Materialism

Mottainai: The Japanese Idea That’s Bringing More Balance to Busy Lives Everywhere

June 7, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You don’t have to be a Japanophile like me to be familiarized with the notion of Mottainai. Take a brief trip to Japan and observe the culture, and you’ll become acquainted with the expression that’s deeply embedded in the way of life there. Depending on the context, you’ll hear mottainai as either the admonition “don’t waste” or the assertion “too precious to waste,” when, say, you spill rice.

In recent times, conservationists such as Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai have applied that phrase to inspire humankind to reduce, repurpose, reuse, and recycle. “If we are wise like nature, we would practise the mottainai spirit. The earth practises mottainai. It reuses and recycles. We even get recycled when we die. We go back into the soil,” Maathai has said.

What the Japanese Can Teach Us About Cleanliness

Mottainai: What the Japanese Can Teach Us About Cleanliness Over in Japan, tidying up is a bee on the bonnet. Cleanliness is a moral virtue, and cleaning is an act of spiritual practice—indeed, a means to purify the soul. In Shinto, good spirits can dwell in clean environments, and you’ll frequently observe Japanese people cleaning their homes and offices.

Ever since the post-war reconstruction, the Japanese have also encouraged upkeep and conservation. They tend to make the most of limited resources and avoid wastefulness. Their culture dissuades the idea of trashing things.

Moreover, the concept of animism in Shinto encourages reverence for objects—from teapots to katana. There’s even an old Japanese parable about a spirit ghost named “Mottainai Obake” who haunts children who treat things wastefully.

Inner Peace Starts with the Cleanness of Our Inner and Outer World.

Knackered for the physical space, the Japanese are devoted to efficient household goods and gift-giving (albeit with lavish gift-wrapping.) Their zeal for getting organized has led to a cottage industry of clutter counselors and storage experts who’re celebrated in television shows and consumer magazines as out-and-out innovators.

In this cultural context, Nagisa Tatsumi’s 2003 book Suteru Gijyutsu (“The Art of Throwing Away”) caused a national sensation with its bold proposal. Tatsumi challenged the Japanese to rethink their attitude to possessing things and to have the courage and conviction to get rid of all the stuff they really don’t need.

Tatsumi goaded people to let go of the things that are tying them down:

Possessing things is not good in itself. We have to consider whether they’re necessary, whether they’re used. And if something’s unnecessary, we should get rid of it. This is the essence of the Art of Discarding. Once you appreciate that you don’t have to keep what’s unnecessary, you’ll be better able to use what is necessary with proper care.

Tatsumi’s book sold 1 million copies in six months and quickly got translated into Korean and Chinese. Indeed, it was the book that inspired Marie Kondo, the reigning queen of decluttering.

Tatsumi’s Book Inspired the Current Obsession with Decluttering

In Suteru Gijyutsu, Tatsumi cheerfully explores the many psychological snags that make people reluctant to discard things.

Take the “keep it for now” syndrome, such as with the advertising leaflets that used to be inserted in the weekend newspaper. Tatsumi advises, “You think, ‘There may be something on sale that I might find useful. But I am too busy to go through them now. So I am going to keep them for now and look at them later.'” That mindset merely contributes to the piles of garbage.

Recommendation: Skim Suteru Gijyutsu, written in 2003. It was translated as The Art of Throwing Away only in 2017, a year before Tatsumi’s death.

Tatsumi’s message is simple yet profound. She guardedly reminds readers of the stark reality that everything is a waste. No matter what you buy, no matter how much you use it, no matter how much you love it, no matter if you keep it or recycle it or donate it … it’s still waste. It will still end up in a landfill someday. By learning to discard, you will reclaim space, free yourself from “accumulation syndrome,” and pave the way to rediscovering joy and purpose in a less-cluttered life.

Idea for Impact: Take back control, gain space, free yourself from “accumulation syndrome,” and find new joy and purpose in your less-cluttered life Take Tatsumi’s motto to heart: “If you have it, use it. If you don’t use it, don’t have it.”

Marie Kondo is No Cure for Our Wasteful and Over-consuming Culture

February 11, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019) on Netflix

I recently watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (2019,) the popular Netflix series featuring the Japanese decluttering evangelist. The show is based on her bestselling manual, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (2011.)

