Column 25: On frugality

Or: on resisting the idea that your life should always look a certain way

There is a very specific kind of pressure that comes with being in your twenties.

It’s not always explicit, and it doesn’t come from one place. It’s ambient. You absorb it without noticing. It lives somewhere between what you see online, what people around you are doing, and what you quietly assume your life should start to look like.

You should be trying new restaurants. You should be travelling more. You should be trying on that brand. You should be saying yes. There is always somewhere to go, something to buy, something to experience before it feels like you’re falling behind.

And none of it is unreasonable, on its own - the problem is the accumulation.

Because at some point, it stops feeling like choice and starts feeling like expectation. Not necessarily imposed by others, but internalised so thoroughly that it becomes difficult to separate what you actually want from what you think you should want.

Frugality, in that context, feels almost out of place.

Not in the obvious sense of saving money - that part is easy to justify - but in the quieter, less visible sense of opting out. Of not participating in everything that is presented as desirable. Of saying no not because you can’t, but because you don’t want to structure your life that way.

And that’s where it becomes complicated: because frugality, done intentionally, is not just about restriction. It’s about attention - it asks you to look more closely at how you spend your time and your money, and to decide - deliberately - what is actually worth it.

Frugality is often framed as either necessity or virtue - something you do because you have to, or because you’re particularly disciplined. But there’s another version of it, quieter and less defined, that has nothing to do with either. A version that is closer to tailoring your life to suit you better. It’s constantly editing and ripping out pieces of yourself that no longer serve you.

Not cutting everything out, not rejecting pleasure, but being more selective about it. Choosing fewer things, but choosing them properly. Allowing space in your days that isn’t immediately filled. Letting your life feel a little less dense, a little less optimised for visibility. Because that’s part of it, too.

So much of what we’re encouraged to do is not just about experience, but about how that experience looks. Where you go, what you order, how often you travel - it all becomes part of a kind of informal narrative you’re expected to build. Something that signals that you’re living well, that you’re making the most of your time.

Frugality disrupts that narrative.

It’s harder to present. Harder to explain. It doesn’t always translate into something visible or easily shared. A quiet day at home, a meal you cooked yourself, an afternoon that wasn’t spent anywhere in particular - these don’t carry the same weight in that system.

And yet, they often feel better. Or at least, more aligned. Because what frugality offers, at its best, is not deprivation, but control. Not over everything, but over enough. Enough to shape your days in a way that reflects what you actually need, rather than what is constantly suggested to you.

Not as a statement, not as a rejection of everything around you, but as a way of creating a life that feels intentional rather than reactive: a sense that your time is yours in a way that it wasn’t before. Not all gaps need to be filled.