The Case for Frugal Hedonism w/ Annie Raser-Rowland #1097

Summary

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How to Money — The Case for Frugal Hedonism w/ Annie Raser-Rowland

Podcast: How to Money

Host: Joel (iHeartPodcasts)
Guest: Annie Raser-Rowland
Episode: #1097
Date: February 4, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Joel sits down with Annie Raser-Rowland, co-author of The Art of Frugal Hedonism, to explore the powerful yet surprising idea that living a life of thrift can actually amplify one's pleasure, not diminish it. Together, they debunk the myth that frugality is about deprivation, advocating instead for a joyful, experience-rich, and deeply satisfying approach to spending less and truly savoring life. Annie shares practical strategies, reflections on culture and advertising, and the philosophy behind frugal hedonism, all peppered with insightful anecdotes and actionable wisdom.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Frugal Hedonism? (01:17, 11:34)

• Frugal hedonism is not about denial; it’s about maximizing pleasure with less spending.
• The title “frugal hedonism” seems oxymoronic at first glance, but Annie argues these values are naturally complementary.
• “Once we sort of looked around and looked at our lifestyles compared with those of our friends, it was like, oh no, we are having way more fun from not being stressed about money.” (Annie, 11:38)

2. The Value of Experiences Over Possessions (02:39, 05:47)

• Annie prefers to splurge on experiences, not things, sharing a vivid story about visiting underground aquifers in her small town—even while battling a migraine.
• Imperfect experiences still offer lifelong stories and satisfaction; imperfect possessions just bring frustration.
• “The distraction of going there was so interesting that I ended up still being really happy we went... Imperfection within experience can still be a win because you overcame something.” (Annie, 04:29)

3. Embracing Local Adventure (05:47, 06:13)

• Being a “tourist in your own town” can unearth surprising and affordable joys.
• “It never fails to surprise me how much good stuff there is right next to where you live.” (Annie, 06:13)

4. How Annie (and Her Co-Author) Live Frugal Hedonism (07:01, 10:53)

• They spend a quarter of the Australian average, mostly without budgeting.
• Their approach is rooted in “embedded principles” like defaulting to secondhand items, making their own fun, and resisting the urge to “treat” themselves with purchases.
• “So often what we're actually craving when we have those urges for novelty…advertising has convinced us that new things come from purchasing… as soon as you just replace that urge with ‘I’m going to learn something new or go somewhere new,’ you immediately save money.” (Annie, 09:13)

5. Frugality Without Deprivation (11:34, 13:01)

• Annie is adamant: she feels richer, not deprived, because her life is “texturally richer” and less stressful.
• For example, not relying on a car leads to better health, closer community, and more day-to-day interactions—with financial savings as a bonus.

6. Frugality and Community (13:02, 14:10)

• Frugality can foster strong neighborhood connections (borrowing instead of buying, sharing produce, etc).
• “That self-reliance from not just turning to money as the go-to for everything... creates a community of interdependence that is a lot richer.” (Annie, 13:47)

7. The Power of Passions as Motivators (14:10, 17:02)

• Quote: “There is no better incentive for being frugal than having passions you want to chase.” (Annie, 14:10)
• Frugality is easier when it’s about bigger ‘yeses’ elsewhere—saving for climbing volcanoes, writing novels, or other ambitions.
• “The immediate gratification of something convenient and easy was less important to me than getting to chase those passions that were a bit longer term.” (Annie, 15:03)

8. The Role of Role Models (17:24, 21:58)

• Instead of aspiring to advertising-driven lifestyles, Annie draws inspiration from literary and historical figures who found joy under constraint.
• “When you’re surrounded by advertising role models who basically all [say] ‘be like a Kardashian’...you have to have counter role models.” (Annie, 20:37)

9. The Value of Contrast: The “Fat and Lean” Principle (23:01, 27:52)

• Periods of intentional “lean living” (like eating simply, forgoing convenience) heighten appreciation for “fat” moments (special meals, comforts).
• “Things do not feel hedonistic if you’re living the high life all the time, you’ve gotta like set up that contrast.” (Annie, 23:58)

10. Resetting Expectations by Looking to the Past (30:21, 33:13)

• Recognizing how arbitrary our consumption norms are can spark gratitude.
• We live with luxuries unimaginable to most people in history, or even the 1950s.
• “What you normalize is really arbitrary…you can go, why normalize myself to this set of expectations when I could say, ‘if I lived in the 1950s, I would feel like the richest person in town.’” (Annie, 31:00)

11. The Dangers of Fake Frugalism (33:57, 36:44)

• Not all forms of thrift are created equal: buying cheap, low-quality goods can be wasteful and environmentally harmful.
• “To me, real frugality has to be thinking about not just making things better for yourself, but making things better for the whole ecosystem...” (Annie, 34:38)
• Secondhand is often the best path—cheaper, more ecological, and often more fun.

12. Time, Busyness, and Frugality (38:59, 42:51)

• Even the busiest can find “low-hanging fruit” (e.g., make coffee at home, simplify gym memberships).
• Small wins snowball into bigger behavioral and financial shifts over time.

13. Social Signaling and Possessions (42:51, 48:26)

• We’re influenced by advertising and peer pressure to “signal” status through our things.
• Transparency, humor, and modeling alternatives (like the “anti-brunch walk”) can help break the spell for ourselves and friends.
• “You give the people around you a little present when you say, okay, keeping up with these standards is not strictly actually necessary.” (Annie, 47:33)

14. Tangible Tips for Spending Less (49:48, 53:12)

• Skip buying drinks while dining out; they often add disproportionate cost to a meal.
• Use drinks as an affordable way to enjoy social settings (e.g., linger over an espresso).
• Cut back on car trips; walking or biking saves money and offers practical/existential perks.

