“Loud Budgeting”, I’m told, is the latest trend. One of our two newspapers, the Deseret News, recently ran a feature article about it. It’s always wise to consider background information as you’re evaluating things. The Deseret News is owned by the Mormon Church. “Deseret” (not a misspelling) is a word from the Book of Mormon. When the Deserted News gets clued in on something, you can be sure that the parade is already way down the street. The Wall Street Journal also had a feature about it. WSJ is now owned by the Fox propaganda empire. … Ditto.

The idea is to flaunt your stinginess. Make a “big deal” out of saving money. Wear the same shoes two days in a row and make sure everybody knows it. Big media is going nutso about it.

Being stingy isn’t new to me. And I don’t flaunt it. I came to my stinginess honestly and naturally. I grew up in a coal mining town where actual money was something they had in Salt Lake. In Carbon County, we had to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo shits. (Way back then, nickels had a buffalo on one side. Way back then, people actually thought of coins as money, too.)

“They” suggest that you cut back on “dining out”. “Cut back”?  … Why not, “Cut out”? My wife and I went cold turkey on dining out when Covid hit. But it was time anyway. Business has changed the dining experience into an assembly line operation where you’re expected to pay the workers (tips) while the owners get the profits. It had stopped being fun. We haven’t seen the inside of a restaurant since that time. And “dining in” is a much nicer experience now since we’ve focused on it. We don’t “order in” either. We never have. Those businesses expect you to shoulder the burden of paying the workers too. We’ve invented new dishes based on staple grains and vegetables. HuNu salad, for example. The name comes from “Who knew that whole wheat grains, when cooked, was a tasty salad vegetable?” It’s cheap too.

“They” say you should cut back on credit card debt. What debt? In fifty years of using a credit card (not a debit card – there’s a huge difference) we have paid 35 cents in interest. And that was a mistake that I was just too lazy to get refunded. The Deseret News reports that interest rates have cost consumers “$2 trillion in wealth from July 2022 to July 2023”. They didn’t get any of it from us. We’re the people who get a tiny slice of the interest that other people pay.

When a shirt gets a hole in it, my wife patches it. And we don’t do it for show. We’ve always done it. I’ve got a white shirt that I wear when I sing in the choir that will last me for the rest of my life because I ONLY wear it then.

We turn the lights off whenever we don’t need them. We turn the water off as soon as we get what we need. We close the doors when it’s cold outside. We keep the thermostat five degrees more efficient than what these johnny-come-lately efficiency people recommend. Cold? Put on a sweater!

We couldn’t wear different shoes every day anyway. We’ve never owned that many shoes.