Did you know that there are thieves lurking about and ready to steal your frugality happiness? These sneaks can come in to your home and rob away your frugal hard work. How? They can rob your contentment of your frugal lifestyle and tempt you into spending, spending and spending. Here are the most common frugal thieve and what they are all about. Keep them out of your home, if you can!
Mail order catalogs
These glossy catalogs are filled with beautiful stuff in beautiful home occupied by beautiful people. Or, the people are having them best time walking along a soft sand beach with the setting sun. These catalogs focus on selling a lifestyle that could be had “if you buy the products.” They show you are the wonderful things you “can’t have” and can rob your contentment. Instead, take a look at the things in the catalog you can have, such as a walk along that beach, a smiling happy family, etc. A room that you painted yourself. Go ahead and get ideas if you like, but don’t get bogged down about having it all. Or, just keep the catalogs out of your home altogether. Remove yourself from the lists and toss any that do sneak in.
The comfortable neighbor
Many a comfortable neighbor may look at you askance when they come into your home and see the television set that you have had for the last 20 years and wonder how you could survive without a flat-screen television. They may offer to have your kids play at their home, since they have a Wii and all of the accessories to go with it, leaving you feeling as through you need to get a Wii, too. Or they may talk about how they never use their second oven as you remove your baked goods from your old range. The comfortable neighbor could rob you of your contentment and breed some envy. This is natural and probably no fault of your neighbor.
Next up, I’ll talk some more about that neighbor and share two other frugal contentment thieves.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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