15. Frugal Hedonism and Investing/Financial Independence (54:49, 56:21)

• Frugal hedonism aligns with saving and even investing for financial independence.
• Annie invests with ethical considerations and values community ties as part of her long-term “wealth.”
• She highlights the value of teaching kids about money, gratitude, and wise prioritization.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Frugality and Joy:
  “The reason for the oxymoron in the title is that… we are having way more fun from not being stressed about money.” (Annie, 11:34)
• On Experiences:
  "Imperfection within experience can still be a win because you overcame something.” (Annie, 04:29)
• On Social Influence:
  “What you normalize is really arbitrary… why normalize myself to this set of expectations when I could say, ‘if I lived in the 1950s, I would feel like the richest person in town.’” (Annie, 31:00)
• On Busyness and Saving:
  "There are aspects of being more frugal that you need more time to do... but if you're more frugal, you don't have to work as much." (Annie, 39:32)
• On Social Life:
  “You give the people around you a little present when you say, okay, keeping up with these standards is not strictly actually necessary.” (Annie, 47:33)
• On Parenting:
  "Investing in your children’s frugal financial capacity... is an investment for the future because those dudes are going to be looking after you when you get old and you don’t want them broke.” (Annie, 58:10)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 02:39 — Experiences vs. Possessions: Why Annie Splurges on Life
• 06:22 — Origins of The Art of Frugal Hedonism
• 11:34 — Frugality without Deprivation: Secret Side-Effects
• 14:10 — The Power of Passions: Fuel for Frugality
• 17:39 — Literary Role Models and Cultural Counterweights
• 23:01 — Fat and Lean: The Pleasure of Contrast
• 30:21 — Looking to the Past: Resetting Modern Expectations
• 33:57 — What is Fake Frugalism, and Why Avoid It?
• 38:59 — Frugality for Busy People: Small Wins
• 42:51 — Social Pressures, Signaling, and Authenticity
• 49:48 — Practical Spending Tips
• 54:49 — Frugal Hedonism & Investing/Financial Independence

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Closing Thoughts

In this episode, Annie Raser-Rowland and Joel carve out a radical vision of real abundance: not the accumulation of things, but the accumulation of lived experience, vibrant community, sound values, financial freedom, and genuine day-to-day joy. Frugal hedonism, Annie argues, is not about penny-pinching for its own sake—it’s about deliberately crafting a life that feels rich right now and in the future.

For more, check out Annie’s book The Art of Frugal Hedonism.

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Transcript

[Annie Rager Rowland]

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[Annie Rager Rowland]

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[Annie Rager Rowland]

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[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Welcome to how to Money. I'm Joel and today I'm talking about the case for Frugal Hedonism with Annie Rager Rowland. Alright, so jumbo shrimp, little giant, Open Secret, bittersweet. These are all examples of oxymorons. And so many people would hear the title of this episode. They'd be like frugality, hedonism. Those follow the same pattern. Those are also oxymorons. But my guest today, Annie Ragerland, she would beg to differ. She says they fit like peas in a pod. And so Annie firmly believes that you can live an excellent life without spending gobs of money. And in fact, you might find more pleasure. You might get quite a bit of joy out of your everyday existence if you elect to take the frugal hedonist path. And it doesn't involve the dreaded act of couponing. So, Annie, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining me today.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Hey, I'm happy to be here.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

And anybody can tell who's listening for the first two seconds that you're not American. I'm so excited to be talking with an Aussie.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yes, sorry, I could have picked that one up.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

G'.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Day. I'm happy to be here.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

And the scheduling was super interesting for this one because you're usually sleeping when I'm working and vice versa. But okay, first question out of the gate is what do you like to splurge on? What's your craft beer equivalent? You're trying to do smart stuff with your money, but obviously there's things that are worth splurging on in the here and now.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

100% definitely experiences of possessions. Case in point, last weekend my partner and I went on a tour of the underground aquifers underneath the kind of historic town that I live in, where you get in these dinky little boats, you sort of abseil down these tunnels that go a kilometer underground and then you have these dinky little boats and paddle yourself along canals that are underground that used to supply the town's drinking water through these limestone tunnels. And at points, you know, the guide tells you to switch your torch off so that you're paddling along in pitch blackness because it's underground silence. And took about two and a half hours. And you hear all about the history of the aquifers and you know the Irish engineer that established them who suicided because no one believed him it was going to work. But then right after he died, they built them and it's sort of all this dramatic story and discover this whole network of tunnels underneath the city that is, that you've never known is there, plus have this incredible textural experience that is like nothing else that I've done before. It's not even like going into a cave. It's because you're in the boats and it's human made. Then that's something that's going to feed into my dreams and so on for ages. And even though I have to confess, I had a migraine when we went and I was almost going to cancel, the distraction of going there was so interesting that I ended up still being really happy we went. And that is partly why experiences are so much more worthwhile than possessions. Because even when something goes wrong in them, even if I had fallen out of one of those dinky little boats and almost drowned, that would have in the course of my life, might have taken a week, might have taken three months, that would have become a valuable experience just because I get to tell the story to people and I'd have the knowledge. And even though it wasn't perfect because I had a migraine and I was like, woo, really pretty woozy, like trying to abseil down a kilometer underground here, the money spent was still totally worthwhile because imperfection within experience can still be a win because you overcame something, whereas you buy a set of like roller blinds that have a defect on the remote control that Imperfection is just straight up bad. There's nothing good about that. You have to fill out paperwork and try and get that remote control fixed and replaced. So that's why it's splurging on. Experiences, for me, will win out every single time.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

I love, too, that you're highlighting becoming a tourist in your own town. I think there's so often we talk about travel, and we're like, we got to get out, and we got to go see the great pyramids of Egypt or something like that. And while that does sound rad, there are just so many things that most people can do nearby where they live that remain unexplored. And so I love that you're like, no, we're digging in the town where we live, and we're trying to get the full experience of this place.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah. So fun. I've done a lot of local tourism stuff, and it actually never fails to surprise me how much good stuff there is right next to where you live.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yeah. Okay. So something interesting, too, is the book that you wrote, the Art of Frugal Hedonism. You wrote that with your co author, like, a decade ago. And I don't know how it came onto my radar, but then I picked it up, and I was like, oh, this is like. This is such an interesting take on frugality. And I think so much of the time we talk about pinching pennies, and there is some aspect of frugality that involves that. But it sounds like part of the impetus for writing this book, too, was that your friends were trying to figure out your secret for not failing with money. They were like, what's going on here, Annie? How are you able to get by?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

