Habits of a lifetime rarely, if ever, change. Under ordinary circumstances, habits develop because they seem to work and they continue just so long as those benefits recur. What happens when something changes in the world around us, such that, engaging in that identical habituated behavior is no longer necessary?
My wife and I are both New Yorkers, she was raised in Queens and lived in a one family home. I grew up in the Bronx on the fourth floor of a five story walk up apartment house. While our families had enough to live on neither, shall we say, engaged in conspicuous consumption. My father was a cab driver and we lived day to day on what he brought home. My wife Betty's father was in the printing trade and brought home a weekly check. The only credit granting program in my neighborhood was at our downstairs grocery store where, when my mother didn't have enough, the grocer would write down the shortfall and thereby carry us for a few days till dad could catch up.
Our married life together was similarly characterized by a need to spend carefully. For most of that time, while our children were at home, I was the sole provider and worked as an educator making a comfortable living as long as we lived modestly. And so it went with the usual ups and downs till retirement.
My wife is still very frugal. She only buys things when they are on sale. She clips coupons and it is not unusual for her to travel between three super markets on the same day so as to take advantage of all the sales items. We shop the discount department stores and eat out at inexpensive restaurants taking full advantage of senior discounts of all sorts. Betty takes great pride in finding the best deal. Even when traveling on vacations we seek out discount motels from coupon books.
What's wrong with this picture is that, because of all those years living a frugal lifestyles we now no longer need to be that careful with money. But it is so damn difficult to change those deeply ingrained spending habits. At restaurants, for example, on those rare occasions when I have been successful at convincing Betty to try something really upscale, she doesn't enjoy the experience as much because of how expensive it seems. It just doesn't seem worth it.
Behavior that was once necessary and that really paid off, now, because of our good fortune, is less necessary. Because that frugality stubbornly persists, it has become a kind of curse.
Sometimes I wonder what we would do if we won big on a lottery. Fortunately that is not even a distant probability. We don't throw away our money on lottery tickets.
8 comments on Curse of Frugality
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Makes me wonder whether learning is exclusive to the young. Maybe thats one reason why grand kids are of such interest to seniors.