Book Review: Meet the Frugalwoods

Thames, Elizabeth Willard. Meet the Frugalwoods : achieving financial independence through simple living. HarperBusiness, 2018.

book cover imageThere are any number of personal finance blogs, and several devoted to living a life of frugality. One of the best known is Frugalwoods.com written by Elizabeth Willard Thames, mother of two who is living her dream life on 66 acres of woodlands in Vermont. This year, she recycled her blog postings into a popular new book, Meet the Frugalwoods. In her blog and in her book, Thames explains how she restructured the way she lived — how she spent her money and her time to craft a meaningful and contented life.

The book begins in 2006 as Thames graduates from college and takes a fundraising job for a nonprofit in New York City that pays an AmeriCorps stipend of $10,000. She considers every dollar before spending it and ends the year with $2000 in the bank. In the ensuing years, she moves to Boston; to Washington DC; then back to Boston, continuing her career as a fundraiser. Finding her work increasingly meaningless, she spends money on small luxuries to compensate. When she and her husband begin hiking in the woods every weekend, exposure to nature changes her life. They embark on a program of extreme frugality to save enough money to make them financially independent by age 32 in order to move to rural Vermont and live a life that they are passionate about.

Thames is at her best when she is evaluating the work/spend cycles of American consumer culture. People work hard at frustrating jobs and then mitigate their discontent by buying expensive homes, furniture, cars, clothes, electronics. Thames explains that people accept roles that society, family and they themselves expect, instead of living life on their own terms. To craft the independent life that she wants, Thames examines her spending to determine when it made an improvement in her life and when it was superfluous. She eliminates makeup and haircuts, buys cheaper food, does her own home repairs. She estimates her family’s savings rate of 71%.

Offering abundant tips on how to live frugally, Thames is mum about one large expense for a family – healthcare. She also fails to disclose the source of the $400,000 needed to buy the spread in Vermont – after they kept their $460,000 house in Cambridge. Their secret: her husband still has his job as a software engineer. It is easier to be independent, frugal or not, if you have a high income. Nonetheless, Meet the Frugalwoods is recommended for its thoughtful message, detailed advice and approachable style.

Also available on OverDrive as an audiobook and eBook.

 

© Meg Trauner & Ford Library – Fuqua School of Business.
All rights reserved.

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