After reading a post at The Simple Dollar on quality of life and consumer spending it made me think of my own views regarding quality of life and frugality.
In the post Trent argues that consumer purchases do not increase your quality of life. I agree with that to a point. The examples in the post included going out for lunch and seeing a move. Both of these are things I regularly indulge in and I do believe they raise my quality of life.
That does not mean that my quality of life would go down if I didn’t do them though. When I go on my hike I won’t be eating out for lunch very often and will rarely be seeing a movie. I expect my quality of life will be even higher then than it is now.
The difference to me is that I will be choosing to give up those indulgences. I won’t be forced to give them up. This goes to my underlying philosophy of frugality which is that frugality is about choosing to do less expensive things not depriving yourself of things.
Agreed. There is such a thing as being too frugal.