It was almost that case of writing a book by popular demand, which I think is always one of the best reasons to write a book. I never set out to be an author, but all three books that I've ended up writing have been just because it feels like, where is this book? It needs to exist. And this was definitely in that category. Both my co author, Adam, and I. I don't know whether it was freaky genetic wiring or whatever it was, but we sort of hit our mid to late 20s and discovered that while a lot of our friends had bumped up their income brackets a little bit and were spending more on, he said, discretionary stuff like eating out and instead of secondhand clothes, buying new clothes and just slightly more expensive holidays and maybe flashy bicycle if they. Or, you know, a car upgrade if they had cars. We weren't really changing any of that stuff. And so we never had to feel stressed about money. So it was this paradox that they were making more money, but they were feeling proportionally poorer and we were making a little bit more money and feeling increasingly richer and richer. And I just kept noticing my savings were piling up in the bank. And people hate hearing this, but neither of us ever think about money. The only time I've ever kept a budget is for the purpose of writing this book. Both Adam and I kept a budget for the entire year. And because he's a spreadsheet nerd, he kept on keeping that budget for a whole year after we'd finished writing with books, just out of curiosity. But we worked out that we spend about a quarter of the Australian average and that was without even trying. And I think it's because we both just had quite strong embedded principles of you always get the secondhand thing, you always make your own fun. You basically never think of buying something as the way to scratch that itch to, to treat yourself or to kind of feel refreshed, which I think is a really huge ploy that advertising has successfully used to make us feel like if you're feeling drab or if you feel like you deserve a treat, or if you feel like life is looking a bit shabby, then buy something. And so often what we're actually craving when we have all those urges for novelty, because humans are, we're novelty seeking animals. It's evolutionary to want to experience and have new things because that's how we expand our skill set and our knowledge set and understand the world better. But advertising has convinced us that new things come from purchasing. Whereas as soon as you just replace that urge with I'm getting that, that new wanting something new urge with a, well, I might try and learn something new or go somewhere new or talk to a random stranger on a bench and have a new kind of a conversation with someone I wouldn't usually talk to. Then suddenly you're not turning to, oh, I need to try the new cafe up the road that got that great review on menu log or whatever. And you immediately save money. And there's all sorts of tools like that that we were using without realizing what we were doing that were meaning we just didn't spend money.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

You're making me think too that we do the same thing with consumption of entertainment and television and TV shows. Like, it's like that is another form of consumption that we enter into or social media, right. And then that leaves us all poorer from a relational standpoint. And I think the Thing that struck me too, about you, Annie, in reading the book. And then also, like, just kind of getting to know you a little bit more through preparing for this episode. Like, it doesn't seem like there's any deprivation to this. No. You're like, no, actually my life is richer for this. Which is why you chose frugal hedonism. You're like, no, I have it all.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

That is. The reason for the oxymoron in the title is that once we sort of looked around and looked at our lifestyles compared with those of our friends, it was like, oh, no, we are having way more fun from not being stressed about money. And because there's all these secret side effects of not spending so much money that mean that you do actually have more fun. Simple things like not having a car or using it to get around as much just means that straight away, I'm fitter, so I'm healthier. I get to experience the sun in my face, the wind in my hair. I don't have to like, get stressed about when I'm having a giant splurge on eating way too much at Christmas, that it's like, oh, that's, that's the waistline increasing a bit more for this year, things, once again, just not. Not using a car means that I know all my neighbors because when I walk out the street, I go, I'm the weird person on the bicycle that, you know, waste them all in their front yard while they're all pulling out in their cars as I have chats with them. And so my life is kind of texturally richer and I exchange banter with them and I bring the bunches of excess stuff from my garden because I hate waste, which is another fabulous frugality strategy. And by not choosing just to buy things all the time if you need it. There's a case that we describe in the book of going camping and needing a. A cooler to go camping. I think you guys call them coolers.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

That's right. That's right.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Okay. Where you put the ice in. Yeah, we call them eskies, which is weird. I don't know where that one comes from because I would never just pop down to Walmart and buy a cooler for a one off trip. Then I go knock on a neighbor's door up the street and say, hey, I know you guys have heaps of camping gear. Can I borrow your cooler for the weekend? And I bring them a bunch of stuff from my garden when I'm doing that. And they end up having a really funny chat with their seven year old daughter who's like worships me as a bit of a weirdo auntie up the street. And it just means that that self reliance from not just turning to money as the go to for everything, it creates a community of interdependence that is a lot richer and more interesting and enables all these avenues for sort of knowing people in more complex ways. And there's so many examples like that I can cite whereby not using money as the go to for everything is actually life enriching.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

One of my favorite quotes from the book, you say there is no better incentive for being frugal than having passions you want to chase. What makes having passions that you want to chase impactful? And how does that lead to more frugality in somebody's life?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, I'm quite an intense person and it's always been really important to me to get to do what I want to do. And at this point that's writing my second novel. I've sort of moved away from nonfiction. When I was younger, it was climbing volcanoes. I was just obsessed with volcanoes. And even though I was living a pretty sort of teenage punk kind of a lifestyle at that point, a lot of time out partying and carousing with friends, they would all then head off to the kebab shop after a long night out and spend half their week's pay packet because we all had terrible jobs that paid nothing at that point on some kebabs. And I would just have like a bag of almonds in my pocket because I knew that I wanted to be able to afford a plane ticket to Indonesia by the end of the year to go climb volcanoes. And that motivation was big enough and potent enough to keep me doing those little things without any sense of resentment. Because that immediate gratification of just something convenient and easy was less important to me than getting to chase those passions that I had that were a bit longer term. And I think we live in a culture at this point where there's something kind of that's been sold to us that's kind of cool to give in to the desire for immediate gratification. It's like, yeah, binging TV shows is cool and having Netflix and chill is cool and picking out is cool and splurging on that thing that you just fell in love with in a shop is cool. It's sort of seen as living life with gay abandonment and that's kind of sold to us as this really appetizing attitude. But it's a really modern kind of perspective. For most of history, people have really admired just a little bit of restraint in that capacity to work towards something that you're even more excited about that isn't momentary gratification, but is like big scale, chunky, full life gratification. Like spending a couple of years climbing volcanoes. I think climbing volcanoes, experiences that come with that.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Eating almonds to be able to climb volcanoes seems like, well, a worthy trade off to me.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

