There’s a fine line between being frugal and being too cheap.
I tap-danced all along this line during my late teens and early twenties, as I found my way in the world. I remember living in my first apartment—my share of the rent was $162.50—and it was the first time I’d be responsible for 100% of my expenses and my budget.
I realized immediately that I could control how much money I spent every month. Rent was set, but utilities, food, clothing, and any other expense could be considered discretionary, at least to a degree.
My desire to be frugal certainly arose from the world in which I grew up. My folks weren’t poor, but they were hard-working teachers whose own parents had lived through the Great Depression. I’m certain that the trauma my grandparents lived through during that time had a profound impact on my family.
Unfortunately, it was all too easy to slip into being too cheap: either not buying the things I needed in order to have a better life, or not investing in things that mattered to me, and this same mindset carried over into other areas of my young life.
If this mindset sounds familiar, read on.
I want to talk about this scarcity mindset I developed. This way of thinking has utility, but it can also be extremely dangerous. Let’s take a brief look at how to tell the difference between those two situations.
Is This You?
I'm just not a math person.
I'll never have enough money to travel.
There's no point in trying, I'll never succeed.
These sentiments are clear indicators of a scarcity mindset—a belief that resources or abilities are limited, fixed, and cannot be changed or expanded. This is one end of a spectrum, and at the other end—the growth mindset—we find an almost arrogant confidence.
One at a time, let’s invert them to find the “growthy” counterparts.
For the "not a math person” one:
I can learn whatever I set my mind to, as long as I try hard enough.
On a personal note, the things I’ve enjoyed learning how to do the most, are things that I never thought I would be able to do. These are things I found almost unimaginably hard to understand, or things that seemed so intimidating to younger me as to be all but impossible.
I played little league baseball as a youngster, maybe 2 or 3 seasons total, and I wasn’t too bad! But I never played football or anything particularly rough, where my body would be more at risk than with other ball-oriented sports.
Against this backdrop, I started playing tackle football with my friends in middle school, largely driven by a boost in testosterone. The feeling of going in all the way in toward what I was afraid of was exhilarating, and so was the physical risk I was putting myself into.
That risk led me to break my collar bone in middle school, which would probably be a point for Team Scarcity: if I had just listened to my inhibitions, I never would have ended up in the ER that day.
But I also wouldn’t have ended up making important social connections and friendships, especially at a time when smoothing over the social experience was incredibly important for my mental health. Wrestling added the “jock dimension” to my friend circles, allowing me to to avoid ostracism in certain circles, and to be mentally healthier as a result.
It also brought me to judo and jiu jitsu, two forces incredibly important in shaping my life over the years. Creativity, hustle, and determination allowed me to have several businesses centered around these pursuits. Thinking I couldn’t do any of that would surely have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Since then, I’ve used a similar “conquering fear by diving head-in” approach to other subjects. I was intimidated by my lack of understanding history, so I went down a ten-year deep dive into history by reading, listening to, and watching everything I could get my hands on. Later, I did this with economics and finance, two blind spots for me growing up (and being punk helped me double down on this blindness).
For the “never have enough money to travel” one:
I can figure out how to make enough money so that I can do what I want.
Before I go on here, I want to make really, really clear that I consider myself to be very fortunate. I’ve won the uterine lottery! I have had opportunities that others might never have, and those have mattered tremendously in terms of my success and outcome.
That being said, every single one of us has opportunities in life, and we have challenges. The Serenity Prayer offers even the agnostic a great deal of wisdom:
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
There are things within your control, and understanding what those things are is crucial.
Now, back to having the mindset of multiplying money. If you believe you can’t grow wealth, I’m here to tell you that you are correct. If you believe you can grow wealth, you’re almost certainly also correct.
Without this firm belief, though, you’ll never make it through the tough times. There will be days when you’re working an extra shift at the restaurant when you’ll want to quit, or mornings at your small business where everything will go wrong. The universe will seem to tell you to stop trying.
Only a firm belief that I can make it through this and ultimately be successful, to get what I need to get, has gotten me through some of these doldrums.
Finally, for the no point in trying, I'll never succeed types, well, you’re right. If you believe you’ll never improve anything about your life—that no matter what you do, things are always going to end up as they are now—you will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However, you can invert this on its head and believe the following:
I can succeed at whatever venture I try, and I have as good a chance as anyone to make it.
Above all else, my life has taught me that this is true—within reason. I’m probably not going to find a cure for cancer this year, or learn to speak 9 languages by the time I’m 50. But I’ve seen a great deal of change because of a belief that things can improve.
On the Substack platform, the scarcity mindset exists, but a growth mindset is far more pervasive. Being around positive, encouraging people who believe in themselves—and in you—is crucial. I’m grateful to the folks working hard to make it a good place for writers to learn from one another, folks I’ve worked with like
, , , , and many others who have helped me hone my thinking and craft.I’m also really happy to be surrounded by other encouraging folks who want to help others write better, and who want to amplify the works of other writers:
for its brain trust on more technical writing, ,, and for helping writers learn the craft and by fostering open dialogue about writing and growing, for creating a directory of AI newsletters, and really dozens more.None of these things happen overnight! If you want to change your life for the better, you probably can, but you should be realistic about the time horizons involved. Remember: you can often do far more in ten years than you think is possible, and far less in one year.
I’m good at things now because of the life I’ve lived. I can see the difference that life has made. This is Amara’s Law writ large, and I wrote about this recently:
Leaving behind a scarcity mindset can be intimidating, but you don’t have to do it alone. And, positive thinking isn’t a clichéd trope—it works. Instead of focusing on what you can’t do, you can start to focus on what you can accomplish. Acknowledge the reality of constraints, but don’t allow them to stop you from improving what you can control.
And, I’m here to help.
Knowlege transfer and collaboration is the way humans are brilliantly smart. Not because of our individual intelligence, but in our collective combinatorial intelligence. As Iron sharpens Iron.
My favorite part was when you mentioned me.