A recent post on X complained about “the total lack of frugality” on the part of the “American poor.” His examples were food stamp recipients driving SUVs and a couple who put every third paycheck towards tattoos.
One can, of course, always adduce extreme examples that don’t necessarily “prove” one’s case. Might a temporarily poor person needing food stamps to tide them over still have the car they had before layoff and eviction? Maybe. But, I also get the point that such phenomena might be too common to be a coincidence.
I have a different question.
Do we think of “frugality” as a virtue? Do we teach it as such?
Recently re-reading Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum about the just living wage, I was struck by the fact that Leo used the word “frugal.” He did not say a living wage was what a wage earner might receive without any need for thrift or frugality on his part. He said that “wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner” (no. 45). He, in fact, thought of frugality as a virtue.
In denying that the Church neglects people’s temporal economic welfare, Leo insisted she wants them to “rise above poverty and wretchedness” (no. 28). But he also recognizes the danger from the other side: greed and pleasure-seeking also often “devour not small incomes merely, but large fortunes, and dissipate many a goodly inheritance.” Frugality and thrift as virtues ensure a balance: not living in poverty but also not becoming so accustomed to the “good life” that the latter is identified with costly non-necessities and optional luxuries.
Leo emphasized that man has a right to private property because, in the reality of the world, he needs something to call his own to ensure his economic safety and stability. That is why I have always admired the Jesuit notion of “indifference.” It means a simplicity of life that recognizes material things are means. If I use them to do God’s will, fine. If I allow them to lead me away from God, that’s wrong.
Obviously, “simplicity of life” means a different thing in New York than in New Guinea, but–appropriate adjustments considered–we should be able to agree on the main lines of what is simple and what is not.
This is where Catholic social thought goes from principles binding on everybody everywhere to practical indications that require the virtue of prudence and the intellectual and spiritual honesty to question one’s assumptions. When discussing a just living wage, Leo wrote that “[i]f a workman’s wages be sufficient to enable him comfortably to support himself, his wife, and his children, he will find it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income” (no. 46, emphasis added).
Notice the twofold criterion here: the wage should allow him “comfortably” to support a family, but once that is achieved, he also should “practice thrift” and reduce “expenses” to protect the future. That means that employers cannot skate around the bare minimum. If most people are living paycheck-to-paycheck without the ability to save even if they “practice thrift,” there’s something wrong. Once upon a time, Catholic social thought assumed a just economy was one where no more than 25% of income had to go for keeping a roof over one’s head. Today, some mortgage lenders jack that proportion up to even 40%. But even with “bracket creep” in the portion of wages spent on necessities like housing and eating, one must also honestly ask: Is there nowhere I can be “cutting down expenses?”
These are the kinds of questions that honest engagement with Catholic social thought makes clear that it does not neatly align with particular political slants. The Left will object that, in calling for thrift, we are “poor shaming,” piling subjective ill feelings atop objective economic constraints. But is it “thrift” to buy lots of prepared and junk foods and “poor shaming” to exclude them from things like food stamps?
The Right will object that Catholic social thought ignores “economic realities,” namely, subservience to market forces that regard buyers and sellers as mere “interested parties” whose relationship is primarily or exclusively defined by the value of the thing they trade. If they are just parties with “interests” and not human beings, one’s sense of obligation to treat them as the latter often loses out.
So, in response to my X tweeter: Yes, the “lack of frugality” is a problem. But it is not primarily a problem because of the added costs it imposes. It is first and foremost a problem because frugality and thrift are not recognized as necessary virtues but unnecessary evils, constraints imposed by a perhaps “unjust” economic system.
Recovering a sense of thrift requires a sense of solidarity–we’re all, buyers and sellers, employers and employees, in this together–and of limits. Limits means both abandoning a “throwaway culture” as well as tempering the human passion Shania Twain identified in “Ka-Ching,” observing “all we ever want is more//a lot more than we had before//so take me to the nearest store!”
Aristotle said, in media stat virtus–virtue is in the middle, between extremes. Between extremes of poverty and indulgence. Frugality is not found among those whose “religion is to go and blow it all.
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This article reminds me of the best selling book “The Millionaire Next Door” that has been around for three decades. Summary: Live within/below your means. There are critics of the book, i.e., this is for people who are cheap, hoard money, don’t enjoy your money etc. (frugality/thrift shaming?) I think there is truth in both the book and the criticism. As for poor shaming, I recently talked with a clerk at a dollar type store, and he estimated that half the EBT/SNAP money spent in the store went to junk food, candy and soda. Yes, only one data point, and more rigorous studies put it at 20-25%.
I don’t know if frugality is a virtue in itself but it’s definitely a life skill.
Life skills are acquired through seeing role models as examples or through our own experiences.
Social welfare programs are a good thing as a safety net but they don’t incentivize frugality and resourcefulness.
