On Financial Philosophies and Frugal Zealots

© Kyria Baker

It's hard to pinpoint when my journey toward extreme frugality began. I know it was some time after I got married. At the time, my habit had been to live from paycheck to paycheck. I was in college, young and full of energy. Aaaah, those were the days! During one summer, I worked at both McDonald's and Wal-Mart, opening at one and closing at the other. Now, I might have managed to save some money if I had had a reliable vehicle, but that was sadly not the case. However, the Lord took care of me during those years when I was on my own. I had no male relative to tune up my car or do any number of other things I needed, and worse, I was not very faithful to my Lord. Yet, He was still faithful to me and met my needs time and time again.

Rowdy and I married in February of 1990. We soon discovered some differences in our approaches to handling money. He was an extreme penny-pincher, while I would pay my bills and then spend the rest on whatever caught my eye. So we fought, and I learned to tighten up and he learned to loosen up. I think the best agreement we made was to allot a certain amount of spending money to each of us and then allow no criticism of how it was spent.

Somewhere along the line I stumbled across Amy Dacyczyn and her Tightwad Gazette newsletter. I was hooked! I subscribed to her faithfully and when she stopped writing the newsletter, I bought the first book to cover the material I missed before I found out about her. Amy put together a treasure trove of helpful hints and tips and wrote informative and entertaining articles about things near and dear to our hearts. Subjects such as cloth napkins vs. paper and gas appliances vs. electric were carefully researched and the proof presented to us in such mind-numbing detail that we marveled that she would go to so much trouble just for us.

Amy, or the Frugal Zealot as she liked to sign herself, helped me pick up speed on my journey toward frugality at an almost alarming rate. I wanted to do everything she wrote, implement every technique, wash every baggie! After a while I sort of burned out and stopped actively pursuing this philosophy of life. But as I matured in the Lord, I started adding little frugal habits here and there as I stopped being so self-centered. Luke 16:10-13 says, "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." See, spending money you can't afford to spend and not taking good care of what you have is rooted in selfishness. The Lord and I have made great strides in this area. At first my motivation was to have more money for things I wanted. I learned some good strategies for some very selfish reasons. But there's a problem with having so much stuff; YOU HAVE TO TAKE CARE OF IT. Clean it, maintain it, repair it! If you lose something you spent a lot of money on, it just makes you sick. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Matthew 6:19-21

I have a much better motivation now: the more I save, the more I can give to the Lord. I love John Wesley's outlook. He determined how much money he could live on per year and he then proceeded to give the rest away. He made quite a bit of money from his teaching and writing, but never raised his own standard of living, so that he could help raise others out of extreme poverty. That is my goal; to have just such an attitude so that I can shower blessings on others with the abundance that God pours out on me. "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25:40