The Freedom of Thrift

You’ve been sold an expensive lie about time and money

Kale: It’s what’s for dinner. Photo by Adolfo Félix on Unsplash

If you don’t have enough money, maybe you need to earn more, but you might also just need to spend less.

You hardly ever hear anybody recommend this approach. It’s assumed that if you don’t have enough money, you need to do whatever it takes to earn more of it. Often, that’s true. But there’s something to be said for voluntarily spending less, too. 

The point is not to live a life of deprivation but to better enjoy your family, friends and free time. Sometimes, it’s better to spend less money rather than grind away every minute to make as much money as possible.

If your pay is too low, no amount of thrift will save you. I should know, as someone who is pretty thrifty but not financially well-off. You cannot thrift yourself into wealth. At the same time, I think I see a trend of people believing they need more money when a better alternative might be to learn how to spend less. 

People really love to spend money

That’s because people who are selling goods and services are really good at what they do. But how often will someone try to “sell” the concept of thrift to you? Right here, in this piece right now, I am trying to do that. I won’t make a penny at it (unless you’re a paid subscriber). This is out of the goodness of my heart, OK?

But I’m a lone voice. You’re only reading this right now because I am motivated less by money than I arguably should be. I ought to be urging you to buy my book (which I do sometimes! I did it yesterday! I’m not against making money!) but right now I want to remind people of the advantages of a simple, thrifty life.

It’s a curious fact that in modern society, people arrange their lives in response to what others want to sell them. There’s very little interest in selling you kale or broccoli – but lots of interest in selling you a special weight loss or wellness course or ebook that recommends you eat kale or broccoli. 

Kale by itself is not very profitable. But pop that kale into a frozen dinner that’s branded in an attractive way and suddenly it’s worth devoting big marketing bucks to it. The shopper who would have walked right by the cheap fresh kale will purchase the expensive frozen dinner and will even feel good about having bought the “healthy” option instead of the frozen pizza they also considered.

Me, I’d buy the fresh kale, and then I’d make soup with it. I wouldn’t spend money on the frozen dinner, because I do my best to remain unmoved by marketing. (Look for my soup recipe at the end.)

There’s freedom in thrifty living

When you have huge monthly bills, the pressure is relentless. If you’ve committed to a rent or mortgage payment you can only just cover, or if you are driving an expensive vehicle, or if you’ve maxed out your credit cards, how can you even sleep at night? 

Or maybe that’s just me who worries about money. But I feel much better when I know I can comfortably cover my bills. I’ve had times when I couldn’t easily pay for even a very scaled down household budget, and that is not a good feeling. I was willing to take extreme measures to get out of that situation as fast as I could. 

I like knowing that when (not if) something disastrously expensive happens, I will still be able to make my house payment and buy groceries (even if I can only afford cheap things like kale!)

Almost no amount of money is ever enough if you blow it

Ignore this advice if you happen to be Elon Musk or any other billionaire. I’m talking to normal people right now.

Here’s an example. A woman is going through a severe money crunch, which she is trying to fix by secretly working multiple remote jobs. None of the jobs pays enough to allow her to drop the others.

To free up more time to work, she’s resorted to ordering a lot of takeout food and to paying someone else to clean her house.

I don’t have enough time to cook because I have to work more to make money so I can pay for takeout so I have more time to work so I can earn more money so I can buy more takeout. You can write the same sentence about paying a housekeeper.

I don’t know the details. Maybe she’s able to earn dramatically more money per hour than it costs to pay for food and housekeeping, but if her billable rate is so high, why are multiple jobs needed? I don’t know her life and she does, so what she’s doing may make perfect sense. 

But if you’d like to save money on sky-high food costs, there’s only one thing to do: Learn to cook. Here’s one of my favorite soups. Like everything I make, it’s highly customizable.

Michelle’s Potato Kale Soup

Chop one or two onions and sauté them on very low heat in butter or olive oil. Add a couple of grated carrots and several pressed cloves of garlic. Add a couple ribs of thinly sliced celery. Keep cooking over low heat while you prepare the potatoes. Don’t rush over this step – taking this part slow improves the flavor.

If you use red potatoes, just scrub and chop into bite-sized pieces. If you use other potatoes, peel them first. Around six potatoes should do it, but you have plenty of leeway here. Add the potatoes to the pot and stir. If necessary, add a touch more butter or olive oil. I feel like the potatoes have better flavor if they cook a bit before you add the broth.

You can use chicken or vegetable broth. You can also use plain water if you don’t have broth on hand. Just use only as much as you need to cook the potatoes. Keep checking them often. 

Once the potatoes are close to being done, add milk. You can use canned evaporated milk if you want, especially if you used plain water to cook the potatoes. Sometimes I use powdered milk, reconstituted to around double strength. Powdered milk is a great thing to have in your pantry for things like this if, like me, you don’t drink milk but occasionally use a bit of it for cooking. 

If you’re feeling truly decadent, you can add some cream. Or some cream cheese (cut into bits so it’ll mix in). Or some sour cream. Add salt and pepper. You can also add in some fresh herbs if you have them or even a good amount of Italian seasoning if you don’t. Go off-script with some ground nutmeg. 

You want to add the finely chopped kale about five minutes before the soup is done. You can also use spinach, but if you do, add it after you turn off the heat because it’ll cook almost instantly. You can add a lot more green stuff than you think because greens shrink down to almost nothing.

If you want to, you can add things like leftover cubed ham or crumbled bacon or shredded cheese. Leftover roast chicken is good, too. I have been known to add chopped white fish filets toward the end of the cooking period and turn this into a chowder. If you add Italian sausage during the sauté, you will approximate that soup that even Olive Garden haters secretly love. Sometimes I even add orzo or other tiny pasta to the boiling broth.

I have a picky family and make all kinds of adjustments depending on who I’m serving. You can’t really go wrong. Soup is forgiving. And it’s cheap. And it’s nutritious. And it’s better the next day, so you can plan to serve it the next day, too, saving you time. If you happen to have made a loaf of sourdough bread, so much the better. 

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules. Tips accepted here.