I Live the High Life

The following post is written by my husband, Ryan. You can read his other Frugal in Virginia articles here.

Others may not know it, but I live the high life. Early on I didn’t see it. But can you blame me? The ways of a Frugal are peculiar to the uninitiated.

There are the startling compulsions. One evening this past winter I found my living room mantle thatched with scores of Healthy Choice soup cans, each balanced triumphantly on the other, a mountainous ritual to some unknown deity of low-sodium broth. Was this a 21st century tribute to the art of Andy Warhol? Had my wife joined a Campbell’s soup cult?


The answer turned out to be far more primal. These cans were the spoils of war—the prized result of a victorious day in the grocery aisles. The metallic pile of non-perishable sustenance stared back at me like a collection of shrunken heads in a witchdoctor hut. They whispered in a voice of extra-chunky sullenness: This is your life now. Enjoy the soup.

I did enjoy the soup and soon came to accept these new behaviors. The post-shopping rituals were odd, but harmless—brand name products in glorious arrangements on couches, beds, countertops, and cupboards. My wife, eyes glowing, would point to an item and call out some pre-Depression era price: the Bounty towels were 10 cents, I got this Bertolli’s sauce for 15 cents a pack, and the Pampers were all free this week! 


Theses moments of festivity were hard earned, and I wasn’t sure they’d last. The Sunday clipping marathons in particular were carpal tunnel-inducing affairs. But by 10pm our carpet was a skating rink of glossy paper scrap—and her coupon book was stuffed like a thanksgiving turkey, prepped for a new month of savings.

She never stopped. And months later, I started to see the benefits.

Let’s leave the bank account out for a moment. I want to talk about product quality. By pedigree, I’m a store-brand kind of guy. I buy Mountain Lion, instead of Mountain Dew because it’s cheap, and so am I. But there’s a subtle difference between Frugal and cheap. Cheap is low cost, low quality. Frugal is low cost, high value. See the difference? My Frugal didn’t just lower our grocery bills; she increased the quality of our intake. That’s her genius. From toilet paper to toothpaste, our family lives a higher quality of life, for less.

So I only eat bagged sauce on my spaghetti now. Snobbery is a luxury for the rich, and yet I’ve become a middle-class snob. Sauce in a jar is so passé. And as I look in our cupboards, I doubt I’ll ever need to lower my standards. I count 23 packs of Bertolli’s premium tomato sauce—should get me through the month.



They say financial issues are the number one cause of marital strife. In our family, they’re unifying, freeing, and fun. Single guys please hear my best advice: find yourself a frugal lady.

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Author of this Guest Post
Ryan Adams is the husband of frugal-mom, Dana Adams, the author of this blog, Frugal In Virginia. Say hi to him on twitter @ryansadams.