In each episode, Kondo cheerfully proclaims, “I love mess!” With certain calm, she calls on various families and goes about clearing their tat-filled homes and bringing order to their chaos. Her trademark sense of minimalistic bliss is informed by Japanese aesthetic and a Zen-sense of orderliness.

Apparently, Marie Kondo isn’t attuned with Christianity.

Interestingly, Kondo has clients kneel on the floor and “ask” their dwelling for “permission” and “cooperation” before they get started. “I’d love for you to picture your vision for your home,” she pleads. “Communicate that to your home.” She encourages saying “thank you” to their piles of clothes as they sort and fold them. She daintily treats inanimate objects as living things and speaks to them. She encourages her show’s audiences to do the same.

That’s Buddhism/Shinto in force. Some flavors of native Japanese spirituality focus on inanimate objects’ sacredness. Several of Kondo’s critics in America have insisted that her methods aren’t compatible with Christianity. Kondo’s rituals of treating objects as if they have feelings, these critics have declared, is to be discouraged because her ways invoke animism, the religious notion that objects possess some sort of spiritual essence.

“Kondo-ing” Has Become a Verb.

With a translator in tow, Marie Kondo never treats her patrons as victims, and that’s exceptionally impressive.

By eschewing a victim mentality, Kondo encourages and empowers people in a way that actually brings about lasting change. Audiences particularly love her advice on organizing wardrobes and storage spaces and routinizing tasks into maintainable systems.

Kondo emphasizes prioritizing joy. She doggedly insists upon keeping only those objects that “spark joy” (she uses the Japanese intransitive verb “tokimeku,” roughly, “to flicker.”) Her “if in doubt, throw it out” commandment has helped millions of people ward off hoarding tendencies.

Kondo has become a cultural sensation, appealing to all sorts of homes bursting with cheap consumer goods. The “Marie Kondo Effect” is directly responsible for increasing donations to thrift stores and charity shops worldwide.

Marie Kondo isn't attuned with Christianity

Keep what sparks joy. Own less stuff. Pursue what’s meaningful.

If you’d like to downsize or declutter without letting go of things you love, take the KonMari method to heart. But don’t go too far. Be careful about shedding items to which you have a deep sentimental connection. Put it into operation earnestly to get rid of clutter. Find joy, significance, and sacrament in simple everyday objects and tasks. Simplifying your priorities and refocus on things that you tend to overlook in the busyness of life.

Only Consume What You Need. Supplement the Konmari method of paring down your belongings with the ongoing strategy for minimizing additional purchases. Buy only those things that will “spark joy” and continue to do so for many years. Never mind that the economy depends upon endless undifferentiated consumption.
Reduce, but Don’t Refresh. If you have a bunch of empty space, be selective in how you fill it up. Cutting down your possessions isn’t an invitation to revert to a situation where decluttering again becomes necessary after a while. Restrain that impulse to acquire the new and the shiny—that’s what overwhelmed Kondo’s clients in the first place.

The real magic of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is in shedding anxiety, living in the moment, and being your best self. Your happiest moments come when you’re lost to a conversation or an experience. You’ll avoid the helter-skelter of life has the power to deny and neglect what’s most important in your life.

Will the Marie Kondo Effect alleviate haywire consumerism?

The more profound significance of decluttering and minimalism is to help make better choices when making purchases in the future.

And beyond the individual convenience, it would be more productive to build up collective awareness and confront the modern consumption economy. It only presents overwhelming incentives to mass-produce and overconsume superficially appealing items.

Collectively, humanity needs to start questioning whether we should be pursuing growth at all. The economic system we have now can’t sustain forever. Our ecological systems can only sustain so much life. We’ve grown so much as a population, and we’ve started consuming so much that we’re straining the earth’s ability to support us. Hyperconsumerism needs to stop.

Will the Marie Kondo Effect alleviate haywire consumerism?

Idea for Impact: Negligent hyper-consumerism is shameful and embarrassing, even to this “card-carrying” capitalist.

