Frugal Friday time it is. This time I wanted to ask myself this question:

”How is frugality good for the brain?”

I am not sure where this question came from. But it came to me in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago, when it was hot, and I was having trouble falling asleep.

I did not dig in to the answer to the question at the time for two reasons:

1. I actually wanted to fall asleep, so I didn’t want my brain to get tangled in the web of its own thoughts.
2. I wanted to hash it out in my writing. Here I am 🙂

Our human brains are always looking for novelty. And that is what makes us be big consumers- all the choices out there. New designs, latest fashions, interesting gadgets. We want them all. So we buy. Because novelty is what makes life interesting for us.

But it does not help with keeping our bank accounts robust.

And, it certainly doesn’t help our planet to have to shell out the resources for all the things we have, or to pollute our planet in order to make things.

Lastly, the novelty wears off soon enough if it wasn’t a genuine want. And all we are left with are useless artifacts of our brain’s need for novelty in the moment.

But if we operate from the mindset of frugality, we give our brains the option to weigh in. And think of the problem in a nuanced way. The thinking becomes more complex when the brain, as usual, jumps with excitement at the novelty factor. But then it also has to think about the desire vs genuine need vs genuine want paradigm. And, the cost factor also comes into play- is this thing that I want worth the cost that is being asked for it?

With all of this thinking through the problem of “should I buy this?”:

• We put brakes on our first instinct of buying something.

• We train our brains for more complex thinking

• We don’t end up with an endless amount of useless-to-us stuff.

• We actually get only what we truly need or treasure.

So it is not a bad thing at all, all in all. 

For those of us fortunate enough to practice frugality by choice, rather than being forced into it, the concept does not mean denying or depriving ourselves what we need or truly desire. But just to put the brakes on our thought process so we don’t get what is not required.

Frugality as a mindset is all about being intentional. 

And intentionality in our lives is what makes it right in any realm that it is applied to:

• What kind of hobbies we chose

• What kinds of people we hang out with

• What kinds of food we put in our bodies

• How we choose to spend our time.

• How we choose to spend our money

• How to we choose to use up the limited space in our houses

I am not perfect.

I get pulled to beautiful things that I have no real need for. And most times, I have come to realize, I just like how they look but don’t really need to possess them. But it’s easy for me to translate the need for admiration to the need of possession. And that is where the intentionality of putting the breaks on our brains’ jumping with excitement at novelty comes into play.

To be stronger in the mind, to owning what we need and what we truly admire, and not a whole lot of junk, and to save money not spent on useless things so we can spend on intentional experiences and genuine needs, and financial investments…

Frugality, by making my brain take that moment of delay to think things through, only makes my life feel richer- not poorer.

And it helps my brain be stronger by making it consider more variables than one.