The Fruglar

" And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an æsthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. " - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby That's pretty reading, but it's pretty crappy history. Fitzgerald is projecting the modern man's paralysis in the face of unlimited opportunity on the discoverers, colonists and conquistadors of yore. But he has done me a service, providing a powerful illustration of the contrasting ways you can approach t...

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson. The modern American conception of freedom and liberty is so infused with patriotic passion, restless energy and good vibes that most of us view freedom as an end of itself. The desire burning in all of us is to be free, full stop. The thoughts of what we'd do with our freedom are often vague in the extreme, and that's if we even have them at all. For much of my life, freedom has been the light at the end of tunnel, something that's much easier to reach for than to define. What I've been much better at defining is what I seek freedom from . To be free from debt. To be free from my commute and my cubicle. To be free from the worries and stresses of eking out a living. Each of these "froms" gives me a specific target: pay off that crushing mortgage, replace that job, hit that financial threshold. The visceral presence of a barr...

Converting material hunger into intellectual and spiritual hunger is the ultimate life hack, a Mr. Fusion for overcoming the intimidating logistics of actually making it from point A to point Z. As the Good Book says, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." I've found great value in words from lesser sources as well: since the New Year, I've been reading a book-a-week. All have been nonfiction and all free or nearly so - libraries and Friends of the Library bookstores are sweet, sweet intellectual welfare, and I am only too willing to bum off of their largesse.  Up this week is Gregory Clark's Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, and it's loaded with nuggets of applicable wisdom for the frugal wealth-builder. He called my attention to one economic law in particular that has a lot to teach us about cheap living. Engel's Law states that the poorer a person is, the larger the ...

Any self-respecting cheapskate should cultivate a healthy hatred of mortgages. They aren't just debt, they are huge piles of life-altering, potentially soul-crushing financial obligations tied to tottering edifices of termite-eaten wood and slapped-on plaster. The new lean, hungry breed of self-improvement people on Twitter are wise to this. This was Ryan Stephens on Twitter yesterday: Home ownership is *NOT* usually a great investment. • In the last 100 years, adjusted for inflation, real estate returns are close to zero. • Houses take maintenance, they depreciate, they go out of style. • Owning reduces labor mobility & economic flexibility. (1/2) — Ryan Stephens (@ryanstephens) March 7, 2018 He goes on to link Paula Pant's excellent deep dive into the ancient rent vs. buy debate from 2015. They both raise unassailable points that puncture the absurd rationalization bubbles that lead people to rack up insane levels of debt to make homeownership happen. In pa...

In my younger days, my extreme frugality was less an expression of my iron will than an organic extension of my laziness. Spending money, after all takes effort. It can actually be easier to kick back on your clearance couch from Ikea and binge watch Netflix (on the sister-in-law's account, natch) than to burn all that energy and money keeping up with the Joneses. This style of saving money didn't require me to transform myself. All I did was find an existing instinct and lean into it. Instincts are just natural bents - you can look at them like a tools in a tool box. Even those of us who have inherited a pretty crappy assortment - and let's face it, laziness usually sucks - can find a good constructive job for just about any tool. This approach is not without danger, however. Eventually, self-improvement requires new and painful forward momentum, and gliding on some of your sketchy instincts can take you to some dark places. Take one exceptionally painful example from ...

Weekends can be like quicksand, sucking time, money and productivity into a bottomless pit of lethargy and waste. Let's call those weak-ends. Thankfully, this was not one of those. With the hourglass rapidly draining on my timeline to put my still-needs-work house on the market, the money-do list took precedence over all the old weak-end pastimes. Up to bat was the garage, or more accurately, the primitive cave and giant spider preserve where my wife does laundry and my dad does handyman stuff. As I rarely go in there, I hadn't given much thought to the garage's sorry state until my real estate agent lady went in there and started waving red flags. So, in the interests of making the home safe for housewives with money, the Fruglar Sr. and I took on the garage as a home improvement project. Our goal: to transform the unfinished walls and daddy-long-leg habitats into an appropriately sterile white laundry room. Drywall being too much of an expense and a headache, we res...