Ironically, after making us get rid of everything, Marie Kondo has started peddling such things as therapeutic tuning fork and crystal ($75,) compost bin ($175,) and food storage container ($60) that are guaranteed to “spark joy.”

At any rate, I hope Marie Kondo and her ilk inspire a collective self-loathing at how much we consume. Utility should be the principal criterion for what we buy and keep.

I urge you to make strides towards more mindful consumption and consciously differentiate wants and needs.

Buy what you need. Buy the best quality stuff you can afford, and keep them for longer. Choose things that can be easily repaired—if possible, repurposed and recycled. Encourage businesses that peddle goods that are manufactured as responsibly and mindfully as possible.

Lessons from Secret Millionaires: The Great Compounding Machine That’s Time

January 11, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Ronald Read (1921–2014) of Brattleboro, Vermont, worked as a gas station assistant and a custodian at a J. C. Penney store. He was a thrifty man, and he even held his coat together using safety pins. Upon his death, he left $2 million to his stepchildren, caregivers, and friends, and another $6 million to the local library and a hospital. Read had built up a secret wealth by starting small, studying businesses that he understood, buying their stock, and holding them for the rest of his life.

Grace Groner (1909–2010) of Lake Forest, Illinois, lived a frugal life in a small one-bedroom cottage near Chicago. She got her clothes at hand-me-down sales, didn’t own a car, and worked most of her life as a clerk for Abbott Laboratories. Groner willed a $7 million scholarship endowment at Lake Forest College. The money came from three Abbott shares she had purchased in 1935 and let grow, reinvesting the dividends.

Time in the Market is a Great Compounder Agnes Plumb (1905–95) of Los Angeles left a $98 million estate to four hospitals. Plumb had amassed that fortune after liking cornflakes when they were first marketed and having her dad buy her Kellogg’s shares during the company’s early days. She allowed her investment to compound, and by the time she died, she had accumulated 1.3 million shares of the Kellogg Company. She was collecting some $437,000 just in dividends every three months.

Jack MacDonald (1915–2013) was a coupon-clipping, bargain-hunting Seattle lawyer. He even wore sweaters with holes in them, and people assumed that he was broke. When he died at age 98, he left a surprising fortune worth $187 million to various causes, including Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Kathleen and Robert Magowan (1925–2011, 1925–2010) of Simsbury, Connecticut, died within a year of each other. These twins lived as hermits throughout their lives and built up a fortune through wise stock market investments. They left $10 million worth to various civic institutions.

Curt Degerman (1948–2008) was a can-collecting street bum living in Skelleftea in northern Sweden. For three decades, “Burk-Curt” (‘Tin-Can Curt,’) as he was called, roamed the streets of his town in tattered clothes. In between collecting cans, Degerman spent much time in the town library studying business media and examining the stock market. He used his tin-can incomes to buy mutual funds and gold. When he died, he left more than $1.4 million to his cousin.

Time in the Market is a Great Compounder.

There’s one thing not apparent in these live-modestly-and-invest-prudently anecdotes. The fortunes of these seemingly ordinary, generous folks became so big due in no small part to their age.

With time, money has the chance for a heck of a lot of compounding. Money grows 10.83 times every 25 years if you consider a 10% historical mean return on equities. To take a prominent example, Warren Buffett, who’s now 90 years old, has made 99.7% of his fortune after 52.

Idea for Impact: Time in the stock market is infinitely more important than timing the market. Start investing early. Watch over your health. Live a long life. Grow your money. A long time horizon will enable your investments to grow through the “magic” of compounding.

That Extra Salary You Can Negotiate Ain’t Gonna Make You Happy

October 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This well-cited study shows that people with high incomes aren’t actually that much happier than their less-earning brethren. This is something many people know empirically. Never mind that subjective happiness is a nebulous condition that’s not easy to measure.

The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory … People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities.

Of course, there’re situations wherein more money can make a real difference in your well-being: nirvana from living paycheck-to-paycheck, freedom from debt, and adequate savings for retirement. Yes, being poor makes people miserable.

The Extra Salary You Can Negotiate Ain't Gonna Make You Happy But, beyond a reasonably upper-middle-class living (better health care, lavish-enough vacations and celebrations, affording one partner who could stay at home, the ability to buy conveniences, and so on,) additional income doesn’t create enough incremental happiness to justify all the compromises the extra income entails.

