Frugal Defined

Webster defines frugal as "careful management of money." In Tagalog, being frugal is a virtue called masinop--eliciting images of a barrio or village mother carefully mending her children's clothes and socks, so that they can last another schoolyear, or the same mother's recipe for recycling the day's cooked rice into fried, sweet "pop rice," just to extend what others would normally throw away already.

Aside from carefully managing money, being frugal to me is getting our hard-earned and hard-saved money to go all the extra miles to the gallon. Versus being cheap, being frugal means why buy a black Nike shirt for our badminton tournament for $45, when I found a wonderful black Danskin cotton-lycra blend in Walmart for $7??

My husband laughs at me for printing on "fast draft" mode. I nag him to turn the lights off when he isn't using them. We quarrel because he has habit of switching the airconditioning on and then leaving the room. He likes to get the unlimited cellphone plan for a big monthly bill. I got the prepaid plan and watch my minutes. I have to get him to understand that being frugal is a conscious choice versus a compromise. And that even when we have money, I will still be frugal.

In the States, dubbed the "throw-away society," I'm not sure if it is easy or hard to be frugal. At my kids' school, I chanced them upon lunchtime, and well the bell rang, the schoolkids just tossed their hardly touched sandwiches and milk into the trash! If only I could catch all those cheese quesadillas and bring to the kids I know in the Shaw/EDSA crossing! I instructed my daughter to carefully wrap her half-eaten sandwich and put it back into her lunchbag. I assured her that someone at home will surely eat it. Bothered by the throwing of food (my lola used to warn me that one grain of rice wasted equals one year in heaven--but of course, my motives were more mature than that),I remember seeing many of our poor back home, eating off the trash.

At the same time, because there are so many things you can re-use, it is easy not to
spend too much and make-do. Drying up markers can be dipped in water for another round of usage. The better quality disposable plastic cups can be washed after a party to be used in a picnic or as play things for the kids. And all that white paper to be shredded in my husband's office, he brings home so the kids can use as drawing paper for their art scribbles.

I will have to extend frugal to carefully managing resources to conserve the earth. I am staunch about composting kitchen waste into the soil conditioner, yielding an organic garden. I pack my kids' lunches in re-usable tupperware containers and jugs so that we don't waste ziploc bags and contribute to more garbage. The left-over adobo becomes adobo flakes for breakfast. I have learned countless recycling recipes.

I am also the designated "doggy-bag" taker. When we go out to eat, I bag anything that is left over from the super-sized portions. People snicker sometimes, some feel it will save me from cooking yet another meal. In Manila, there is no problem finding a street-child to take the doggy-bag. Here, you can't just give it to the homeless man under the traffic light. He will demand that it is hot. And he will sue you if he gets a tummy ache.

Whatever, I just cannot throw food away. I teach my kids a valuable lesson (even if they keep whining) by not buying them new toys often. They learn the value of patience and of appreciating what they have. Many say that a person who has everything is often unhappy because he cannot appreciate what he has. My kids learn how to play with berries and leaves for play cooking. They learn how to share and how to wait, which is not common here--where you get what you want right now--because your parents are guilty and give you whatever you want.

My grandmother is 92 years old and she is in great health, with 20-20 vision. Everyone asks her her secret, and she says "simple living" all the time. I know that she managed her resources well and lived within her means, even is she is quite wealthy. I guess, that's it: she is wealthy beyond money, too. I believe that if everyone managed their resources more carefully and efficiently, there will be less hunger and poverty in the world. I also believe that kids that are taught how to be frugal will be more emotionally mature and better citizens of our planet.

But wait, I better get my girls a new set of markers--sobrang luma naman yata itong mga 'to!