The inexpensive version of the life I meant

I saved the money. I want that on the record before I confess the rest, because thrift is the one virtue everyone agrees to applaud, and I am not above wanting the applause. The ticket was cheaper if I went three weeks later. The apartment was cheaper if I took the one that faced the alley and the all-night kitchen. The gift was cheaper if it was adjacent to the thing she had actually pointed at, near enough to be defensible, far enough to be a different gesture.

None of these were ruinous. That is how the habit hides. A frugal life can still be a series of near-misses you inflict on your own affection. I told myself I was buying freedom. Some of the time that was true. The other times I was buying a story in which I am hard to disappoint and impossible to accuse of extravagance. No one can say I was careless. They can only say, later, that I arrived in a slightly worse mood, with a slightly wrong gift, having missed the week that mattered.

Money regret usually dresses up as a number. Mine is a difference of forty dollars and a window. I would pay it now without performing wisdom about it. The lesson is not “spend.” Spend is too small a god. The lesson is that cheapness can be a vanity, and that the cost of a thing includes the life you do not get to stand inside while you are congratulating yourself for the discount.