I used to work with Section 8 housing and those low income folks driving SUV’s or blowing money on tattoos were always behind in rent and one step ahead of the repo man. It’s not a sustainable lifestyle.
Pope Leo (the current Pontiff) would have been raised by parents who survived the Great Depression and the rationing of WW II or who sacrificed for service in the military. Many of us were raised by the same experienced parents. Gardens (canning) and small farms were how people survived, espc of course, in the rural areas. Now we have mass produced food, largely unaffordable by any reasonable measurement, and ridiculous expiration dates telling the purchaser your food is no good after this date!
No, frugality is not really admired, at least not like it used to be; and with Ceaser printing trillions of dollars during the pandemic, why be frugal? is the thinking why go to school?, we found out during the pandemic it was okay not to attend no matter who’s paying property taxes to pay the bills
A local situation was a person who received a state card could not use it to buy cigs but could use it for soda. They had almost all of the cash to buy cigs but were 20 or 30 cents short, so they bought a few liters of pop, took them out in the store parking lot and dumped the soda on the asphalt, then returned the empties for the deposit, and then the ultimate purchase – the cigarettes!
As far as a living wage we’ve apparently lost that battle?
I guess that works where you can return bottles for a deposit? We don’t have that option here but I remember back when you could collect glass bottles and get a small refund.
Maybe we could work out a deal- just joking– there needs to be a 25 cent deposit nationally though.
Good article and I agree with much of it.
In all fairness, though, I do think that the food budget can be tricky.
Sometimes in attempting to live frugally and make our own meals instead of buying various “convenience foods”, we find that the recipe that sounded so delicious turns out to be unpalatable to the family, including the cook.
I’ve had this happen quite a few times, especially when I attempt to make something “old-fashioned” that used to taste good, but now–it’s just not the same. I think this might be because of differences in the products of today and yesterday, or perhaps, certain steps that were not in the recipe that used to be common knowledge with our grandparents and parents.
One example of this is various meatloaves. I LOVE meatloaf, but for some reason, even though I have many different “favorite” recipes, they just don’t taste as good as they used to–I suspect this might be because of how the cattle or pigs are being fed these days, or perhaps because of the amount of fat (probably less?) that is allowed to stay in the meat.
Another example is fresh or even canned fruit and vegetables. Again, it probably has to do with how they are treated when in the fields and orchards–various chemicals and fertilizers, etc. Or perhaps certain preservatives are being added that give them an “off” taste, or perhaps artificial sweeteners are being added to the cans and plastic jars of fruits/vegetables or even to the actual fresh fruits and vegetables.
And…it might be that what used to taste great when it came in glass and steel containers tastes different when it sits on the shelf for months in plastic containers and absorbs the chemicals.
Even when I buy home-canned products at various autumn festivals (which are expensive, by the way!), they taste different than I expected. I think younger canners are adding less of the “good stuff” (e.g., cane sugar!) like our parents and grandparents used to do!
Funny that we all used to eat that “good stuff”, but we weren’t fat. And today, we eat the modern “more healthy stuff”–and many of us are fat!
I’m not saying that people should give up and just go buy/eat whatever they know they will actually eat, but…it is tough when you know that once you’ve spent the food money, there isn’t any more until the next aid payment a month away. And when the ingredients for a home-cooked meal cost more than a “convenience food” because we thought that the meal would last for several days (leftovers) and then the family ends up throwing out the entire meal, I can understand why families stick with what they know will actually taste good and get eaten in its entirety–junk food and fast food.
Sigh.
It used to be a sin to waste food, even attending the Catholic grd school we had to eat our hot lunch; I could not and still cannot eat sauerkraut and would hide it in the empty milk carton when I
thought no one was looking; one of the lunch ladies years later said she knew about my practice- wish there was another entree they could have plopped on my plate. A co worker later on in life explained how they buried cabbage in the ground and got through the winter that way when he was growing up.
Growing up n the farm any uneaten food would go to the chickens or hogs. They would have had a regular feast with the health food our high school wasted when Michelle Obama was calling the shots on the hot lunch program. Kids wouldn’t eat it.
Send money when you can.
Frugality, and asceticism are really vital to attain, and remain in the spiritual life – being focused on our salvation achieved by deference to and for the good of others. “The Jesuit notion of ‘indifference’ means a simplicity of life that recognizes material things are means. If I use them to do God’s will, fine. If I allow them to lead me away from God, that’s wrong” [quoted by Grondelski] basically says it all.
We have a natural tendency to seek the finest of apparel, cuisine, technology whereas excellence can be rightly placed on material that enhances our studies, contribution to society. A balance toward what contributes to society, my spirituality should have priority over comforts. Recreation however remains important to emotive well being, Teresa of Avila considered it a vital component of the rule for the OCD.