It worked out nicely and it makes.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

You an interesting person. It makes you an interesting person. Like you have stories now to talk about volcano climbing. I would rather listen to those stories than stories about kebab eating, you know, Like, I just would. Yeah, it's just.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

And you know, I've eaten a kebab. I can talk to you about kebabs. Just I didn't eat 100 of them.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yes, yes.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, so I get both.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

One of the, one of the other things you talk about in the book is the character traits of a frugal hedonist. And you've talked about even identifying like literary characters as role models for your life. Can you like dig down on that a little bit?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting one. Australia is a much more secular society than the U.S. you guys have got a stronger presence of religion in culture, so it's not quite as true for you guys. But for a lot of our past as human beings, we had religious role models to kind of inspire us to those sort of higher traits we wanted for ourselves. And I'm not religious, so this, like it, that doesn't apply to me. And I'm fine with people who are. That's what they still look to. But when we did away with having those particular role models, those, those people that when you're going, ah, life is hard, I'm a human being, it's messy. I feel sort of tired and overwhelmed and I just can't be bothered being the person I want to be. Then you would look to that saint or whoever it was that epitomized all the values and the character traits that you really thought would. What you should be aiming for. We don't have that so much anymore. And so it's really important as humans to have role models and characters you find inspirational for when you're having all those weak human moments that are so inevitable in the giant, crazy mess of life to bring you back to how you actually want to be and how you want to live. And so I was a big reader as a, as a teenager and continuing and I was really into books that had Characters that sort of had all this grit and tenacity in the face of hardship. Like I loved reading about Arctic explorers and you know, they would have their Christmas party where they, they just ate a frozen Mars bar spread with some toothpaste as their Christmas pudding and pretenders after dinner mints and, and sang carols and like melted snow and, and, and put one drop of rum in it each to pretend they were having Christmas cocktails. I loved all that kind of thing. And you know, I read old John Steinbeck and so on. I was so taken with how people just found a way to have fun in the face of adversity and limited physical means and material means. And just in the same way that when religion was so strong in society that when you're having those weaker moments, like you go back and you, you rewrite, read the appropriate, if you're Christian, you're the appropriate Bible chapter. And that goes, oh, that's right, that's, that's more how I want to be. And you feel that strength come back into you of that's why I'm doing this and that's why I want to live this way. Is having. When, when you're surrounded by advertising role models who basically all like be like a Kardashian and have a private jet and don't you really want a Rolex? Then you've got to, you can't just block that stuff out because it's so pervasive and it gets under our skin because there's really, well people paid people very clever in how they design those ads to get under our skin. You have to have counter role models and having like literary role models and so on that you have pinned down or even a grandparents or someone that it was like, oh, they had nothing and they knew how to have so much fun in life and they had an amazing sparkling witness and they could make a meal out of it covered with nothing but a ball of string and a bone in it. And coming back to those characters again and again as an inspiration is a really great way to counteract that mass cultural advertising message that we get that you live life well by doing this, all this buying stuff and you go, oh no, you live life well by being like that Arctic explorer who could sing songs for seven hours straight on a mug of snow melt with one drop of rum in it and a slice of frozen marsbah.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

That's one of those things that Scrooge learns in A Christmas Carol as he goes back and he's looking at his younger self and old fezziwig right? I mean, like, what a cool dude who is making the party rock for his young apprentices. And, like, when he's asked by the ghosts, like, well, but what did it take for him to make this happen? He's like, gosh, I guess not much. Like, right. It's a paltry party, but it meant a lot to a lot of people. And part of that is, like, the vibe you bring to it. Right. Not having the fanciest accoutrements. And one of the other things you talk about, too, in the book, which I was so impressed by, you said that we tend to appreciate everything more if we adopt a frugal, hedonism mindset. And you gave the example. Maybe this was elsewhere, but you said, like, biking in the rain makes you enjoy a warm shower more. Like, I ran in the freezing cold this morning and it made me enjoy my warm shower. And there's something about, right, the kind of maybe slightly seemingly painful decision that you take as a frugalite that makes you enjoy the conveniences that you take for granted. You don't take for granted in the same way.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Absolutely. Funny enough, I'm going to bring this one back to religion again, because that is something that a lot of religious societies do really well, is that they have stuff, say, periods of deprivation. And fasting is a classic one, you know, and part of that is just historically was just to accommodate for times of year where maybe there wasn't much food around, but it was also to keep you really loving what you did have when you had it. And the term I kind of like to use is like setting fat against lean is that you intentionally just kind of go for a sufficiency for a lot of the time. So you go, yeah, I just had, you know, pretty plain steamed vegetables for lunch and with a bit of olive oil on them and half a can of beans. And it was tasty, it was healthy, it was cheap, it was good. But that meant that when I then had a dinner that was like this decadent bowl of linguini with. With clams on it or whatever, that just tasted doubly amazing is if you'd had a really lush lunch, that dinner wouldn't have tasted as amazing. We all know that that's how it rolls, and it's so simple, and yet it's something that we ignore a lot, even though it's basically one of the biggest ways to heighten your pleasure experience in life is things do not feel hedonistic. If you're living the high life all the time, you've gotta like set up that contrast. You do the hard day's work digging in the garden and get all sweaty. And that beer that you drink after you've done that tastes about six times as good as if you'd just been mooching around the house and then drank a beer. We all know that's true and yet we don't think to exploit it intentionally that much. I'm sure anyone who's listening who's been camping knows how when you get back from camping, like having a hot shower seems like so luxurious.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Or if you've been eating those meal in a bag like the first meal that you eat when you get home, you're like, you talk about it at night with your friends, about the first meal that you expected.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Thing I've ever tasted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is an uncouth comparison, but I'm sure heaps of your listeners have heard of the Market Assad. It's that, it's that principle of if you're always seeking the highest level of pleasure that you just have to. It's called the hedonic treadmill. There's actually a name for it is that the more convenience and high pleasures, satiation, satiating experiences that you load yourself with, the less you enjoy them. So you actually have to implement a bit of that fat and lean principle. And plus it's, it's fun to do, especially if you do it as an experiment. I'm a huge fan of experiments. They make something that could feel like deprivation into a bit of a game and a full life flavor. And so, and there seems to build, you know, YouTube about this kind of stuff is spending say a whole week where you go, we're going to try and live off just what's in the pantry for this week. And not only is that a fun and interesting experiment and you eat some weird things you never would have eaten before, you get to tell your friends about it, you learn new skills and then when you eat, you save a bunch of money. And then at the end of that week, whatever you eat tastes amazing after.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

