A little over a year ago, I began trying a new idea in my personal journal. Each day, I wrote down the five best things that happened to me that day.

I started this as a way to reflect on the positive things in my life and, psychologically, it’s been a very positive thing. I can browse through those lists and realize how good my life is, even when times feel kind of tough. Each day, I sit down and reflect on all of the good things that happened in my life. In the end, it’s really raised my mood and helped me to reflect on the wonderful aspects of my life.

Once I crossed the one year mark with this, I decided to take a tally of the things I had written down. How many involved my kids? How many involved my wife?

And perhaps most interestingly to you, how many of the entries involved spending money?

Here are the results (rounded to the nearest percentage).

61% of the entries had nothing whatsoever to do with spending money. They involved things like going to the park, playing in the yard with my kids, holding my wife, having a nice conversation with someone, or so on.

Another 35% of the entries had only the most tangential relationship to spending money. Preparing a meal, for example – I did have to buy the food to prepare it. Playing a board game with my wife or my friends – the board game did have to be purchased at some point.

Only about 3% of the entries had to do directly with consumer activities. Many of these were good feelings about finding a bargain or about talking myself out of buying entirely.

The good moments in my life are the ones where I don’t spend money. The happiness comes from spending time with my family and with my friends. It comes from writing and from learning new things and from pushing my mind. It comes from conversation and companionship. It comes from intellectual growth and reading.

It doesn’t come from trips to bookstores or to the coffee shop. It doesn’t come from browsing the shelves at the local electronics shop. It doesn’t come from ordering some stuff online. Those things might give me a burst of good feeling, but when I think of them even just a bit later – at the end of the day – I usually feel a mix of good and bad, since I feel some regret at the money spent.

Instead, the purely good feelings come from the free things in life. The hug from my daughter when she runs in the house. A giant high-five from my son. A wink from my wife. A delicious made-from-scratch dinner. A game of Ticket to Ride after the kids are asleep. A kiss.

If you doubt the truth of this, try it yourself. Give it one week. Here’s what I challenge you to do.

For one week, don’t spend any money at all on non-essentials. Just one week. Give up those little mood boosters. Don’t stop by the bookstore or the clothes shop. Do none of it – for just one week.

Every night that week, reflect on your day and make a list of the best five things that happened. Just keep them in a little notebook.

At the end of the week, review your seven lists and think back over your week. Are you missing out on any major happiness in your life by trimming your spending? Sure, you might be actually missing a thing or two, but you’ll likely be surprised how happy your life is without spending money.

And the benefits are tremendous. If you radically trim your non-essential spending, it suddenly becomes much easier to build an emergency fund. It becomes much easier to become debt free. It becomes much easier to save for the big dreams you’ve always had, like starting a business or building a house exactly like what you want. It becomes much easier to retire early. It becomes much easier to support the social causes you care about.

The great things in your life don’t come from spending money with reckless abandon.

Throughout this week, I’m posting a series of articles on the ethics of frugality. How far can you take things without crossing an ethical line or diving into seriously socially unacceptable waters? I’ll be recounting some of my own stories – and some stories from readers – along the way.

“Jim” writes in:

A married couple I’m friends with invited me over to dinner recently. When I arrived, they were rushing around trying to throw a meal together. The main course turned out to be leftover chicken breasts. Yes, leftover. They had been grilled a day or two before and they had merely tossed on some additional spices and warmed them in the oven. I was kind of disgusted by this. I understand that this was an inexpensive route for them to go for dinner, but I was a dinner guest at their home!

When you have guests over, how far does frugality go before it crosses a tactful line? As always, there are two sides to the story…

The price is right. Someone is providing a free meal to you. It’s rude to look a gift horse in the mouth. The meal was obviously cooked and was edible, so a good guest wouldn’t question the source of it (assuming there are no allergy issues or the like). The hosts obviously have some issues going on in their lives – perhaps financial or otherwise – and the best thing you can do as a friend is support them. In fact, instead of being outraged, you might take this meal as a sign that your friends need some help.

