Quotes About Frugality

I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people.

Economy is idealism in its most practical form.

These days, you've gotta milk a dollar out of every dime.

My mother, she had a very good attitude toward money. I'm very grateful for the fact that we had to learn to save. I used to get like 50 pence a week, and I'd save it for like five months. And then I'd spend it on Christmas presents. I'd save up like eight pounds. It's nothing, but we did that.

The first sign of extravagance is to buy trousers that one does not need.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

He owned one pair of shiny black shoes that he resoled every two years for twenty years.

You get really scrappy when you're making things for zero dollars, and you just have to keep thinking like that. It's not like, 'Oh, we now have a little bit more money, let's do things differently.' If you just keep boiling it down to the simplest possible way to make it, I think that always ends up being the best.

Mere parsimony is not economy . . . expense, and great expense, may be an essential part of true economy.

A child thinks twenty shillings and twenty years can scarce ever be spent.

He neither drank, smoked, nor rode a bicycle. Living frugally, saving his money, he died early, surrounded by greedy relatives. It was a great lesson to me.

He who will not economize will have to agonize.

After order and liberty, economy is one of the highest essentials of a free government.... Economy is always a guarantee of peace.

A man who accustoms himself to buy superfluities is often in want of necessities.

You know you get a tube of toothpaste... such a bloody con. You squeeze and squeeze and nothing more comes out? Well, take a pair of scissors and cut it about an inch and a half from the bottom and it's absolutely packed with stuff! I do that, then cut off the top bit, so I can stick that back on and it doesn't dry out!

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.

There was no luxury. I never got on an airplane until I was 18. We drove everywhere. My dad was like, "Waste not, want not."

In fact, the bigger the bill, the less likely you are to spend it. If you want to really save money, spend only cash and carry only fifty-dollar bills.

The only way two ever live more cheaply than one is if one of them gives up what he or she wants.

There wasn't much left at the end of the month for her favorite luxuries—great clothes and hardback books, but she didn't mind. She bargain-shopped and used the library.

We were very much a reading family, but we were a borrow-a-book-from-the-library family more than a bookshelves-full-of-books family. My parents valued books, but the grew up in the Depression, aware of the quicksilver nature of money, and they learned the hard way that you shouldn't buy what you could borrow. Because of that frugality, or perhaps independent of it, they also believed that you read a book for the experience of reading it.

We were very much a reading family, but we were a borrow-a-book-from-the-library family more than a bookshelves-full-of-books family. My parents valued books, but they grew up in the Depression, aware of the quicksilver nature of money, and they learned the hard way that you shouldn't buy what you could borrow. Because of that frugality, or perhaps independent of it, they also believed that you read a book for the experience of reading it.

This explains why I've been making Recession Tea- letting a teabag steep for half the time it should so I can use it again for a second cup later.

I am going to challenge you not merely to live within your means, but to live below your means.