The difference between cheap people and frugal people, in one chart
The line between "cheap" and "frugal" is a thin one.
"Frugality isn't about cutting your spending on everything," writes Ramit Sethi in "I Will Teach You to Be Rich." "That approach wouldn't last two days. Frugality, quite simply, is about choosing the things you love enough to spend extravagantly on - and then cutting costs mercilessly on the things you don't love."
Author Thomas C. Corley conducted a five-year study of self-made millionaires and found that 67% of the wealthy people he spoke with consider themselves to be frugal. They spend money on the things that matter to them, instead of indiscriminately on vacations and new cars (unless, perhaps, those are the things they most value).
In "I Will Teach You to Be Rich," Sethi breaks down the differences between cheap and frugal in a simple chart, which we've reproduced below. Where do you fall?