The first grocery run.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

And you probably actually find that when you do that first grocery run, you don't splurge in the way that you imagine you're going going to because you've recalibrated yourself to something simpler seeming really enjoyable. So perhaps, you know, you might be fantasizing that you were going to buy like 10 tubs of Ben and Jerry's when you went to the shop after that, but instead you just go, oh man, I just want to buy like the best mango they have in the shop because that's going to be so amazing. And it's, it's a really neat little mechanism to play with is just, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just live a little lean now and that's gonna make me really appreciate this thing that I'm working up to. And not to view that as deprivation, but to view it as a kind of dance that you do to keep all of your pleasure receptors more alive to pleasure rather than dulling them by just constantly giving them what they want. And definitely saves you a lot of money.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got more I want to get to with you, Andy, including I want to talk about fake frugalism and how not all frugality is created equally. We'll talk about that and more right after this.

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[Annie Rager Rowland]

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[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

So I'm talking with Andy, Raja, Roland. We're talking about frugal hedonism. I'm curious to you mentioned looking back to grandparents. How did they treat money? Maybe that can be inspirational when we do look back in history. Basically everyone listening to this podcast is historically rich by time standards, but also by just kind of worldwide standards. And even if you were to ask somebody hey, would you want to take a time machine to live? Back in the 1950s, almost everyone would say no, thanks. It's much better now. There is just more abundance. So how do we use that? Maybe as that reality, not as a tool of shame, but maybe to. I think part of what you're getting at is lower expectations. Just being like, I don't think. How do I use that to help me realize I don't need as much as I thought I did.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

I'm sure your history teacher told you this in school is that knowing about history actually gives us more power in the present. And understanding that people didn't always have as much as we have and yet managed to have a really good time is pretty potent because it makes you realize that we reset our expectations about what counts as normal with every generation or more than every generation, even every five years. You know, a very mean example I'm going to use right now that will make every single person listening cringe is probably 25 years ago, no one expected to just grab a takeaway coffee every day and carry that around with it. Maybe not just one, maybe three over the course of the day. If you're really dysfunctional, we could be looking at five. And because that wasn't on our radar as this thing we just all expected to have, no one felt like life was any more rubbish than not having of that coffee. It just wasn't part of what we had normalized. And recognizing that what you normalize is really arbitrary is a really powerful thing, because it means you can go, well, why normalize myself to this set of expectations when I could say, bringing up the 1950s again, say, wow, if I lived in the 1950s, I would feel like the richest person in town at the moment. Like, I have a washing machine, I have a refrigerator, I have a television, I have a car. I have two spare rooms in my house that have nothing in them but a foosball set. A beanbag. Like, it's crazy how much a lot of us have compared to all of human history. And number one, that enables gratitude and appreciation. But it also makes you realize that all of that stuff that maybe you thought you still needed, you probably really don't. And that we are actually living like not just kings, but kind of rulers of entire nations in the perspective of a lot of history at this point.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

I think Jerry Seinfeld has a joke about French kings and how we're living better than French kings these days. And I think that's true. They still had to go to the bathroom outside or whatever, right? I mean, we have indoor plumbing. Yeah.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Terrible dental hygiene. My gosh. Yeah. And it's Very freeing to help you step outside of that mindset of poverty that it's so easy for us to get into when we feel like, oh, but this other person has this thing I don't have, or life would feel easier or better if I had that thing. And it just lets you step outside that, that mindset and say, oh, I have so much. I have so much. And it really is all about context, which is hilarious. Like, it's, it's, it's hilarious that we're that easily suckered into just normalizing whatever's going on around us as, as what is required for basic contentment.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

What is fake frugalism? Because I mentioned in the intro we're not going to talk about couponing, and there are some strains of frugalism that sound far less appealing than the one you're describing here. So what's fake frugalism? Why do you hate it?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, the secret agenda behind this book was that I am a raging environmentalist, mostly for pretty selfish reasons in that I just love hiking and being in the natural world. And I like, you know, to me, true, true hedonism is swimming in rivers and lakes and so on without catching weird diseases from them. I'd like the world to stay that way, if possible. And yet I'm very aware that people are tired of being told to not buy things and not consume as much for the sake of being good, because it makes me feel like a martyr. And once I kind of worked out that not consuming as much not only will help us save the planet and keep all those nice rivers and lakes that you can swim in without catching diseases, but not consuming as much is also really fun in the long run. I guess it became important to distinguish between that kind of saving money, where you buy the most rubbish stuff because it's really cheap, and you buy it from a big box store where they don't care who made it, and maybe you do save coupons and there's no sense of the chain of impact on the world behind that thing you bought. And so to me, real frugality has to be thinking about not just making things better for yourself, but making things better for the whole ecosystem, both the human ecosystem and the natural ecosystem that we live in. Because that is actually true hedonism.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

