Passive Tightwad

This cracks me up:  http://www.refundcents.com/dealdivas.asp

Just...  scroll a little...  and hopefully chuckle with me at the pictures of folks posing with their massive quantities of random stuff.

Check out this one:  http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/6553763  Just how much Captain Crunch cereal does the kid eat?  Maybe they should have gotten a coupon for more toothbrushes.  Looks like he only has 20 or so.  (Dang it, the link isn't working right...  Scroll down, or just trust me on this-- it's a picture of a boy with literally 50+ boxes of sugar cereal, 30+ boxes of band-aides, 20+ toothbrushes, some toothpaste and some good-nites.)

Here's another of my favorites: http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/6553763 She's gonna have to plaster her child from head to foot with band-aides from now until she's 12 years old to use all of those.  At our house we've had the same two boxes of band-aides for about two years now.  One was a free box of Gardasil band-aides (brown ones!) and the other is a store brand box that cost less than a dollar.  She's got to store all of those band-aides somewhere now, right? 

These pictures really do make me laugh, but I also used to feel a little guilty.  Maybe I should be coupon cutting.  They certainly seem to think that they've gotten some good deals.  Am I wasting money I shouldn't be spending?

Then I read this today at a blog called "Less is Enough."  Apparently I am a Passive Tightwad!  And that's okay!  Maybe those Hyperactive Tightwads aren't really saving much money.

Also, "tightwaddery" is my new favorite word.

Below are some excepts from the Less is Enough post, explaining more about Passive, Active, and Hyperactive Tightwaddery.

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Dacyczyn characterizes “active tightwaddery” as doing things like “patching pants, baking bread, hanging laundry, and rebuilding car engines.” As she says, “It all sounds like so much hard work.”

She goes on to explain

But most of frugality is about the passive stuff — it’s not what we do, it’s what we don’t do.

Passive Tightwaddery is my first choice of money-saving strategy because it works by not doing things—not eating out, not constantly upgrading gadgets, not taking exotic vacations. This generally has the added bonus of making your life easier on a day-to-day basis. Less is enough.

Active Tightwaddery is great if there are things that you enjoy doing that allow you to spend less or save more. Gardening, refinishing furniture, and doing home repair and home improvement projects are great examples of activities that many people like to do that can save substantial sums of money. Activities like these also have an added bonus, which is that if you’re spending a lot of time and energy painting your house or canning vegetables, you probably don’t have time for other things that cost money—things like recreational shopping, expensive hobbies, or elaborate vacations. It’s a double-whammy win.

Hyperactive Tightwaddery is the contemporary American spin on the whole thing, focusing on activities like using coupons and other discount offers from stores to “save” hundreds of dollars on every shopping trip by combining manufacturer’s coupons with store discounts and other buying incentives. I’m sure this is a great strategy if you go through large volumes of consumer products on a regular basis (for instance if you have a large family … or a small but high-volume one) and/or if you’re happy to spend your life surrounded by large volumes of consumer products.

Otherwise, I think it’s not a great approach, because it keeps you firmly wedded to the consumer treadmill.

The game you’re playing has been set up by the manufacturers of the products you’re buying and the stores you’re shopping at. They’re in charge of making the the rules, so the game is obviously going to be tilted in their favor—if they didn’t come out ahead in one way or another, they wouldn’t be doing it. This doesn’t mean that you can’t ever come out ahead, it just means that the odds are against you, and you need to be organized and strategic in how you go about it.

Comments

[wendy]

I sometimes feel badly that I am not saving oodles with coupons, but then I think about how I don't really buy most of what is available via coupons anyway. I'd buy something I wasn't going to buy anyway to save a few cents. Anyway, I am going to go to a coupon class that is at church tonight and see if I am missing out on something or not.

[Kohana]

Whenever I decide to take the time to look at coupons, they're never for the stuff I use anyway. I know people who seem to save lots of money with coupons, but when I ask myself "is it worth driving across town to a different grocery store on Tuesday morning" etc, etc, to take advantage of a certain "deal", my time and convenience always seems worth more than the 50 cents, or even 5$. Sure I'll drive for a sale if it's a BIG sale and I'm making a BIG purchase...but for a couple of bucks? Meh.