Even people who had big wins in the lottery winded up no happier than those who had bought lottery tickets but didn’t win. Sure, these people will be more content with their new toys for a short time, but that delight typically fades away quickly. After that, they’ll seek out yet another indulgence. Soon, that’ll wear off too, at which point they’re already on the hedonic treadmill.

Idea for Impact: Be mindful of what you’re trading away in the pursuit of a higher salary. Wealth and status are false gods.

Never Enough on the Hedonic Treadmill

February 10, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life (2008,) mutual fund pioneer John C. Bogle puts emphasis on the virtue of contentment:

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”

Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word—stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate. For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails …

We chase the false rabbits of success; we too often bow down at the altar of the transitory and finally meaningless and fail to cherish what is beyond calculation, indeed eternal. That message, I think, is what Joseph Heller captured in that powerful single word, enough.

The Hedonic Treadmill: Never Enough American entrepreneur Seth Godin describes the never-ending ratchet of consumption:

It used to be that a well-tended lawn of 50 by 100 feet was wasteful indeed. Today, it’s in the by-laws of the local housing association. You could impress the neighbors with a new Cadillac, now you not only need a Tesla, but you need a new Tesla. And you could show off by flying first class, but then you needed to charter a plane, then charter a jet, then charter a bigger jet, then buy a fractional share, then own the whole thing, then get a bigger one and on and on.

Conspicuous consumption is not absolute, it’s relative.

It’s sort of a selfish potlatch, in which each person seeks to demonstrate status, at whatever the personal or societal cost, by out-consuming the others.

It’s a lousy game, because if you lose, you lose, and if you win, you also lose.

The only way to do well is to refuse to play.

In times of yore, the Roman stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger counseled about the excesses of desire in his Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Moral Letters to Lucilius; tr. Richard M. Gummere; 1917):

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour’s property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.

Our consumerist society encourages us not to be grateful for what we have.

Consumerism encompasses dissatisfaction—if people are happy with what they’ve got, then they are less concerned about getting more.

Idea for Impact: Why is more and more always better if it can never be enough?

Yes, This is How Money Can Buy Happier Times

October 7, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Is you're overwhelmed, could money buy you some happiness

Harvard consumer psychologist Ashley Whillans’s cover article in the January 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review considers why the pursuit of money may not bring you joy.

As a society, we really have more time to spend than in previous societies (a result of convenience and mechanization.) Yet, she observes, we tend to use our free time to work yet more and expand our bank accounts, rather than invest that time in things that can provide us with more happiness—meaningful relationships, for example.

The article (and the related podcast) explains how to value your time over money, in particular by hiring help. Here is a précis:

You may not be able to change how many hours you work in a week, but you may be able to change how much of those non-work hours you’re spending on chores.

If you are having a really busy weekend and you have four or five hours of chores to do at home, that means you’re going to have four or five less hours to spend in any other ways that could promote meaning and happiness.

When considering how we can use money to increase our happiness, most of us think of investing it in positive experiences like Hawaiian vacations. But it’s also important to think about how to eliminate negative experiences from our day. Take small actions—don’t do anything too drastic, but just sit down and think about whether there’s anything you can outsource that you really don’t like, that stresses you out a lot, that you can afford.

Idea for Impact: Money allows you to compress some of your routine tasks, should you so choose

If you feel increasingly strapped for time, use the mental model of opportunity costs and consider earmarking a fraction of your discretionary income to hire a personal assistant. Buy yourself some more of that most valuable of life’s supplies, free time.

Start by asking your friends for referrals for a reliable assistant. Outsource your housework, shopping, errands, and other tasks that you dislike. Use the salvaged time to seek activities that bring you joy—recreation, relationships, spiritual and intellectual nurturance, or even productive work.

However, farm out your personal chores in moderation. According to the aforementioned article, there’s some evidence to suggest that people who outsource too much have the lowest levels of happiness, perhaps as a consequence of indolence.