If we're talking about like the quote unquote, frugal person might own 12 jackets that all cost $12. But you're saying, I guess maybe the frugal hedonist might own two jackets and they might cost a lot more than $12. But they're higher quality and you don't need as many actually to get by. Is that a good example?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

That's a pretty good example. Although I'd call you on one aspect of that is that the frugal hedonist probably would still own two jackets that only cost $12, but they'd be really good quality jackets. And that came from a thrift store.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Okay.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, they kind of had some fun outings with friends trolling thrift stores until they found those jackets.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Love it.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

And I'm just going to dive in while we're talking about thrift stores, because second buying secondhand stuff is gold. People, once they get into a kind of frugality mindset and also environmentally conscious mindset, can really easily be pulled down that tunnel of I have to buy the really expensive, ecologically responsible option. But while that's a great option and it's great to support some of those businesses that are coming up with those alternatives, the least environmentally damaging option and the cheapest is always going to be the thing that already existed, that would have maybe become landfill gone. Gone to become trash if you didn't buy it. So use that like Facebook Marketplace to get your secondhand stuff. Trade stuff with neighbors. I've got friends that host an amazing clothes swap night once a year where everyone brings all the clothes they don't wear and brings a mirror if they can and something to kind of act as a makeshift change room. Although everyone gets a bit. A bit naked by the end of it because you can't be bothered hiding behind the screen. And you try and all the clothes appeal to you and you come away with a whole new set of clothes and you end up with some really good quality stuff that is going to last you ages. And you get all the fun of that event and you get the novelty of having new clothes. It's like a. It's like a triple win, a quadruple win right there. So, yes, quality, definitely. But secondhand is kind of like a get out of jail free card because you're having so little expenditure and environmental impact. When you buy something secondhand, that means you don't have to agonize over, oh, can I afford this? You know, really? Well, locally made out of rainforest friendly cotton T shirt is like, no, I just got this secondhand one that would have ended up probably in landfill if I hadn't bought it. So that didn't do any of those things.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

One of the other things you highlight too is that people are just so dang busy, right? And so busyness just having too much on our schedule often inhibits our ability to be frugal. Is that what's the solution to that though? Like, what would you say to somebody who's like, I'm just too busy, I need the instacart delivery, I need all these services and I need to pay more for these different expenses in my life because I've just got a lot going on.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

It's a bit of a chicken and egg kind of conundrum that one, because there are aspects of being more frugal that you need more time to do. There's no two ways about that. Like just, you know, cooking more home cooked meals. Then if you're more frugal, you don't have to work as much. And that really is true. Like I, my partner when I met them probably five years after publishing this book was working a full time job and it took about a year of us hanging out and him sort of taking on some of my habits to cut down to three days a week because he was like, oh, I just don't actually need half as much money as I thought I needed. And I wasn't even trying to indoctrinate him intentionally. I just kind of rubbed off on him in my habits. Some people may love working a lot and be really passionate about their jobs, so that obviously doesn't apply to them in that case. But then they probably, those people probably aren't needing to pay for as many of those kind of discretionary expenditures that we use to cheer ourselves up and so on. So they're probably not spending as much money. It's really good if you're really busy to just do a bit of a life audit and pick those couple of little money savers that you feel like you can build in the time for like, okay, I spend $30 a week on takeaway coffees and that's significant. It actually takes me very little time to just make up a big pot of cold brew one day a week and pour it into five little jars that I've saved up from my leftover pasta sauce or whatever it is and take that, that in the car with me each morning. Just little changes like that. So the low hanging fruit time wise, that can really save people a lot of money. And then I find that people get a little bit addicted to those tiny life hacks like that and once they see how much one can save them, it snowballs and they sort of want to do another one or they will go, well, my gym membership cost me X amount of money because I have signed up for, you know, the, the gold option. But I hardly ever use all the, the Pilates classes and stuff. I basically just go do a run on the treadmill twice a week. So I'm going to cut it back to that option and then I'm going to once a week because that's more realistic. Do a Pilates video at home, like a free YouTube Pilates video at home and go, well, that was actually more realistic for my time capacity and I've just saved myself 30 bucks a month or whatever it is. So you just work out those little things that are realistic for you to do within a busy life and that are those low hanging fruit. And then once you've been doing that for six months, because changing habits is always hard. Our brains like to save calories and changing habits uses more calories than doing exactly what you've always been doing. So there's always that sort of grinding of the gears for the first little bit of any change of habits. Get through that bit six months later or three months later, go, well, what's another low hanging fruit? I could see that maybe I could shift here. That might give me a tiny bit more time or not take up too much time and save me an amount of money that's disproportionate to that.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

You talk about the influence of advertising on our lives, but then there's also the reality that we like to convey certain things about ourselves by the possessions that we own, by what we wear, whether it's our home and like, let's do a $50,000 kitchen reno. Because when we entertain, wouldn't it be nice if this place looked a little bit classier or a certain kind of genes or even just the kind of like coffee you drink sometimes that is something, you're trying to state something to the people around you. How nefarious is that? How, how impacted do you think that is by advertising? But then also, let's say intrinsically I really like this thing. And, and I do think it maybe is a little reflective, let's say, of who I am. It's like I grew a mustache and one of my friends said you look more like yourself than you've ever looked before. And it's really funny. It's like it was false advertising before, I guess, but now that I have a mustache, people think I'm a little weirder, which is actually true. So some of those things really do like put off something to the world. Talk about maybe how you would help somebody think through what their possessions signal about them.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

