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    In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
    In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
    In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue
    Audiobook9 hours

    In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue

    Written by Lauren Weber

    Narrated by Marguerite Gavin

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Cheap.

    Cheap suit. Cheap date. Cheap shot. It's a dirty word, an epithet laden with negative meanings. It is also the story of Lauren Weber's life. As a child, she resented her father for keeping the heat at 50 degrees through the frigid New England winters and rarely using his car's turn signals-to keep them from burning out. But as an adult, when she found herself walking 30 blocks to save $2 on subway fare, she realized she had turned into him.

    In this lively treatise on the virtues of being cheap, Weber explores provocative questions about Americans' conflicted relationship with consumption and frugality. Why do we ridicule people who save money? Where's the boundary between thrift and miserliness? Is thrift a virtue or a vice during a recession? And was it common sense or obsessive-compulsive disorder that made her father ration the family's toilet paper?

    In answering these questions, In Cheap We Trust offers a colorful ride through the history of frugality in the United States. Readers will learn the stories behind Ben Franklin and his famous maxims, Hetty Green (named "the world's greatest miser" by the Guinness Book of Records) and the stereotyping of Jewish and Chinese immigrants as cheap.

    Weber also explores contemporary expressions and dilemmas of thrift. From Dumpster-diving to economist John Maynard Keynes's "Paradox of Thrift" to today's recession-driven enthusiasm for frugal living, In Cheap We Trust teases out the meanings of cheapness and examines the wisdom and pleasures of not spending every last penny.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateJan 29, 2010
    ISBN9781596595354
    In Cheap We Trust: The Story of a Misunderstood American Virtue

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    Reviews for In Cheap We Trust

    3.5/5

    46 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A detailed and compelling argument for the resuscitation of thrift in America. Steeped in the history of the nation and with a number of practical suggestions and modern resources for trimming budgets, buying less and saving more. A truly timely and brilliant piece of advice.
    • 5/5
      I often let interesting covers and titles lure me in and this was also the case with Lauren Weber's book. Sometimes this can be disappointing, but not this time, on the contrary.While there are a lot of books on buying and spending out there, this one stands out for me, both in the topic it deals with and its great quality.Presenting a fascinating and powerfully written survey through the history of frugality in American history, in combination with Weber's own "history" of frugal living when she was a kid, this is a great book for those interested in economy and American culture alike. Last but not least, she also provides the reader with a bibliography full of more (and highly interesting sounding) books on the topic.In short: No matter whether you buy the book or get it from a library (after reading it, you'll wish you'd have gone for the second option) a truly recommendable and engaging read!
    • 3/5
      I thought this was a self help guide to becoming frugal but that was my mistake, it was really a history of American frugality. Interesting read.
    • 4/5
      I've read a few others of this sub-genre, and I kinda just skimmed most of the book.. The most value I found was in the last chapter- Cheapskate Psychologhy. First she reviews the traditional negative psycho-babble about anal retentivity. Then she finds experts who admit that those who can control the impulse to accumulate are mentally healthier and happier than those who can't. ( She mentions the Walter Mischel marshmallow experiment.) And then she pins it down correctly, from page 260 on. A sense of accomplishment and a hatred of waste in all it's forms. People who can live thriftily generally are not fearful of living against the grain, exhibiting more independence. Frugal people are nonconformists.
    • 4/5
       -a history of thrift and its opposite in the USA, from colonial times to today-marketed as if it was about the author's family and friends, but much more-history of a small but important subject; the best kind of history
    • 2/5
      Weber's research on the topic of thrift is exhaustive. I found the book exhausting- I was drowning in dry details. Can one slog through a dry book? If so, that's what I did here. The introduction was funny, where she talked about her cheap upbringing. I would really like to read a memoir from her.
    • 3/5
      Good history of frugality and spending money
    • 3/5
      I don’t know why cheap is in allcaps. Weber gives a general tour of the reputation of cheapness throughout American history, including its interactions with racial stereotypes and sometimes with gender. She has interesting tidbits about how pillars of industry decided that spending (or very occasionally saving) was the way to make the American economy work, but there’s very little here unless you want to hear her ending account of walking among the freegans for a bit. Conclusion: freegans don’t like how dumpster diving has become the key publicized feature of the movement, which is more comprehensively anticapitalist.
    • 3/5
      This was sometimes entertaining and sometimes insightful. It didn't move me into a different way of thinking, but it did make me think more about America's current past attitudes about resources and money. What I liked most about this book is the breadth of coverage. Weber discusses Ben Franklin, Keynesian economics, Wall Street and the "fregan" movement. My only substantial criticism is that she only covered the pro-government spending side of that debate, taking as given that fiscal stimulus works, while giving not even a nod to the counter-arguments. Would she be happy or not that the copy I read I borrowed from the library?
    • 5/5
      Cheap is the new black.Actually, Lauren Weber’s words are “Cheap is the new green,” in her hopeful nod to ecology as the prompt that might finally make frugality sexy in America. Because nothing else has much tempered its persistent unpopularity and negative connotations with miserliness, stinginess and unworthiness.To be clear, it’s primarily frugality and thrift that Weber promotes (as in the economical use of resources … living simply and mindfully, without waste), and cheapness (as in consuming inexpensively) to a lesser degree. In a journalist’s voice, she writes about the history of thrift and spending from the Puritans and Quakers to Emerson and Thoreau; from wartime rationing to the expanded postwar industrial capacity that spurred consumerism; from the origin of savings banks, through the growth and decline of home economics, to the Depression and today's financial crisis.She also explores economics, sociology and a number of competing tensions. For example, is it good citizenship to demonstrate personal responsibility through personal savings, or better to support the national (even global) economy by spending? If you do spend, should it be on “productive” (essential) goods with their long-term economic benefit and not on “consumptive” (luxury) goods? Do your personal savings on ultra-inexpensive imported goods outweigh their high political and environmental costs? And how do you resist advertising, forced obsolescence, ego gratification and keeping up with the Joneses?Readers with any level of interest in frugality will find themselves repeating the WWII mantra, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” and will see themselves described in this book, somewhere along Weber’s continuum from Dumpster-diving freegans to folks who simply believe that less is more.