Click here to read a wonderful Boston Globe article about how the citizens of Maine are surviving the current recession due to frugal skills handed down through the generations.
Make sure to read through the comments, which run from the gamut from flippant to insightful.
Now . . . how about an article about the frugal folk in Oregon? Our hardscrabble ways might not be generations in the making, but we can still give those New Englanders a run for their money.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
The comments are “wicked good”.
This isn’t news up here in North Dakota either 😉 No huge booms, means no huge busts. I told a relative in CA that living “level” was much better in the end run than living large.
It is good to see some of these articles coming out praising the frugality of our parents and grandparents. My grandmother is a fascinating woman who has rich, rich memories about living during the depression, but also before that, as they were never a wealthy family financially. My grandfather grew up in the hollers of West Virginia in poverty that can barely be imagined now. They married and became more prosperous, but didn’t change much about their lives. The older I get, the more I understand the mindset of my grandparents and why my grandmother doesn’t feel the need to upgrade her “vintage” green and orange Tupperware just because it is dated and not the newest. Still works.
I moved to Maine from Chicago 7 years ago and I agree that frugality is a way of life up here…everyone goes to yard sales, Goodwill, etc and it makes no difference if you are a store clerk or a professor, its just the way it is. LOL
For most up here, there is a feeling that we are insulated from the overall financial crisis since money has always been tight.
Interesting article, but I think I fall into a little different category. I’m surrounded by excess, so in relative terms I’m frugal. But I do that to support a lifestyle that includes work that I enjoy, travel, and going out to a nice dinner a couple of times a month.
For me, saving up for 2 months to go to the Olive Garden for a 50th anniversary sounds depressing. If you really can’t afford it, that’s how it is. But if it’s just about saving more and being frugal at any cost, not for me.