This is a question that's come up for me before in interviews, and it's one I find particularly hard to answer because I am a knee jerk rebel. I was made that way. I'm just cut from that cloth. So if someone tells me I should have something or should do something, my first instinct is, nuh, I want to look behind that screen and see if I actually really want that. I'm not going to be your sucker. So it's actually very hard for me to get into the mindset of people who approach that kind of situation differently. But I think it's really comforting to remind ourselves that if you look around at friends you've got and who you admire and are impressed by, it's generally not to do with how flash their kitchen upgrade is. It's to do with how well they tell a story or how well they listen. When you're offloading about something that happened to you that day that was really hard for you, that if you do feel insecure about that stuff, talk about it. Like, be, be open about that and you'll bring people on side. Like, I've, I've had people say, oh, you know, we were, we were kind of thinking we should renovate when we moved in, but frankly we just decided the house is pretty good as it is and it's, it's just not worth the money or the hassle. We'd rather spend it on better things. And you say that to someone and that helps them shift their mindset and go, yeah, that's actually a legitimate life choice to make. That option has just been opened up to me as a way of thinking. And you give them a gift by saying that to them and you get yourself out of being judged for not having tried to keep up with the Joneses. So kind of transparency is actually an underrated tool within that situation. You know, I used to work in fashion shops for years and there was a set of kind of lifestyle behaviors that lots of my co workers would engage in that I just wasn't really interested in spending the money on. And they would tease me for having my little jar of leftover lunch that I would bring. And they'd be going up to get like, you know, the newest baguette from the delicatessen up the street or whatever. And they call me Swamp Girl. But I just leaned into that and I was like, got my swamp girl lunch. Boy, am I enjoying my little swamp girl lunch. No, I don't want none of you baguette. And have a sense of humor about yourself and that, that stuff about maybe not keeping up with certain standards becomes less intense and feels less important. Plus, I really do think it is a gift that you can give to other people is because people can feel a bit panicky about how pressured they feel to keep up with certain lifestyle standards. And when you show them an alternative, it's actually quite a relief to a lot of people. I actually just read an article this morning because, you know, our publisher sends us links to when the book gets mentioned in various online articles and so on occasionally. And it was an article about someone saying that this book had really reshaped their life and she started instead of. Because she was on a really tight budget for a period trying to buy a house and that she had started just inviting all her friends for walks instead of brunch. She's like, it's like it's the anti brunch walk. And that her friends had all confessed one by one that they were so grateful for the anti brunch walk because it meant that they didn't have to worry about that extra chunk of like, you know, paying for brunch can be quite an expensive thing. And that they actually had a better time going for a big long walk together than going out for brunch. And she gave them a gift by offering them that low spending, frugally hedonistic alternative. And you can kind of. Yeah, you give the people around you a little present. When you say, like, okay, keeping up with these standards is not strictly actually necessary.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yeah. I've traded a lot of my relational time from getting beers at a local pub to going for runs or hikes. And it's like, I have better conversation. I have the richest. You really do. It's so much better than at a noisy bar grabbing beers. And so, yeah, it's saves you money at the same time.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

And you both feel buzzed afterwards in.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

A different way, different kind of buzz. That's right. That's right. All right, just a few more questions I want to get to with you, Andy, including how do frugal hedonists think about investing for the future? We'll talk about that in just a sec. All right, we're back, still talking with Annie Razor Roland, talking about frugal hedonism, which I. I just love that combo of terms. And I love it when somebody takes something, turns it on its head. Something that has, at least in the last 20, 25 years, seems like it's been castigated. Right. Like we talk about frugality, like it's. Yeah, I guess if you have to. To get by sure. But to make it like a superpower, that's what you're doing, Annie. And maybe, I don't know, can you offer some practical ways to spend less too? If somebody's like, all right, give me like some of that, that meat and potatoes kind of changes, I can make sure. One of the things I've seen you suggest is not buying drinks and you're not just talking about avoiding alcohol.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

No, it's really interesting. It wasn't until doing the research for the book that I actually walked around about 20 different venues in my hometown. I looked at everything from high end to low end and look at how much drinks cost in proportion to a meal on each of those menus. And often they're running at about half of the cost of the meal. So you know that that juice that you have along with your sandwich is going to, is going to set you back about half the cost of what the sandwich does. Or at the really high end restaurant, the bottle of wine is often half as much as what you pay for the total meal tab or even just a soda can literally, when it's in a restaurant or a cafe, be half the cost of the bowl of fur that you're ordering or whatever it is. So again, low hanging fruit. You might want to occasionally get a drink if you really, really feel like one. But so often it's just an automatic default. Thing is like, I should order a drink to go with my meal. You can just ask for water. That's, that is, that is a viable option and it saves an enormous amount of money to do that. And it means that on those eating out experiences that the bill is really like 2/3 as much every single time. If you go, no, I'm just not going to have the soda or I'm not going to have the, the orange juice or whatever it is. The flip side of that is to actually use drinks in lieu of buying a meal. Because we all love that feeling of sitting down somewhere public and drinking in the world, watching passersby, sitting at a cafe table at the town square and watch it, watching the world happen around you. But instead of going, well, I need to go for a full sit down meal, say, I'm just gonna have that one espresso Italian style, you know, and sit there and sip it really, really slowly and make that really on me. And that will be way cheaper obviously than buying the croissants and the juice and the espresso. Go, no, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna really savor this espresso. And make it last. Other really low hanging fruit for a lot of people, how much they drive. And I know this can be a bit different in American cities because there's a lot of places where it's really hard to get around without driving. And that's true to a large extent in Australia too. But we've got a lot of slightly more European setup where you can get around quite easily without driving. But gas is really expensive. And if you try and just consolidate your trips together and go, well, do I actually need to pop to the store again? Or can I make something from what I've got at home or can I stable that up for that once a week grocery run where I'm also going to the pharmacy and going to the pool and doing this other thing. Make that like a once a week car run, you know, and get yourself an electric bicycle if you can afford one. I think they should be issued free to everyone at age 13 maybe.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Hey, I love mine.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, I don't have a car. I use the electric bike. It's got huge panniers on it. It does everything I need it to do. And I can borrow a car from a friend if I really need one or hire one. But trips, trips under like five minutes. You should not be using a car unless you've got one leg, really. That is just burning up money. And you can walk down those three blocks and get that thing that you were going for. I always laughed when I go to the local park each morning for a big walk. I live near a nice reserve. I go for a kind of hike around there every morning. And the number of people that I know because I've seen them when I've been riding my bike live at the end of my street, they're about 10 blocks away from this park that I see them drive up to go do their walk in the park each morning. And I'm like, you're coming to the park to walk? You could have just walked the 10 blocks to get here. So just, you know, thinking about car usage when gas is so expensive is a really potent little money saver.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yeah, I think too. I've noticed, especially when people go to the gym when you live less than a mile away and you don't walk or jog to the gym, I'm always like, I don't understand, like you're literally driving there to get fit. So you could drive home, just go on foot. One of the things I'm curious too. I don't know if I've ever heard you talk about this. How Does a frugal hedonists think about investing for the future? You talk about having a pile of savings, but do you think the aspirations of financial independence are aligned with frugal hedonism?

