making different choices--such as switching houses for a vacation.
“For people interested in the philosophical viewpoint, this would be the first choice,” Duguay says.
She adds, “All these books show people there is another way to do things. Not only can they stay out of debt, they can put their money into something they want.”
When the Debts Get Too Big
The nonprofit Consumer Credit Counseling Service has 33 counselors working at 13 offices throughout Los Angeles County to provide free financial advice on budgeting, credit, collections, debts and related topics. Initial counseling is free and a debt-management program for individuals with the means to repay debts over an extended period has a fee of up to $20 a month. Information: (213) 386-7601.