The hosts aren’t treating their guests well. If your hosts wanted to merely see you for a while, they did not have to invite you over for a meal. Inviting a guest over for a meal means that you’ll attempt to put something appetizing and reasonably fresh on the table, not your leftovers. If you intend to merely foist leftovers on a friend, make it clear – it can be fine if it’s a close friend and there’s some advance warning (“Hey, Jim, we have a ton of leftovers from our Thanksgiving dinner. Want to come over and help us clean them up?”). Without that, though, it’s fairly rude to toss your uneaten scraps in front of a guest in your home.

My perspective is that it depends on the friendship. I would have no problem serving my closest friends some well-prepared leftovers, nor would they feel self-conscious serving me the same. Anything beyond my closest friends, however, would never get such treatment in my home.

What’s the difference? I have such a long, established relationship with my closest friends that there’s no longer any need to impress in order to further build a friendship. These people have been my friends for the majority of my life at this point (or nearly that long). They know who I am and they know I care deeply about them. They also know that they’re an intimate part of my life, intimate enough that I would feel comfortable serving them some leftovers in a pinch.

If a friendship weren’t nearly as established, I would never serve leftovers as a dish to my guests. However, I would use leftovers as an ingredient in a dish that I would serve to anyone. If I make a big pot of chicken chili, for example, quite often the chicken itself is a leftover and the liquid in the soup is chicken stock, prepared from the bones of a roasted chicken.

One of my mantras is “stop caring what other people think.” That mantra ends at my doorstep when I invite people inside. When they’re here, I do care what they think because I value them enough individually to invite them into my home and share part of my life with them. Respect your guests – and they’ll respect you in return.

Over the upcoming week, I’ll be posting a series of articles on the ethics of frugality. How far can you take things without crossing an ethical line or diving into seriously socially unacceptable waters? I’ll be recounting some of my own stories – and some stories from readers – along the way.

“Megan” writes in:

A friend of mine had a sweater from Land’s End that she’d had for about fifteen years. It was getting pretty old and beat up simply because of normal wear and tear. A few weeks ago when she unpacked her winter clothes, she found that one sleeve had finally worn off the sweater. she called up Land’s End and complained, invoking their lifetime guarantee. They sent her a replacement one – not exactly the same, but pretty similar. She was quite proud of this “free” sweater. I was less than impressed. What do you think about this?

As always with these types of things, there are two sides to every story (at least two sides). Here are two ways of looking at it.

Lifetime guarantee means lifetime guarantee. As long as I’m the original owner of that particular item, then I should be entitled to get it replaced if it wears out. It says right there that if, for any reason, you’re unhappy with the sweater (and you’re the original owner of it), you have the right to return it and request a replacement item. This is your right, no matter the circumstances.

Fifteen years of wear on a sweater is a little over the top. If you manage to get fifteen years of wear on a sweater, then the product has been exceptionally good. Instead of trying to get another “free” item of similar quality, just buy another sweater. It’s pretty obvious that the reason for the “lifetime guarantee” is not to give you freebies if you wear a sweater to death, but to protect against a weak seam discovered after several wearings over a few years or something like that. By trying to squeeze a free sweater through this loophole, you’re basically taking advantage of a good company that puts effort into producing quality products – the kind of company we need more of, not the kind we should push out of business.

My take on this is somewhere in the middle. If I had an item that had worn out from regular use, I would not use a lifetime guarantee to try to get a free replacement. However, if I had a sweater that suddenly failed after a few years due to a weak seam or something along those lines, I’d unquestionably call in that lifetime guarantee.

To me, a very well-made item that simply lives out a long, natural lifetime is a very good product, while lifetime guarantees are there to protect you against faulty products. I have quite a lot of respect for companies that produce material with a high enough level of quality that they can provide a lifetime guarantee on it – that means that, under normal wear and tear, it’ll have a long lifetime.

If something goes wrong in the middle, I expect that lifetime guarantee to hold up. But if my long-loved sweater winds up being worn down enough that it becomes the padding on my dog’s bed, I don’t feel that I should be awarded a free replacement. The product did exactly what was advertised and did it very well – I’m deeply satisfied with it.