The Simple Life, The Good Life // Book Summary of Greg Mckeown’s ‘Essentialism’

August 21, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

One of the great struggles of modern life is the intense complexity, chaos, and exhaustion of activity and reactivity. We have a tendency to take on too much, become accountable to too many people, and say ‘yes’ to too many demands on our time and our energy.

As I mentioned in my world’s shortest course on time management, the merits of ignoring the trivial many and focusing on the vital few is often overlooked. The need for essentialism—less responsibility, less fame, less money, fewer possessions, less mess—is something that’s easy to identify with, but requires abundant self-discipline to put into consistent action.

Business consultant Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014) is an excellent reminder that a rich, meaningful life entails the elimination of the non-essential:

Essentialism is more than a time-management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.

McKeown’s wide-ranging discussion covers insightful get-a-hold-of-your-life principles—frugality, sufficiency, moderation, restraint, minimalism, and mindfulness—reframed in the essential-avoidable dichotomy. Here are prominent insights from Essentialism:

Get to grips with selectivity—whenever you can, judiciously select which priorities, tasks, meetings, customers, ideas or steps to undertake and which to let go. “The basic value proposition of Essentialism [is,] only once you give yourself permission to stop trying to do it all, to stop saying yes to everyone, can you make your highest contribution towards the things that really matter.”
Most top performers have one thing in common: they accept fewer tasks and then fixate on getting them right. “Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”
If you don’t arrange your life, someone else will. “When we forget our ability to choose, we learn to be helpless. Drip by drip we allow our power to be taken away until we end up becoming a function of other people’s choices-or even a function of our own past choices. In turn, we surrender our power to choose. That is the path of the Nonessentialist. … The Essentialist doesn’t just recognize the power of choice, he celebrates it. The Essentialist knows that when we surrender our right to choose, we give others not just the power but also the explicit permission to choose for us.”
Pop out at least once a year to reflect and ask questions about what you’re doing and why. “The faster and busier things get, the more we need to build thinking time into our schedule. And the noisier things get, the more we need to build quiet reflection spaces in which we can truly focus.”
Pursue a well-lived, joyful, meaningful life. “The life of an Essentialist is a life lived without regret. If you have correctly identified what really matters, if you invest your time and energy in it, then it is difficult to regret the choices you make. You become proud of the life you have chosen to live.”

Recommendation: Speedread Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. It will remind you of the wisdom to think through—and act upon—what really matters. Essentialism is chockfull of useful instructions on how to say ‘no’ gracefully, exercise your freedom to set boundaries, discover the power of small wins, and harness the power of routines to evade the pull of nonessential distractions that can subsume you easily.

I’ll Be Happy When …

October 19, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

'I'll Be Happy When' Syndrome It is fallacious to let life slip away in the pursuit of the illusion that, “When I achieve something, I will be free to live in happiness.”

If you pursue a job, a relationship, a house, a material possession, or the settlement of a debt, happiness will never come because there is always another “something” that will follow the present one. The circumstances that you thus wait for do provide a transitory elation, but, too soon, they withdraw into the dull and mundane, only to be replaced by the next fantasy of happiness.

The Art of Simple Existence is One of the Most Difficult to Master

According to Buddhism, the art of simple existence is one of the most difficult to master. If you aren’t living in peace and happiness at this moment, you’ll never be able to. If you truly want to be at peace, you must be at peace right now. Otherwise, there is only the aspiration of peace “someday when I accomplish something.”

The experience of pleasure, freedom, and love are available now, whatever your circumstance. The American clinical psychologist John Welwood reminds us of this in Ordinary Magic: Everyday Life as Spiritual Path:

Our society would have us believe that inner satisfaction depends on outer success and achievement. Yet struggling to “get somewhere” keeps us perpetually busy, stressed out, and disconnected from that essential inner resource—our ability to be fully present—which could provide a real sense of joy and fulfillment. Our life is unsatisfactory only because we are not living it fully, but instead we are pursuing a happiness that is always somewhere else, other than where we are right now…

Cultivating the capacity to be fully present—awake, attentive, and responsive—in all the different circumstances of life is the essence of spiritual practice and realization. Those with the greatest spiritual realization are those who are “all here,” who relate to life with an expansive awareness that is not limited by any fixation on themselves or their own point of view. They don’t shrink from any aspect of themselves or life as a whole.

