I came to this realization the other day that due to necessity, i have spent my entire adult life being a cheapass.
Yes it is true, but i have to admit, it is not all my fault. I blame it on my parents.
Well, honestly i can't blame it all on them right? I mean after all i am 47. That would be like kind of like blaming my mom for forcing me to eat brussel sprouts, still feeling traumatized by it, and spending years in therapy for it. No, they cannot take all the credit. Maybe in my early youth, but not now. I am my own worst cheapass... it is time to take some personal responsibility.
But i can't help but wonder. Could it be years of eating crusty meat scraps, day old bread or dented cans of green beans that my mom found in the clearance bin at Waldbaums? No, it couldn't be that. Maybe it was the flea market training or learning how to scavenger hunt (ie: scope out the garbage on trash day) that my dad taught me? Hummm... Or maybe it was the recyling or re purposing of everything that came into our house?
I can't pinpoint it, but i had to get it from somewhere right?
I know my parents, like me now, had no choice but to get on the frugality train. All aboard! They were broke and trying to raise three kids on my dad's meager salary. It was either get on the train or starve. So off we went into the frugal sunset.
It all started when my father's business went belly up. I had to be about 2 or 3 at the time. My mother was not working and they were flat broke. My father eventually found a job. It was for the city of New York, painting lines in the street at night. It was a horrible job, with a low wage, but my dad took it because it had good benefits. So my parents had no choice but live in my grandmother's house in Queens. It was an old funky row house, with the bathroom in the hall and rooms laid out so that you had to go through a bedroom or two in order to find the kitchen. There were radiators in each room that spewed steam and made howling noises at night. The bedrooms were tiny, neighborhood was noisy and the windows were drafty.
I spent the first 13 years of my life in that house.
We lived on the top floor and my grandmother down below. The back yard was a rectangular shape. There was a clothes line that went from the window to the back fence. There was a small patch of grass that constituted a lawn and aside from a few rose bushes, the only decorative element was a bird bath. When you went into the backyard, you could peer over the tiny wire fence into every neighbors yard on the block. Everybody knew every bodies name and business. Because nobody had air conditioning, the entire summer was spent outside, either in the back yard or camped out on the front stoop in order to people watch. Summer activities consisted of either the fire hydrant, stoop ball, johnny ride the pony, a tiny plastic pool or a sprinkler out back. For a kid back then, it seemed, life was good.
Things were tight, they always were. I remember at an early age that there was always the "we can't afford that" line for anything that appeared to cost anything. I knew not to ask for much. You got what you got and you appreciated it... period. Toys were simple and most of my day consisted of either school or running around the neighborhood with my pinky ball or an old pair of skates. Vacations were either non-existent or consisted of riding upstate new york in the back of the Ford Station wagon to the Catskill Game Farm or Lake George.
We did not need much.
To be honest, my fondest childhood memories were of living in that rowhouse in Queens. I guess because it was never really obvious to me that we were all that different then the rest of the kids that lived on the block. Everyone wore hand me downs, and waited in line at the free lunch truck during the summer for the Bologna sandwich and apple they gave out to all us "poor kids." My mom always new the exact time that truck rolled in and shoved us all out the door so we could be the first in line. Everybody in our neighborhood was all in the same boat.
Quick, get in line or miss out on a free sandwich!
I learned that, things always got recycled or re purposed for something else and my dad always brought things home that he found from the trash.
Didn't all dad's do this?
You never quite knew what my dad would bring home. As soon as my mom saw him come through the door, she would cringe and yell at him to "get rid of it". She could never see how anything he brought home could could possibly serve any useful purpose.
But my dad knew otherwise. My dad always saw the potential in something that nobody else was able to. He was able to create something truly amazing out of junk.
One time, he found a funky wooden wagon wheel in the trash. It was ugly and huge. My mom looked at him, shook her head in disgust and went back to washing the dishes because she knew that she had no control over what came into the house. She had to let it go.
He took the wagon wheel, worked some magic on it and turned it into a western chandelier (or at least that's what he told us it was). After the chandelier, there was the whiskey bottle converted into a lamp, tables converted into desks, homemade bunk beds made out of wooden scrap and leftover wood re purposed into a complete home entertainment unit.
Frugality made my my dad very creative.
My mom, on the other hand, had her own gifts. She was known as the contact paper queen. Are you familiar with contact paper? Do they even make that stuff anymore? Either way, it came in sheets and was sticky on one side. You basically bought the color or style you wanted to cover something up with, rolled out the sheet, cut the shape and presto! A brand new something could be created! She literally created dresser drawers, shelves and a dice costume for my brother out of contact paper and old cardboard boxes. She probably could have opened up her own contact paper furniture business if she wanted to. It was actually quite amazing.
When i finally moved out on my own, i learned how to make my dollar stretch. I credit this skill with years of being around my parents. I lived in several basement apartments on meager waitress wages, all the while putting myself through school. Often, to the disgust of my roommates, i thought nothing of hauling home a chair, table or sofa from the trash in the back of my Honda hatchback.
At the time, even though i was basically struggling, i never felt poor. Maybe this was something else my parents taught me? Don't get me wrong, there were times when i barely had 20 cents in my checking account, but there was always the thought that it was not as bad as it could be. In other words, i always thought "i will be fine."
And i was always fine.
A few years ago, upon getting one of my social security statements, i was actually shocked by how little i made back then. One year i believe i lived on about 6000. How i managed this was anybodies guess. Yea, rent, food, necessities were cheaper but the reality of the situation, was that i lived in abject poverty and had no clue.
Nowadays i am still not rich. My family of three manages on my salary and a tiny bit of rental income each month. I have had people ask me "how do you do it?" To be honest, i am not sure. I know i am kind of a cheapass... OK maybe not kind of, maybe full blown cheapass, but there is more to it i guess then just the cheapass part. It also has to do will feeling like no matter what, we will be fine. We have enough to meet our needs and a bit extra for a happy meal. We have a nice house in a lower middle income neighborhood. Our sofa is about 20 years old, but it still works. My clothes are from garage sales and thrift stores.
When i look around, it feels like we are doing well. Maybe to somebody else that would not be the case at all. Maybe ignorance is bliss as they say?
I was once listening to this radio show on finances. The guy said something that kind of stuck with me. He said "If you can go into a mall, look around, buy nothing and feel great, then you have basically achieved financial happiness." That kind of sums it up for me. I feel good with what i have, i do not really need anything else.
Well that and i also avoid the mall like the plague.
Now don't get me wrong, there are days when being a cheapass has it's downside. Sometimes i feel a bit burnt out with the whole process. Like for example, I was walking around Khols the other day, eager to spend a 20 dollar gift card that was burning a whole in my pocket. Free money!
What was supposed to be a fun way to burn free cash kind of turned into a complete disaster. First i felt completely overwhelmed. Too much stuff and I did not even have enough money to buy one crappy t-shirt! How can you get the most bang from a buck if even the stuff on the clearance rack does not cover a tiny gift card? Then at every turn i had the opportunity to look in a mirror and assess my garage sale wardrobe. What seemed like totally presentable when i left the house this morning had morphed into crazy bag lady sans a few stray cats. Wow, did i really leave the house looking like a bag lady? The thought that it could be a conspiracy theory made it feel a little better. The bad lighting and the fun house mirrors were there in order to make you feel so bad about yourself that you had to buy something! That was it, fun house mirrors and bad lighting.
Or maybe it was just me feeling the pangs of not enough money and being in a place where i did not belong. I could have a pity party or i could just pack it up and leave.
So i left. Yes, being a cheapass has it's downside. Note to self... stay out of Khols...
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