Introduction

It all started 30 years ago with my mother: banging on the door of a shoe shop, with a shoe that she had just bought for me an hour earlier. The shoe had a defect that we hadn't noticed in the shop's low lighting, but the shop was now closed. Furiously showing the glass door all her anger, she could see the poor sales assistants cowering in the back, wanting to go home; it was Saturday night. Once they realized that my mother wasn't going anywhere ("I can see you in there!!") and they had to pass her to leave the shop, it was game over.

I got used to being embarrassed, but my mother was unperturbed. My parents spent most of our childhood poor and every penny was accounted for. My mother wanted her money back and that was the end of it. I now send bad food back in restaurants. (I'm really nice about it; but will they still spit in my dessert?) And it goes against my nature to keep purchases that are defective. Unless it's going to cost me money to take a shirt back to the store, I'll do it. In the past, I have thrown money about when I've been working hard and making what I would call real money.

But even so, it's in my very DNA to be frugal; I expect a rainy day around every corner, which is why I've weathered this economic crisis like I'm in a Broadway musical and it's my turn in the spotlight. To be fair, I arrived in America ten years ago and there's nothing like emigrating from a "socialist" country to a capitalist one to make you tighten the purse strings. New York has the most enduring motivators: if you've ever rented space in the corner of someone's kitchen you'll know what I mean. There's no greater force that drives one more than renting a time-share on a couch with a greasy bike messenger, let me tell you.

But some people simply don't know how to save money and many people don't have the discipline because of factors like stress or boredom. Even before the current economic crisis there was the circulating unofficial New York statistic that something like 90% of New Yorkers were one paycheck from homelessness.

Before the recession people were confident enough to take out many hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction loans for renovation on a house they only use for a month during the summer. Many of us had three mortgages, credit card debt, overdrafts and grocery bills of thousands of dollars a month.

Now that the recession is well and truly upon us, it's time to put down the credit card and stop viewing shopping as a sport or therapy. It's only fun until you get the bill and then what? Throughout my twenties, I was flat broke and wasn't granted the privilege of a credit card until I was thirty years old. I'm thanking my luck stars now that there was no way I could even be tempted to overspend.

You don't have to go to extremes to be frugal, but the freedom it brings will encourage you push yourself. This blog is a commentary on my experience in business over the last ten years, the economy, frugality and personal finance. Of course, it's also about the current recession and how lucky we are that it came along when it did and what we can do about it.

Wake Up To Frugality!