The Foul Weather Frugals

We’ve been hearing a lot about a group of people we’ve dubbed the Foul Weather Frugals (that’s a Sentient TM, btw). FWFs are folks who have few (or no) inherent values around conserving money but are tightening the belt now out of necessity and fear. Maybe they’ve lost their job, or their ARM just increased and they’re having difficulty making mortgage payments – whatever the reason they’ve stopped eating dinner out, buying new cars, and shopping department stores as frequently as they once did.  This behavior is justified in the current economic climate- but we wonder how sustainable it is to a group of folks for whom frugality is a new notion. Think about hybrid cars: there was a spike in sales when gas prices were around $4 a gallon, but when gas went down, sales fell. What happened? Who stopped buying them? We think the Foul Weather Frugals are largely responsible for this shift.
On the other hand -I haven’t finished assimilating this information yet but I’m sitting here reading yet another article, this one in the Washington Post about how people that are still gainfully employed with money in the bank and no direct threat of losing their job, have “suddenly” (?) become frugal. These folks are an oddity, it seems, because they don’t “have” to conserve their money, but they choose to do so. Huh?  That we think this is at all odd is so completely American – !  To save money at all is rational: further, to be conservative is one of the founding values this country was built on. To save consistently whether times are good or bad, and to spend carefully and conservatively are also basic human values. So why then is it such an anomaly when people exhibit conservative behavior?  Are our values as Americans so out of whack with reality that being conservative is suspect?  Back to these folks with jobs and savings: could it be that being frugal is in fact a deeply ingrained value for them, and that overt spending was out of line with their value system?  We think it’s likely that they are authentically frugal, so we call this group the True Frugals.
Clearly, we’re talking about a continuum of attitudes and behaviors  here: people are not  so easily categorized into “X” or “Y” groups – the real truth is most people will exhibit a mix of attitudes and their values do change over time and according to circumstance.  Still, the movement in general and the shift in prominence of frugality deserves more exploration. and it’s something we intend to delve into as we continue to explore the True Frugals and Foul Weather Frugals. Thoughts? Comments? We’d love to hear them!