I guess that my impression of the situation in the question comes down to the sweater itself. If it had only been worn five or ten times in that fifteen year period and the sweater degraded enough that the sleeve fell off due to such little wear and tear, the lifetime guarantee should be invoked. However, if that sweater had been worn several times a year and was obviously nearing the end of a natural lifetime, it’s not frugal to demand a replacement – it’s cheap.

What do you think? Would you demand a replacement item if your item had a lifetime guarantee and you used it frequently to the end of a long natural life?

Over the upcoming week, I’ll be posting a series of articles on the ethics of frugality. How far can you take things without crossing an ethical line or diving into seriously socially unacceptable waters? I’ll be recounting some of my own stories – and some stories from readers – along the way.

A long while back, in a post entitled “When Is Frugality Stealing?“, I wrote about how I would sometimes jot down notes out of books when I was in a bookstore. This was completely allowed – and even encouraged – by the store’s owner (perhaps in part because I was a regular customer there) and would often result in me deciding to buy the book once I found that the information was accurate and useful.

This leads to a bigger question about frugality: when is it okay to sample content without buying?

Take, for example, music. Some people find it completely appropriate to download and keep mp3s, offering up the reasoning that the content is overpriced for what you get or that they might buy the music someday if they listen to it enough. Personally, unless these are given as free downloads by the people that recorded it, I find this stealing. There are many, many ways to sample music without just taking what you want – thirty second previews, Pandora radio, and so on. Access to such recordings isn’t really an issue, either, unless you get into highly obscure recordings.

This is a topic that’s endlessly debated online. There’s a significant group that argues that information was meant to be free and that anything that can be reduced to simple information should thus be free. Thus, content creators should find other ways to earn an income and treat their content as an “advertisement” of sorts for their other endeavors. For example, they might argue that I should give my books away for free and then charge a price for my live appearances or for “deluxe” versions of the content.

Here’s the thing. Content has a cost. Someone had to invest a significant amount of time creating the material you enjoy. It’s reasonable to think that the creator would want to be compensated for the time and energy invested in it. When you step back and look at a broader scale, there’s an enormous amount of people involved in making a film, showing it in theatres, and then making it available for you to easily rent or buy. The same is true for any creative work.

When do I think it’s okay to sample such content? It’s fine to sample if the person who created it or the retailer says it is. So, if I want to jot a note out of a book, it’s fine if the bookstore clerk says I can. If I want to listen to a particular song, I can go hear that thirty second sample or listen to a streaming source like Pandora. If you want more, pay for it. That “pay” might mean enjoying it with ad support for free (like on Hulu) or enjoying it by paying for it without ad support.

Some people might go further and just completely give away their content, and that’s fine. They’re choosing to give it away because they believe they’ll build a bigger audience for their live events that way. However, just because one person is doing it doesn’t mean that consumers can then treat every person producing anything in that same fashion.

All that being said, I think most content companies make it ridiculously hard (even now, with the internet) for people to adequately sample the content. How do I know if I want to watch this movie or not? Well, I can probably find a trailer for it (maybe) or a review here or there. How do I know if I want to listen to this album? I can hear some thirty second samples of the chorus and (maybe) a full song or two on a service like Pandora. At least with bookstores, readers are encouraged to read the first part of a book in a bookstore so they can make up their mind – I think that’s one of the reasons why bookstores aren’t having the difficulty that music stores are having.

What do you think? Where’s the line between sampling so you can make an informed decision and stealing just so you can save a few bucks? Where is the line of right and wrong?

This is the fifteenth of sixteen parts of a “book club” reading and discussion of Keith Ferrazzi and Tahl Raz’s Never Eat Alone, where this book on building a lifelong community of colleagues, contacts, friends, and mentors is teased apart and looked at in detail. This entry covers the twenty-ninth and thirtieth chapters – “Find Mentors, Find Mentees, Repeat” and “Balance is B.S.” – which appear on pages 273 through 290.

Just over a year ago, I wrote an article entitled “How to Find and Utilize a Mentor, No Matter What You’re Doing.” In it, I discussed strategies for identifying a mentor in one’s community and adopting that person as your mentor.

What I didn’t discuss in detail was the value of a mentor. Why would you want to have one?

