Hmm, but your much-debated approach to extreme saving later as opposed to a little and often from an early age is predicated on receiving a big salary hike later on in the career, is it not?

And because your income rose, that’s why it worked for you?

I think you may be perceiving your salary hike as a ‘sunk benefit’, if there is such a thing!

I personally think that after a certain point frugality is a rotten method compared to the benefits (including psychological) of finding ways to raise your income. So I was happy to see where I was placed on this chart.

But then I am naturally frugal compared to most, who would probably see my spending gauge as near stuck to the sides since my student days…

I think that the constraint of time is a major element to consider here. Time spent pursuing frugality against time spent increasing income.

Examples where my frugality runs short include not spending all of my time in shops and on the web researching the best deals on small scale one-off purchases (say sub £40 ish) – I just want to get the job done; or paying someone to sort out a problem with the shower or install a radiator, instead of learning how to do it myself (far too many DIY botch-jobs in the past anyway!).

However my wife and I do keep an eye on bigger monthly costs and will spend time comparing insurance deals and sticking to a budget for monthly grocery spend, etc.

It probably also depends on where people are in their financial epiphany. The first step for most people waking up to their debt problems is to go on a big financial diet and pursue a more frugal lifestyle – for people used to just splashing the cash, being frugal can be quite a revelation; the next stage would be good money management to keep those finances under control, followed by income growth.

@Monevator, no, it’s a fairly linear progression in real terms from 1989.

There were two big game changers in the last five years. One was largely discharging my mortgage, and then running the rump of it out of town. The other was a change in focus as I saw the writing on the wall at work. Without the latter I would have been reasonably happy to carry on to 60, and icing the mortgage means I get an effective pay rise of 7k net or about 11k gross. Plus the realisation that “no stuff tastes as good as financial freedom feels”.

> who would probably see my spending gauge as near stuck to the sides since my student day

That’s probably your unique trick there. This was a fight for me to get it down, though I am sitting on a mountain of stuff that I can learn to appreciate better when living on less

@MoneySavingChallenge the time/cost balance is always hard to square, and that’s probably even harder for families. I’m surprised, however, reading some people’s posts where the focus is on getting great deals on this that or the other. That’s good if it’s something you really need, but I look at some of those and think “these are wants, not needs”. I’d aim to cut the purchase out in the first place.

I’ve probably got a bias to aim for building wealth. Bumping 10k into my ISA so I have £500 increased tax-free income every year gives me more enhancement of quality of life than spending that £10k at the moment.

However, this equation is different for everyone, and what’s right for me isn’t necessarily what’s right for others. And I’d be the first to admit that some of the frugalistas put me to shame in some areas.

I liked your taxonomy. It really made me think, and that’s what this is all about – getting ideas, integrating some into my world-view, and discarding others or concluding they don’t square with my experience. Slowly, over time I get a better investor, I foul up less often/less big and gently add reliable holdings to my stock. Some of that is learning technique, some of it is learning to challenge my inbuilt predilections and biases and let go of those that don’t serve me well.

That’s a very interesting idea, plotting a collection of blogs on an x-y axis according to their ideology.

Of course, with the background image being Outer Space, it opens up the imagination to additional dimensions for the plot. On the Z axis, I would put “optimism”, where Monevator would be deep in the positive territory sticking out of your computer monitor and poking you in the nose, while SLS would be way back in the depths of Andromeda due to his bearish perspective on the economic future.

For my own benefit, I could even add a fourth dimension which measures Badassity, putting Mr. Money Mustache and similar blogs at one end, and CNN/MSN and other places where people like to complain that they can never save money, at the other end.

Anyway, very nice post.

[...] Don’t shoot me, I’m just the reporter here Take look at MoneySaving Challenge’s UK taxonomy where I saw a similar [...]