Economies of scale

As I was trying to put a specific label on my attitude toward our level of comfort with our current standard of living, it occurred to me that 'frugal' falls far short of encompassing our lifestyle decisions. So often we think of frugal in terms of less, smaller, simpler, but that concept only works as a means of comparison. Here's a rather haphazardly scientific and quasi-mathematical way of looking at it:

People manage to make do with very little, and they even manage to be happy about it. We as humans are incredibly adaptable, and we can quickly accustom ourselves to new habits and tastes. A study in something-or-other I read recently tracked a massive increase in what people considered a necessity vs. a luxury item now as opposed to three years ago. In other words, as such trinkets as ipods and mp3 players become increasingly common, more and more people will come to assume that yesteryear’s cutting-edge gadgets are indispensable. Even so have the VCR and microwave crept into pretty much every home, when I personally can remember a time when they were an expensive novelty.

So if it's just a matter of learning to like our circumstances, then it makes sense to choose a lifestyle way down on the cost-of-living meter, and then make it our business to enjoy it.

Sound a bit Pollyanna-ish and trite? Look at it this way. Perhaps you are comfortably happy with your life right now. Contentment is great. But isn't there anything you might possibly find it in your heart to desire, anything at all? Maybe a trip to England? There probably is. There always will be. That's just human nature. We will always want more than we have, and no matter how much we have, we will go on wanting just a bit more. So we might as well start small, because we can always go up from there.

Say your standard of living is exactly average, whatever that means. You take your microwave and your dishwasher and your Starbucks coffee for granted. You spend $800 on Christmas presents (that actually was the national average last year), and presumably rake in about the same. Whenever reality falls short of your expectations - you have to cut back expenses one month, or something - you feel deflated. Whenever you have a bonus month, you get to splurge, and you feel thrilled.

The higher up on the scale of living you are, the more it takes to thrill you, and consequently the fewer the possibilities are of finding something truly out of the ordinary. After all, eating out every day means that eating out is an everyday occurrence, so there is no thrill value there.

Living with delayed gratification and self-denial doesn't mean that I never get what I want. No, in my case, it usually means that I very much want and appreciate what I do get. I find that the potential for happiness is so much greater when my 'thrill threshold' is set low. Gotta love those cheap thrills!