Tip 2: Create a Pyramid of Purchase Pondering

For our next money-saving trick, throw your rational mind out the window. We're going to create a hierarchy of purchases. You obviously don't need to spend as long pondering and comparison shopping for that stale penny bubblegum at the hardware store as you do for your first $100,000 condo.

Here's how it goes:
< $1: Minor purchase. Don't cry when you hand over the money.

$1-$10: Major purchase. Most people in the world live on this much money for an entire month. Or something. There are statistics showing that if you have access to seeing this, you are rich. Therefore, you have a responsibility to spend appropriately.

$10-$20: Major major purchase. Your grandparents sold their house for this much during the Depression.

$20-$100: Majorly major major purchase. This is countless immunization shots and political regime overthrows and monthly salaries for people working much harder than you are.

>$100: Circuit frying purchase. You'll need therapy for this one. How did you end up so lucky as to be able to even consider this purchase in your lifetime? Why were you born into life with things that cost over $100 and blogs and internet access and a vote while other people eat dirt and watch their children die of preventable illnesses? Does this $100 purchase correctly reflect your values and the values of those who could be bought and sold with it? Does it protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Will it make you happy? Did the people producing the good sing songs while they made it? Will it last? Will it draw baths for you, but not in a way that hearkens back to your invisible role in social inequalities in the world?

** There may be loopholes in here, as they are sometimes necessary for survival. But following this guide as-is will be a good start to lining your bank account with big bills.

Tip 1: Develop Neuroses

I've been thinking lately about what makes it so that I can save over $10,000 in a year while spending as recklessly as I ever have in my life. I've got some natural advantages, like no debt from college, but most of the advantages come back to choices I've made about money. And most of those choices, I believe, go back to genetics. I am Tightwad, progeny of Tightwad & Spendthrift.

Tightwaddery is not a particularly socially acceptable condition. Who wants to go out with the cheapskate who counts pennies and turns down invitations to nice restaurants? Not many, and probably even fewer decent folk. But luckily the genetic line of tightwaddery I have comes hand in hand with other charming mental traits such as extreme ethical rigidity.

(If you want to save money, cheer for extreme ethical rigidity! It is your best friend! And, once employed appropriately, your only friend!)

For you, genetically unlucky person, Extreme Ethical Rigidity (EER) will need to be learned. I'll offer tips.

1. Develop an ethical framework. What are your values? Which of society's values do you embrace?

2. Put every decision into your ethical framework and expect perfection.

3. Save money!


Perhaps a practical, real-life example would help:
1. The general American cliched values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are a good starting point. You can do whatever you want and buy whatever you want so long as you don't go messing around with others' rights to those three.

2. You decide to get a new wallet. You can't buy wallets made in most countries of the world, because you are unsure of the labor standards under which they were produced. Vinyl's out, because its production is too toxic. Leather's out, because of livestock isn't an efficient use of land and you're not sure the animal was killed humanely. If you find yourself getting close to making a purchase, remember that your money is also how you communicate what you value. You might want to support a locally-owned business that pays a living wage to its employees and sources its materials in a sustainable way.

3. Ha! Good luck, sucker! Put that money straight into the bank instead of worrying about finding a wallet to carry it around in.

To begin

What this blog will be:
A way for you to learn the valuable financial lessons of those DSM-IV certified issues I bring to the table of life.

A way for me to share the joys and pitfalls of tightwaddery, ethical rigidity, and paralyzing indecisiveness with the vast reaches of the internet.

What this blog will not be:
Responsible for your mental issues, should you have any.

Responsible for the death of your social life should you take the suggestions herein to heart.

Why this blog's existence is justfiable:
Because you really do want to know how to be such a tightwad that you can save 1/3 of your income even when living like a spendthrift.

Because that which hurts us and makes us miserable ought to be laughed at.

About me:
I'm a twenty-something girl living in the urban Midwest. I've been a tightwad shopaholic for about as long as I can remember. While this hasn't always been good for my social life (who really wants to hang out with the teenager who won't go to movies and would prefer that a trip to the mall end without any money changing hands), it's allowed me to tender my resignation to try to find a job I love during an economic recession.

In the year and a half that I held the entry-level job, I saved up over $10,000 dollars while living as high on the hog as I ever had in my life. This gives me a window of approximately ten months to either make it or find a lovely group home for adults. Here are the secrets of a disturbed mind.

Disclaimer:
Therapy is very wonderful. Medication also helps. And friends.