The most valuable reason to have a mentor, I’ve found, is that a great mentor is a boundless source of advice that actually works. If you manage to get a successful elder statesman as your mentor, they likely have forgotten more about your area of interest than you’ll ever know. That wisdom can be incredibly helpful to you as you start out and grow into your area of interest.

Beyond that, a mentor can be a great source for connections and other resources to help you grow. They can put the word out for your fledgling career or entrepreneurial endeavor.

I believe a mentor is one of the most valuable things a person can find in their career or entrepreneurial journey.

The Historical Nature of Mentoring
On page 274, Ferrazzi puts mentors in a historical context:

No process in history has done more to facilitate the exchange of information, skills, wisdom, and contacts than mentoring. Young men and women learned their trade by studying as apprentices under their respective craftsmen. Young artists developed their individual style only after years working under elder masters. New priests apprenticed for a decade or more with older priests to become wise religious men themselves. When finally these men and women embarked on their own, they had the knowledge and the connections to succeed in their chosen field.

My belief is that the world would be better off if we returned to this sort of apprenticeship in most career fields. There are very few career fields today that do not require a pretty large skillset and isn’t benefitted by quite a lot of additional knowledge. Incorporating some form of apprenticeship into a field means that new entrants learn all of these things under the careful eye of a person who has learned them.

Yes, in many cases, apprenticeship already exists informally. I had several strong mentors during my early years that taught me many, many things. Yet, even then, it was limited. They were mentors to me out of the goodness of their heart, taking time out of their busy schedules to teach me things. On the other hand, as a proper apprentice, one would actually be very strongly tied to one’s master, doing much of their grunt work but also fine-tuning one’s skills and knowledge base over a long period of time.

Mentoring alone is incredibly helpful and it has spawned many a successful professional. Apprenticeship offers even more, yet we seem to have abandoned it culturally due to our impatience and our drive for profits. Is that a good thing? For quarterly returns, yes it is. For long term growth of skill-based fields, it’s not at all.

Everyone Has Something to Offer
In some ways, almost everyone you meet in life can be a mentor. On page 276, Ferrazzi spells this idea out:

The fact is, from my father’s perspective, everyone had something to offer. When he’d go out for his weekly sit-down at a local diner with his friends, he took me along. He wanted me to be comfortable with older, more experienced people and to never fear seeking their help or asking them questions. When my dad would show up with me in tow on a Friday night, his buddies would say, “Here’s Pete [my father's nickname] and Re-Pete [my nickname to his buddies].”

This passage really struck me because it points to something really important about mentorship: you can learn valuable lessons from almost anyone.

Here’s an example. For several years, I lived in an apartment about three miles from my workplace. It was in a large town that had solid mass transit available, so I would go out of my apartment building each day, walk a little ways, and there would be a bus stop. I’d wait for the bus there and ride it to work.

Most mornings, the same small group of people would be there at the same time and, over time, I got to know them. Many of them were professionals in other departments at the same place of employment. From those people, I learned a lot. They taught me how to speak up. They taught me how to diminish my intimidation factor (I’m a very tall, broad shouldered guy and can inadvertently intimidate people on occasion) and how to seem more friendly. They taught me about the nuances of office politics and gave me lots of advice on how to deal with difficult situations I was facing.

And they were just people at the bus stop. Yet, still, they were useful mentors who taught me a lot.

When you keep your ears and eyes closed, you miss out on a lot of valuable lessons.

Getting a Mentor
How exactly do you build up a relationship with someone who might be a primary mentor of yours. On pages 281 and 282, Ferrazzi offers up some strong ideas:

The best way to approach utility is to give help first, and not ask for it. If there is someone whose knowledge you need, find a way to be of use to that person. Consider their needs and how you can assist them. If you can’t help them specifically, perhaps you can contribute to their charity, company, or community. You have to be prepared to give back to your mentors and have them know that from the outset. [...]

If, however, there are no immediate opportunities for help, you must be prudent and conscious of the imposition you’re placing on that person. Almost every day, some ambitions young man or woman sends me an email that states all too directly, “I want a job.” Or, “I think you can help me. Take me on as your mentee.” I shudder at how deeply these young folks misunderstand the process. If they’re going to get my help, and they haven’t even offered their help in return, then at minimum they should attempt to endear themselves to me. Tell me why you’re special. Tell me what we have in common. Express gratitude, excitement, and passion.

