Are You Cheap or Frugal?

There is a BIG difference between frugal and cheap. Many confuse the two and mistake one for the other. When you’re frugal, you care about what value a certain product/service is bringing to your life and use money as a tool to get them while when you’re cheap, you only think about the cost of the item and not the value it brings. There are a couple of differences between the two and below I have given a brief comparison.

Value vs Cost

The people who are frugal care about what value they get from using products/services while those who are cheap care about the cost regardless of the value. The cheap will prioritize getting the cheapest available product which often delivers poor quality and end up spending more in fixing them and maintenance. For example, if you buy a cheap China phone like Sumsung which works for the first few days then stops. So, you end spending more fixing the cheap phone than you would have buying a great Samsung that will serve you for years.

Them vs Others

What a frugal person buys only affects them like buying a great laptop like Alienware. If the laptop works well, it will serve them and if it fails, only them are affected and not other people. When a cheap person buys cheap stuff, it usually affects others for example, they buy a cheap car that breaks down every other day. If they are transporting other people, they will end up getting late most of the time.

Long Term vs Short Term

A frugal person sees how long a given product will serve them and how much of an asset it can be. Buying an expensive premium laptop will serve a person greatly for many years and will make his work easier as the laptop is very fast and efficient. A cheap person only sees today and how buying a certain product will suits his products for today. The product cannot last very long and they end up it over and over again in the name of cutting costs.

Reasonable vs Unreasonable

A frugal person will buy things they really care about and will make a difference in their life. To them, money is a tool and a means to an end therefore, it does not hold much weight. A cheap person will rather cut costs as much as possible and would bargain for hours on end to get a great price for a given item. This is unreasonable as time is precious and cannot be wasted on needless bargaining. A frugal person values their time wisely and spend it like so while a cheap person does not and would rather spend their time on getting the best deals.

Conclusion

The table below quickly summarizes the key differences between the two.

FRUGAL	CHEAP
They care about value	They care about cost
It only affects them	It affects others
They think long term	They think short term
They are willing to spend on items they care about	They are unreasonable