[Shant]

Agreed. Another good way of looking at it is that managing your spending should be like managing any other finite resource, like time.

No one really thinks it makes sense to save your time by not spending time on anything at all. You want to be frugal with your time -- you save it in order to splurge on the things that matter and will give you the most benefit/productivity. I think it's the same with money -- cheapness is a mentally lazy way to save money, frugality is a smarter way.

As a side note, I've never understood the obsession with making food purchases your main source of money-saving. The idea of "cheap calories" seems so misguided when you take into account that, down the line, those diabetes and heart disease treatments will be anything but cheap. Not to mention what you lose in productivity with the mental and physical sluggishness that comes from eating crappy, fake food.

I'm all for ramen-profitable, but I'll pass on the ramen. If only "3 year old shoes and grass-fed steak profitable" had a better ring to it.

[eru]

Just make it oats-profitable. Oats are still cheap, but not as crappy as Ramen.

Though I do like to splurge on food.