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yes, certainly. As I mentioned earlier, both my co author Adam and I have never had any trouble saving money. At some point I realized that I'd saved enough that I should probably invest it. And I hunted around. I found I don't like thinking about money. As I said, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. So I found the best ethical investor that I could. They manage my savings for me. Those savings have been growing. Occasionally I check in that their values are still aligned with things I do and don't want to be supporting and say, no, I, I'm just not comfortable like being that invested in AI development or whatever it is, just so that's aligned with my values and that is setting me up to be financially independent. I think having a, this is a different level of independence, but feeling quite enmeshed in the community because, because of the kind of stuff that I've talked about, like being generous with neighbors, helping babysit kids, friends, sharing things around the neighborhood, borrowing things from each other. That's a form of, well, it's not independence, it's the opposite of dependence, but it's, it's old age insurance because people know who I am, they've got goodwill towards me and that's going to look after me into my old age.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Yeah.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

So I feel pretty well sorted on both of those levels financially and sort of socially. And those are both important levels of investment for me. One thing that comes up a bit is that neither Adam or I have kids. So this stuff can be different for people with kids. But I'm pretty confident now in that because the book has been out for over 10 years. Basically 80%, 90% of my friends have had kids of that time period and lots of their kids are now, you know, almost ready to leave home. And the people amongst those people who have really good frugal habits, it's carried them through having children. It hasn't, it is not impossible at all. It hasn't changed. And if anything, I see them then instilling what is getting to be a bit of a rarer kind of money consciousness into their children so that their kids, you know, have been given pocket money from a young age that they have to learn how to manage and prioritize what they spend it on. And that was actually a wonderful gift that my mom gave to me as a single mom who didn't have heaps of money is that from a really young age she gave me a small amount of pocket money. And then each year she increased it and said, okay, now you have to pay for your clothes out of that amount of money. Now you have to pay for. Because shoes are expensive, shoes get thrown in. Next year, a bit more pocket money. Now you have to pay for any movie tickets or books or anything that you want out of that kind of money. So. And that started from the age of about eight for me. So first of all, I was just, you know, having to budget for my own lollies, my own candy. But then that got built up every year so that it got me really thinking about, well, if I have this, then I can't have that, and if I save three weeks pocket money, then I have that thing I really want. And so investing in your children's frugal financial capacity in that way is also an investment for the future because those dudes are going to be looking after you when you get old and you don't want them broke and unable to pay for your aged care.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

100%.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Awesome. Andy, this has been such a great conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time. Where can how to money listeners, where can they find out more about your book? That's been around now for a long time, but maybe a lot of folks in the US haven't, maybe hasn't migrated across the pond in the same way.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Yeah, actually, I do get a lot of letters from US readers, so I'm not sure how you guys are all buying it, but people definitely are. You can go to frugal hedonism.com and I know it's stocked at various bookstores. Unfortunately, I don't know which one, so probably frugalhedonism.com is going to be your easiest bet.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much for taking the time, Annie. I appreciate it.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

Absolutely. You have a wonderful day.

[Joel (Host of How to Money)]

It's always nice to talk to fun people. Annie's enthusiasm was infectious, and that was a huge part of the reason I wanted to have her on. Actually, when I stopped recording, we were chatting for just a second and I just talked about. I just said thank you for being so passionate about this and for bringing so much joy to the conversation. And she said, well, Joel, because deprivation never wins out. We like having fun too much. And it talked about, well, I think when I started being frugal, so much of it was I have to deprive myself so I can reach financial independence. So I'm not worried about my money and my future. And a lot of that stems from kind of things I experienced in childhood. And I think part of the last five, seven years or whatever has been me trying to change that mindset and be like, no, no, no. Like a lot of the frugal choices I'm making are not because I'm fearful about what's going to happen or I'm doing this for an ultimate long term goal. There is some of that, but a lot of it is just saying, actually I'm doing this because it's a better alternative than the other more costly thing I could be doing. And I think that is like a deeper connection to frugality that Annie is stressing, that she stressed in this conversation that she points us towards that is worth learning from. And I think there are just so many big takeaways that I could discussed from this conversation when she talked about what we normalize is arbitrary. Like the things that we think are normal. Three cars in the driveway or 3,500 square feet worth of house or whatever. I mean, all of the things that we normalize, they are arbitrary. And when you look back to history, you realize just how good we've got it. We live like kings and queens, despite the fact that we're middle class or something like that. Right. And we can change the nature of what we value. She talked about even some of the secret side effects of frugality. Right? Being fitter, having better community. She talked about self reliance. And that actually something we find admirable oftentimes in the people around us is their ability to restrain themselves. And so just so, so much good stuff in this conversation. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope it inspired you to think about your frugal attempts differently. Instead of just pinching pennies in order to get ahead for future you, it is better to think of it as lifestyle changes that you can keep around for a long time to come. Because it's better for you. It's better for your money, but it's better for your mental health. It's slowing you down. Even just like, yeah, those walks instead of brunch, right? What can you do that's on those basic levels that allows you to save some money but also increase some of those other parts of your life that matter that are valuable. All right, that's going to do it for this episode. I feel like I could keep talking about this because such a fun topic, but we'll put links to Annie's book and to that website she mentioned in the show. Notes up on the site howtomoney.com thank you so much for joining me today. See you back here for a fresh Friday flight in a couple days. Until next time, best friend out.

[Annie Rager Rowland]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.