Learning frugality from other cultures

For most of my life I've been living quite frugally; my father is very very frugal, and so was his father. And I've defenitely inherited his frugal genes. There was a time when our finances were so tight that basic necessities had to be reconsidered and budgeted for. We did a lot of very frugal stuff such as not driving a car, eating mostly legumes as our main protein source, reusing food packaging, and buying second hand clothing. Growing up in a western country, all these things were considered very frugal or even cheap, or I dare say even poverty... Because for some reason, poverty in most western countries is considered something bad, something which you should be ashamed of- almost like it's omething sinful. Even though in most cases, and certainly ours, it was something we couldn't do anything about. We didn't buy a dozen of TVs on credit nor did we have a shelter full of cats, nor were we addicted to any substance- those are the most common prejudices about poor people, I guess. 

So sometimes we were proudly being frugal whereas other times we really tried to hide it a bit, because that's just how the society was. I honestly don't like hiding who I am. But having been bullied throughout all my school years, even in college by teachers, this really shaped me as a person, and I always tried being careful not to be the "weird" one. It took many years to heal and somewhat unlearn that and to be proud of who I was- with all my "weird", yet so valuable habits. I still carry bits of my past and I think being careful will never completely go away, but I can honestly say that I've made big improvements. The thing is, with people becoming more environmentally conscious these days, it's a bit less of a shame if you're not wasteful and you're not always considered "the stingy one" anymore, which is nice. Because of this you can just disguise your frugal practices as being environmentally friendly- even though both are usually important to most frugal people. But somehow being frugal is a bad thing, whereas being eco conscious isn't. People can be weird sometimes. 😃

It was such a relief for us when we moved to a country where not only being frugal wasn't something that was frowned upon; rather, it's the norm for most people! The "very frugal things" we did I mentioned earlier in this post, are actually quite normal things where we live. Yes, most people here don't eat meat daily, and certainly not red meat. Nor do they have more than one car - even middle class, two adults working kind of families. Even having no car isn't a big deal here. Yes, nearly everyone buys second hand clothing because new clothes means Chinese crap and there aren't fashion chains such as H&M or Zara in our area, so second hand clothing isn't necessarily something people do to save money, it's just the best choice you can make quality wise. Also it's totally accepted to haggle, especially with large expenses. Now you can't try this in the supermarket (well you can try, but with no result), but in a lot of other shops, at the market, and for services you're hiring someone, it's totally normal to haggle. This is honestly something you really need to learn. There's a lot of other things that are more acceptable societally here when it comes to frugality, and I could go on and on I guess, but my point is that you can really learn from other cultures. It just fascinates me how one thing is something shameful in one culture, yet in a different culture, it's the norm. And of course people here don't live perfectly zero waste, but at least I can really appreciate the more simple approach to materialistic aspects. 

What's also interesting is that they can learn a thing or two from the frugal ways I brought with me from my own country and upbringing. It's honestly not as much as I learned from them, but a typical simple Dutch practice they were not familiar with, for example, was to have just a sandwich as lunch instead of a cooked meal. This isn't something we do a lot because I like hot meals way more than I do cold sandwiches, but it was for sure a thing especially children enjoy. And probably the parents too, as it saves them time and money.