Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

[mountainmist]

Do you unnecessarily hoard items that your family will never actually use? There is a big difference between stockpiling for emergencies, or buying large amounts of your family's necessities on sale or clearance.

Here's an interesting quote from the Children of Hoarders website (their homepage at http://www.childrenofhoarders.com)


Five personality traits were independently associated with hoarding:

http://www.childrenofhoarders.com/forum/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=128&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

* miserliness
* preoccupation with details
* difficulty making decisions
* odd behavior or odd appearance
* magical thinking


Hoarding and indecision were more prevalent in the relatives of hoarding than of non-hoarding probands. Hoarding in relatives was associated with indecision in probands, independently of proband hoarding status.

The findings suggest that hoarding behavior may help differentiate a distinct clinical subgroup of people with OCD and may aggregate in some OCD families. Indecision may be a risk factor for hoarding in these families.

[Ima saver]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I think I am only frugal. I don't hoard anything. I just don't need to go shopping to buy things that I really don't need. I think too many people confuse their wants with their needs.

[Broken Arrow]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I don't think I am miserly... yet. But I'm working on it.

"Bah humbug!"

How's that?

[mountainmist]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I don't think I am miserly... yet. But I'm working on it.

"Bah humbug!"

How's that?

LOL

I have a friend who once married into a family where clinical hoarding was evident, but who had any idea that all these negative personality characteristics accompany that disorder?

I'm glad that someone posted the Children Of Hoarders -dot- Com website, it has alot of info that explains alot of peculiar things.



((~shiver~))

[Ima saver]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I don't think anyone on this forum is miserly! (cept you broken arrow)!!

[mountainmist]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

Maybe clinical hoarders are miserly towards others, but they certainly aren't frugal, or else they would never have bought all the junk that fills their homes - there's nothing frugal about that type of cluttered unorganized extreme over consumption.

[getforfree]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I keep my kids baby clothes. I don't pland and don't want to have kids anymore. But no birth control is 100%, so I keep it just in case. Should I continue to store it, or should I make a garage sale, or sell it on ebay. I don't want to give it away for free. Or maybe I should keep it untill I will be like 40?

[Frugal Father (tm)]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

To me hoarding is clutter. Thats just my opinion. I happened to hate clutter it saps your energy. Miserly tendancies and hoarding are not mutually connected.

[bjl584]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I seem to have this ability to aquire free items. Everything. I guess that makes me a hoarder. In fact, my garage is full, so I'm currently clearing land to build a 30 x 50 pole barn for all my stuff. I got all the material for the barn for free. All that I need to pay for is the concrete slab.

[mountainmist]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

I keep my kids baby clothes. I don't pland and don't want to have kids anymore. But no birth control is 100%, so I keep it just in case. Should I continue to store it, or should I make a garage sale, or sell it on ebay. I don't want to give it away for free. Or maybe I should keep it untill I will be like 40?

I don't really think that the baby clothes have much value. If you make a point of going to several dozen garage sales next summer, I think you'll find that in most areas of the USA, all baby clothes are usually marked at a quarter or fifty cents. Occasionally something brandname in spectacular condition might be priced as high as three bucks.

I don't know how old your baby clothes are, but if it was all purchased within the past several years, I freshly launder it and take it to one of the kid's consignment shops and see if you have anything they'd be interested in selling.

If you accept Store Credit instead of cash, and only shop their sales, you can find some nice items for older members of the family.

Since you are unsure of whether you will have another child or not, I definitely wouldn't get rid of anything remotely expensive, like cribs & crib bedding and playpens, etc.

If you ever suddenly NEED those kind of items, you might not be able to find them on sale, or they may not be readily available in local thrift shops, and that's when you could have a major expenditure.

Many families have rued the day that they got rid of "all that baby clutter," and then had to spend hundreds of dollars to suddenly unexpectedly have to immediately replace it.

Anyway, I have no idea of what types of baby clothes you have, so I advise you to check out the baby clothing auctions on Ebay, MAYBE they'd sell for more that way, I don't know.

The LAST thing most older women want to do when they are pregnant is to have to run around to department stores to replace all those pricey nursery items they decided not to hang on to.

[boefixepa]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

Hording is NOT frugal.. I'm with mountain mist and fugal father on this one. Someone trying to be fugal is not going to just accumalte stuff and never use it. Part of being fugal is wise of consumption. Stockpiling and hording are two very different things.

[JanH]

Re: Are you frugal, or are you downright miserly?

On the baby front, my Hubby tutored a guy in college with four kids. They no sooner got rid of all their baby stuff than found she was pregnant again! We got rid of the clothes, but kept the crib, high chair, and sheets/towels. Never had much stuff with either of them.