I get emails all the time from bloggers who have just started a blog. They have maybe two or three posts up and they write to me essentially demanding that I take the time to visit their site and give them thorough feedback on what they’ve done.

In essence, these people are asking me to be their mentor. They’re asking me to give my experience and careful advice to them. Often, it’s in exchange for nothing, and just as often, they’ve given me nothing in return for it, not even the basic start of a conversation.

Now, if they happen to be presenting a blog that might be interesting to me, I’ll check it out, but most of the time, I just delete these emails. The people making such requests do not want to establish any sort of relationship. They just want to be handed a recipe to get themselves a few more page views.

On the other hand, several much wiser bloggers have started out by emailing me questions and observations about The Simple Dollar. They’ve written long posts, linking back to my site and debating what I have written. After an extensive conversation, then they might ask for some specific help, and at that point, I’m very happy to oblige.

The role of the mentee isn’t just to take. Every relationship is an exchange, and if you’re not offering to exchange anything, the other person likely won’t offer anything, either.

The Myth of a Work-Life Balance
On page 287, Ferrazzi attacks the idea of a balance between professional and personal life:

When it became clear to me that the key to my life was the relationships in it, I found there was no longer a need to compartmentalize work from, say, family or friends. I could spend my birthday at a business conference and be surrounded with warm and wonderful friends, as I recently did, or I could be at home [...] with equally close friends to celebrate.

To put it simply, once you figure out what your true central values are in life, the boundary between “work” and “personal” becomes a non-issue. In every aspect of your life, you just seek those true central values and do whatever is most in line with them.

For me, my central values are my children and my personal and intellectual growth. Almost every activity I choose to do, whether it’s work related or personal, seeks to push me in one of those two directions. I try hard to grow intellectually due to my work, and I push through the drudgery to earn income so I can support my children. I’ll spend long afternoons playing with my children and taking them to intellectually-stretching events or playing mentally challenging games with them or engaging them in social situations. My favorite pastime with friends is to play a game with them that requires me to think. I’ll happily invite anyone over that’s interesting to me and makes me grow somehow as a person, whether I know them through my professional work or they’re a close personal friend.

In the end, what’s the boundary? My only boundary of any sort is that I’ll turn off my cell phone if I want to engage in a focused activity with my children. Aside from that, pretty much anything goes.

I know what’s important to me and everything balances on that. The details? I’ll figure them out as I go along if my central values are in the right place.

There Is No Equation
What if you have multiple central values and you try to balance them? Ferrazzi, on page 287, argues that there is no equation that can be balanced:

The kind of false idea of balance as some sort of an equation, that you could take this many hours from one side of your life and give it to this other side, flew out the window. And with it went all the stress of trying to achieve that perfect state of equilibrium we read and hear so much about.

In essence, what Ferrazzi discovered is that the best way to spend your time is the way that mixes your various core values and interests the best.

One of the key highlights in my life is inviting friends over. I love to socialize. I love preparing meals for guests. I also love conversation with intelligent people and engaging in thought-provoking activities with them. This balances several key values in my life all at once.

What I learned, though, is that I get even more value out of this if I simply disregard the professional-personal barrier in terms of who I invite. For instance, the thought of inviting J.D. and his wife to a dinner party with several of my own personal friends sounds like it’d be incredibly enjoyable for everyone. There is no line between personal and professional there at all – it’s just people I like that I find interesting. The only difference is in how I connected to them.

I spend my time looking for activities with synergy throughout the various core values and passions in my life. I love taking my children to the grocery store, for example. It provides countless teaching opportunities, a fair amount of playfulness, the ability to riff on my passion for cooking, plus countless opportunities to jot down ideas for posts for The Simple Dollar. Where’s the line between personal and professional there? To put it simply, there isn’t one.

There’s just me.

