WHEN MARGARET ATWOOD proudly plunked down a massive binder chronicling her mother’s 30 years of expenditures down to the last penny, Marjorie Harris knew that she was with a kindred spirit.
And when Canada’s most acclaimed author declared that Harris should write a book on the subject of thriftiness, she listened. Thrifty is now on the shelves, published by House of Anansi in Toronto.
“She felt I should write it, so naturally I paid attention,” says Harris, on the phone from her condo in a small town in Southern California. (Yes, she got a deal.) “The deadline was short, eight months, so it was pretty hard to do.”
Thrifty is a frugal living handbook and covers everything from travel and gardening to food and fashion. In addition, it has a smattering of memoir, from Harris’s life on a budget, as well as guest appearances from famous and not-so-famous frugal-istas such as actor R. H.Thomson, and Sheree-Lee Olson from the Globe and Mail. According to Harris, once the book was begun, thrifty Torontonians came out of the woodwork. “The number of people who live like this actually astounded me,” says Harris. “And young people, too. They are a lot smarter than you think with money.”
Harris makes it a point of pride to chronicle the number of chairs and cabinets bought for a bargain or found street side. She loves Value Village but says second-hand clothes shopping is akin to an art, and shouldn’t be approached willy-nilly. And for goodness sake, cook a good meal and use your leftovers! But, if readers take one thing from her book, Harris hopes it is a bit of financial literacy. Something the boomer generation is sorely lacking, she says.
“I just couldn’t believe how numb, not just dumb, middle-aged people were,” Harris explains, “A: They didn’t see it coming. B: They couldn’t figure out how to adjust quickly. I’m not saying I know everything, but I know about losing a job and having to skate pretty quickly.”
Harris is a freelance writer who has published numerous gardening books and had a long stint as an editor at Gardening Life magazine before it closed up shop during the recent economic downturn. A humbling and scary experience, says Harris.
“It was devastating,” she explains. “I thought I’d never go out in public again, let alone figure out how I’d earn a living. It’s taken a year to haul myself out of that pit.”
First step in the quest for thrift? “Absolutely know where every cent of money is that you have,” says Harris. “Have a budget. I don’t know why this scares people so much.”