Idea for Impact: When One Lives, One Must Live Entirely

However difficult your circumstances, however uncertain the times, peace is not to be earmarked for a future time. The definitive source of happiness lies in the quality of your thoughts. Real sustainable peace springs from a healthy and nurturing relationship with yourself. Let nothing and nobody take that away from you. Don’t postpone being at peace.

I Admire Business Leaders Who’re Frugal to an Extreme

October 4, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Business Leaders Who're Frugal to an Extreme Business folks are rarely frugal, especially when they’re on their clients’ dime or using nameless stockholders’ funds.

I admire businesspeople and companies that are frugal to an extreme and are obsessed with reducing waste. Here are three prominent examples of leaders who’ve successfully inculcated frugality in their companies’ cultures.

Walmart founder Sam Walton was famously frugal and lived a humble life right up until his death. He drove a red 1985 Ford pickup and said, “What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?” On business trips, Walton required Walmart’s buyers to lodge two to a hotel room, eat in family diners, and even bring pens from the hotel rooms for use at “home office.” One of their travel goals was to limit expenses to less than 1% of their purchases. Walmart did not have a corporate jet until they had $40 billion in sales. Walton wrote in his biographical Made in America: My Story (1992; my summary,) “A lot of what goes on these days with high-flying companies and these overpaid CEO’s, who’re really just looting from the top and aren’t watching out for anybody but themselves, really upsets me. It’s one of the main things wrong with American business today.”

Amazon is obsessed with reducing waste. From the very beginning, founder Jeff Bezos built a company focused on providing value in terms of prices and customer service. A micromanager, Bezos audited all corporate expenses when the company was much smaller and reproved everything not warranted for delivering value to customers—no first-class travel for executives, no color printers, office desks made from wooden doors, etc.

Thriftiness is at the heart of the Brazilian private-equity group 3G’s operating model. 3G is notorious for pressing the zero-base budgeting method of cutting operating costs at companies it acquires. Julie MacIntosh’s Dethroning the King (2010) has an interesting story about 3G-run InBev CEO Carlos Brito‘s first visit to Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis headquarters after InBev purchased the American brewer in 2008:

To honor Brito’s visit and pay him the respect it felt he deserved as the soon-to-be new chief, Anheuser-Busch arranged for him to stay in a suite at the cushy Ritz-Carlton. The Ritz wasn’t Brito’s style, though, especially since he was just about to start indoctrinating Anheuser-Busch’s staffers to InBev’s frugal way of life. He had flown commercial into St. Louis from New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

He had someone call back and say, “No, no no, I’ve already reserved a room at such and such a place—like the Holiday Inn,” said one InBev insider. “I think that’s when it probably, for the first time, hit home in St. Louis that things were going to be different.” Rather than hitching a town car or helicoptering in to Anheuser-Busch headquarters from his hotel on Tuesday morning, Brito accepted a ride from [Anheuser-Busch President] Dave Peacock.

While on the subject of leaders and indulgence, I’d like to mention private jets, those symbols of corporate indulgence. Corporate jets were famously ridiculed when the CEOs of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler flew them to Washington DC to seek government bailouts in 2008. General Electric’s former CEO Jeff Immelt’s was disparaged recently for flying around the world with a needless “backup jet” in case something happened to the corporate plane he was using. But a corporate jet isn’t an indulgence for a big company, it is a business necessity. Having used corporate jets during a previous job, I can swear that flying commercial is relatively counterproductive and costly. In the 1990s, Warren Buffett, the poster boy of thriftiness, reluctantly bought a private plane. He christened it “The Indefensible,” but within a few years, renamed it “The Indispensable.”

Why I’m Frugal

October 1, 2018 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Frugality Over the Ages: Frugality as a Virtue

Frugality Over the Ages

From Socrates to Thoreau, from Franklin to Gandhi, philosophers, moralists, and spiritual leaders have identified frugality as a virtue and associated simple living with wisdom, integrity, and happiness. The Cynics were the first to reject wealth, power, sex, fame, and other desires in favor of a simple life free of all possessions. Diogenes the Cynic (portrayed in image) famously lived in a wine barrel and had no worldly goods.

