The Green spotlight #6: “Frugality’’

It’s another exciting time on your favourite blog “The Green Spotlight’’. Good to have you here.

The Green Spotlight is a weekly review of books that will inspire you. Over here we believe that when you read, you get insight which serves as a green light and is synonymous to success.

The last edition was on love languages a little bit different from all we have seen on the previous editions.

This week’s edition is not on love, we would get back to it on our subsequent editions but this week we are looking at a more inclusive subject which touches every area of our lives.

Unto the review of the week

The review of this week is centered on the book “frugality”.

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Author : Dag Heward Mills
Year published: 1997
Number of chapters: 8
Number of pages: 20
Published by : Dag Heward-Mils, Smashwords.

My opinion about the book “Frugality’’

Introduction/Theme

Frugality is the wise and careful use of resources, money and opportunities. A person is said to be a frugal person when the individual knows how to make use of the above mentioned to his advantage.

Many people are wasteful and on the average tends to lack. most African countries are know for the waste of resources such as electricity, water and etc while the developed nations understand that frugality tend to wealth and vice-versa.

When someone is not frugal, the person is prodigal, as prodigality which is wastefulness is the opposite of being frugal.

If we must succeed in life, we must imbibe frugality and there are principles of frugality; let’s take a look at these principles and see what we can glean from them.

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Key points from the chapters

• The first principle is the value principle. A lot of people do not value what they have until they loose it. Most individuals will only attach value to things when they get to know the price of that item else they would commonise it.

There are a lot of things in our life that we should value. Value good relationships, good friends are had to get by, value your boss or your employees. Value your parents and teachers.

A sticker says “if you can read this, value your teacher”. Teachers are one of the least valued people. You don’t need to loose what you have before you value it.

• The second principle is the timely valuation principle. This may sound like the first but it’s different. It’s says to value things timely. For example, a lot of people will not value their father or mother until they die.

When they are no longer alive , they suddenly realize their usefulness but all the while they are alive, they never gave them gifts or treated them as special.

Most people will only wait until Someone dies before they celebrate them. That’s a very bad thing to do. Value people timely.

• The third principle is the gathering of crumbs. There’s a saying that little drops of water makes a mighty ocean. You can create wealth by counting your Pennies and gathering the crumbs.

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A lot of people are very wasteful. Jesus fed five thousand people with few loaves of bread and few fishes, yet he asked the disciples to gather the crumbs. That’s to show us that we shouldn’t be wasteful. You must learn to maximize all you have and not be an advocate to wasteful living.

• The seven fat cows and seven lean cows is the forth principle. This makes us know that everyone would pass through a phase of abundance and scarcity.

Most people feel that life will always be rosy. When you are in that phase of abundance, make investments and plan towards the times of scarcity so that you don’t live your life only to remember the good old days.

• The needing no supervision principle is the fifth principle. Many people do not know how to work without supervision.

If you can’t work without supervision, your supervisor will be paid more just to make sure you work or you could be paid the money meant for your supervisor is you don’t need supervision.

You should be able to get up and do what is required of you without having anyone coarse you into it. Your life and destiny is your responsibility.

Getting interesting right? There are two more principles that points to being a frugal person. Would you have the honour of finding out for yourself what those are?

My rating of the book

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Frugality is a simple and yet wisdom filled booklet. It’s simply opens your eyes to some things you may commonise but yet are the bedrock of daily living.

The author succinctly used daily life stories and scriptural backings to paint a vivid picture of frugality and all it entails. I give it 9/10.

Conclusion

There’s an Igbo adage that says that you don’t get wealth by gathering and throwing away. This book simply agrees with that adage. And as it’s said , a word is always enough for the wise.

Frugality is a virtue you must imbibe in your day to day life and I think you should look through the pages to see what more you can glean.

Thanks for coming down this lane with me. If you missed our last edition on the five love languages, you can have a look at it here, Edition 5

Your thoughts on this edition of the green spotlight is welcomed and hope to see you again on our subsequent editions.