I am slashing my spending and rethinking my bourgeois ways. You should, too.
By Lisa Pryor
Opinion Writer
Let me tell you about the cult I have joined: the cult of thrift. The indoctrination started gently, with a podcast here, a YouTube video there, about minimalism, debt-free living, frugality, decluttering, zero waste.
Then, before I knew it, I was listening to an American evangelical Christian named Dave Ramsey telling me in his Tennessee drawl that “the borrower is slave to the lender” and that I need to get “gazelle intense” and live on “rice and beans, beans and rice” to get out of debt, be “weird” by having a paid-off house.
There is a growing concern that stressed-out, debt-ridden consumer culture is unsustainable.CreditDavid Sacks/DigitalVision, via Getty Images
Now, having chugged the Kool-Aid, I am slashing my spending and rethinking my bourgeois ways.
Bargain grocery shopping has become a sport. I make soups from scratch and serve casseroles made from cheap cuts of meat. Instead of taking the kids to expensive museum exhibitions to learn about nature, we are spending time in nature. Instead of dance classes, we dance. I am buying less wine, and when I do, it is supermarket wine. Dyeing my hair less, and when I do, using supermarket dye.