Who Are You Spending Time With?
Ferrazzi ties these points together in an interesting way on page 288:

If you buy into the myth of balance (the one that sees life as an equation), as I once did, the answers to such questions as “If I’m so ‘accomplished,’ why aren’t I having more fun?” or “If I’m so ‘organized,’ why do I feel so out of control?” is to “simplify,” “compartmentalize,” or “reduce” your life into its most essential components.

So we try to save time by eating our lunches at our desk. We have less serendipitous conversations with colleagues, strangers, and other “nonessentials” at the water cooler. We consolidate our schedules to include only the most important actions.

People tell us, “If you just get more organized, if you strike a balance between work and home, and limit yourself to the important people in your life, you’ll feel better.” That’s just totally misguided. What they should be saying is “I gotta get a life filled with people I love.” The problem, as I see it, isn’t what you’re working on, it’s whom you’re working with.

Think about it this way. How many of your coworkers would you choose to spend time with if you didn’t work with them? If that number is very low, then it’s likely you have a strong desire to separate work and personal life. If it’s high, it’s likely that you do fill your social calendar with these people and thus you have a naturally balanced life, balanced in the way you want.

Ferrazzi’s argument isn’t that you should devote your life to work – I know that’s what at least a few readers thought when they read this. Instead, he’s saying devote all of your time to what you enjoy doing and the people you enjoy doing it with. Boundaries aren’t all that important.

The more time you find yourself spending doing things you don’t like doing with people you don’t like spending time with, the lower your quality of life is. There’s no paycheck worth chasing that’s worth sacrificing so much of the happiness in your life.

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the final chapter – “Welcome to the Connected Age” – and I’ll share some final thoughts.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t have much of a desire to collect books. I keep a small pile of reference books around for information and inspiration, and I have a handful of books I’m sure I’ll re-read in the future. Other than that, the only books I retain are unread books.

I have a bookshelf in my office and, aside from part of the top shelf, the only books on it are unread books – ones I’ve never read. I pick them up at yard sales, from PaperBackSwap, and so forth and just pop them on there.

Whenever I read a book, I usually put it in another box that I intend to give away in the near future. About every six months or so, I give away the contents of the box, usually on PaperBackSwap.

Why am I mentioning this? A few days ago, I spent a couple of hours reorganizing this bookshelf. Rather than feeling like I was just shuffling around stuff that I wouldn’t look at again, I was excited. It made me want to shout, “Clear my schedule! I’ve got some books to read!”

Those are the kinds of possessions I want in my life. That’s not clutter, that’s joy.

Remove a Limiting Belief in About 20 Minutes Beliefs are things that should be challenged. It either reinforces and strengthens a belief or it replaces that belief with something closer to the core of who you are. Either way, that’s a win. (@ steve pavlina)

How to Be Indispensable The best way to be indispensable is to create things useful to others and pack the ideas with intelligence, loyalty, kindness, respect, discipline, pride, passion, and compassion. (@ jonathan fields)

Pay Yourself First In other words, the first thing that should come out of your paycheck is some sort of savings for the future. This is a very powerful approach, as it ensures your long term future while also teaching you to live on less. (@ get rich slowly)

Overcompensating to Change Habits “When I was studying piano, I used to practice playing scales with each hand playing in a different key. This wasn’t something I was ever likely to do in real music, but it helped push the fingerings into my subconscious.” Brilliant. There’s no better way to reinforce a habit than to focus on mastering those little specifics. (@ productivity501)

How to Speed Read Like Theodore Roosevelt These are the techniques I use when I first read a document. Quite often, I’ll follow it up with more careful, slow reading when I’m trying to understand a specific point or topic. (@ art of manliness)

How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated The best way I’ve found to defeat burnout is to use a lot of milestones. I find that big goals make it hard for me to stay on task – instead, I set goals for the next few days that are in line with the big goal. (@ zen habits)

Another Case from the Clueless Files I really don’t like the type of reporting highlighted in this article. Attempting to make me sympathetic for people who made stupid mistakes, realized they were stupid, then made them again is something of a turn-off. (@ free money finance)

Over the upcoming week, I’ll be posting a series of articles on the ethics of frugality. How far can you take things without crossing an ethical line or diving into seriously socially unacceptable waters? I’ll be recounting some of my own stories – and some stories from readers – along the way.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine told me that they’ll often go to grocery stores, go around to every sample stand in the store twice or three times, and call that good enough for their Saturday lunch. Do they also buy groceries there? “Not usually,” she said. “That store’s prices are too high.”