For the Puritans, the love of material consumption was an evil; their spiritual doctrine stressed, in the words of the American historian Edmund Morgan,

A man was but the steward of the possessions he accumulated. If he indulged himself in luxurious living, he would have that much less with which to support church and society. If he needlessly consumed his substance, either from carelessness or from sensuality, he failed to honor the God who furnished him with it.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, a doyen of the self-improvement movement, listed frugality as one of the 13 virtues he followed as a young man. Between 1732 and 1757, Franklin published such famous aphorisms in his Poor Richard’s Almanack as “be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich,” “beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship,” and “he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.”

For the American philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, frugality or “transcendental simplicity” was a means to a higher end. In Man the Reformer (1841,) Emerson wrote, “Economy is a high, humane office, a sacrament, when its aim is grand; when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom, or love, or devotion.” For Thoreau, “high thinking was preferable to high living;” he wrote in Walden (1854,) “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor”.

Thoreau inspired the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. After suffering a mental breakdown in the late 1870s, Tolstoy, who was born into Russian nobility, rejected his family’s estate and serfdom. He renounced his decadent, racy lifestyle and engaged in a revolutionary brand of Christianity based on spiritual and material austerity.

Tolstoy’s philosophy showed the way for the creation of utopian communities of simple, self-sufficient living—the most famous example being the “Tolstoy Farm” ashram that Mahatma Gandhi established in South Africa. Gandhi was the quintessence of simplicity and sported austere homespun clothing. He famously said, “you may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them,” and “our civilization, our culture, our [nation] depend not upon multiplying our wants—self-indulgence, but upon restricting our wants—self-denial.”

Frugality is a Moral Virtue

The distinguished career coach Marty Nemko once wrote, “I even take care to tear-off single sheets of toilet paper. Because I’m cheap? No. Because it’ll help the environment? No. I just think wasting is wrong.” That, in a nutshell, is why I’m frugal.

For me, frugality suggests an appropriate limit on individual and collective desires; it denies the materialistic expectations that the modern society imposes upon us.

Frugality is not some form of world-denying asceticism or austerity. It is a part of principled stewardship of not only the resources I’ve been blessed with but also of myself.

Frugality is about forgoing a subset of desires—as part of a quest for an abundant life. In other words, frugality restricts my indulgence of materialistic appetite, with the intention that I leave space for the cultivation of diverse forms of pleasure.

When I started to work while still in college, frugality was an element of my quest for financial independence. It became the lynchpin of a deliberate set of lifestyle choices and values. But my focus on achieving financial freedom never let me pining for the pleasures I might have had.

Six years ago, I gave up a corporate job and significant earnings in favor of a simpler life with plenty of discretionary time and money for world travel, leisure, learning, culture, and meaning.

Idea for Impact: Enjoying a rich life is more important than zealously stewarding one’s savings and investments.

Living frugally, with the particular intention of achieving financial freedom, requires a good measure of renunciation. This renunciation is easiest when one regards it not as deprivation, but as a deliberate choice in a trade-off for an enriched life.

Materialism

What the Japanese Can Teach Us About Cleanliness

Inner Peace Starts with the Cleanness of Our Inner and Outer World.

Tatsumi’s Book Inspired the Current Obsession with Decluttering

Wondering what to read next?

Apparently, Marie Kondo isn’t attuned with Christianity.

“Kondo-ing” Has Become a Verb.

Keep what sparks joy. Own less stuff. Pursue what’s meaningful.

Will the Marie Kondo Effect alleviate haywire consumerism?

Idea for Impact: Negligent hyper-consumerism is shameful and embarrassing, even to this “card-carrying” capitalist.

Wondering what to read next?

Time in the Market is a Great Compounder.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Money allows you to compress some of your routine tasks, should you so choose

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

The Art of Simple Existence is One of the Most Difficult to Master

Idea for Impact: When One Lives, One Must Live Entirely

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Frugality Over the Ages

Frugality is a Moral Virtue

Idea for Impact: Enjoying a rich life is more important than zealously stewarding one’s savings and investments.

Wondering what to read next?