Is this type of attitude right or wrong?

On the one hand, the store is giving away the samples. They expect customers to walk up, take one, and try the wares on offer. The whole point is to give these samples away, so I might as well take the samples, regardless.

On the other hand, the sample giveaway implicitly assumes a few things. It assumes that you’re actually a customer of the store, there to buy things. Sometimes, it also assumes that you have some interest in purchasing the sampled product.

In the end, though, I don’t really think it’s appropriate to go into a business, eat their freebies, and leave, with no intent whatsoever of purchasing an item.

Society is built around value exchanges. In the case of samples, the store is giving one value – a free sample – in exchange for another – being a customer and/or being a potential buyer of that item. If you’re just walking in to gobble samples, you’re neither one of these.

Here’s an analogy. Imagine a friend of yours stops by. He walks into your home, opens up your refrigerator, and grabs a bite to eat – that’s often okay if it’s a close friend. But what if they then just walk out your front door without sitting down to chat with you? That’s blatantly rude.

Why is it rude? It violates a simple value exchange, the kind that society operates on. You don’t mind giving your friend some food, but you expect some conversation and friendship in return for it. By just walking out, your friend is not living up to his end of the unspoken bargain.

Society operates on such unspoken bargains. Traffic operates in this way. Almost all interpersonal relationships work in this way. Workplaces operate in this way. Without these unspoken bargains, society collapses.

What do you think? Is the idea of free samples at a grocery store really such an unspoken bargain? Is it a situation where people should feel fine walking in and taking samples without even thinking about it?

Over the upcoming week, I’ll be posting a series of articles on the ethics of frugality. How far can you take things without crossing an ethical line or diving into seriously socially unacceptable waters? I’ll be recounting some of my own stories – and some stories from readers – along the way.

A little over a year ago, I witnessed something that bothered me quite a bit. I tried several times to write an article about it, but I could never figure out exactly how to address it.

I was at a community festival with a flea market attached. One family had rented a slot and was selling homemade candles and soaps. At one side of that family’s slot, however, was a boy, aged ten or so – presumably, their son. He was selling comic books. He had several issues laid out in front of him and a bunch more in a pair of boxes nearby.

As I watched, he was negotiating with a gentleman that I would guess was about thirty five years old. The gentleman took out a ten dollar bill, threw it on the table in front of the boy, and said (quite loudly), “Take it or leave it.” The boy shook his head. The man picked up the bill, said, “It’s your loss,” and turned heel to walk away. Under his breath, the man muttered, “Stupid kid.”

I looked back at the booth and the ten year old boy was obviously kind of upset at the interaction. I walked over and looked at his comics, talking to him about them, mostly to cheer him up. After about five minutes, the guy came back, threw fifteen dollars on the table, and picked up two books with a price totaling $30 as though it were his birth right.

The boy looked at the cash, then picked it up and handed it to his father. The boy looked at me and said, “We need the money.”

Usually, I have no problem with haggling. However, it was fairly obvious that the gentleman was trying to take advantage of the kid using several psychological techniques – showing the money, acting angry and aggressive, and using other tactics to get what he wanted – and it simply left a really bad taste in my mouth.

How far is too far when it comes to haggling? I don’t mind doing it on occasion, but there are a lot of times when I find it in extremely poor taste.

Is it appropriate to haggle with children? Some of you might have been fine with the gentleman’s behavior above (I wasn’t), but what about a six year old selling lemonade? Are you going to argue that you should get a cup for a quarter instead of fifty cents? Where’s the line between bargain hunting and cheapness?

Is it appropriate to haggle with the obviously disadvantaged? If I see a family selling homemade throw rugs and they’re obviously destitute, should I haggle with them? Again, I tend not to do this, but I’ve heard many arguments against this – appearances can be deceiving, if people can’t afford to haggle then they can’t afford to sell, etc.

Where do you draw the line with haggling?