Imagine that you live in a primitive place where water is scarce. In fact, you have to walk downhill about a mile and then carry every drop of water you use up that hill in a bucket. This is a harsh environment, with no shade. In fact, you have to drink a little water on the way, just to make it up the hill.

Since every drop of water represents a chunk of your time and hard work, you try to ration it carefully. But somehow, once that bucket is up the hill, the water seems to disappear. A big portion is used for drinking water —for survival—for you and your family. You have to also use it for keeping a minimum standard of sanitation. After that, the demands for the water seem to be endless. Your teenager loves to take hot baths. Your neighbor is always over for a cup or two. The baby likes to splash in a big bowl, and the diaper washing never ends. It feels like you’re always running up and down that hill, but there’s never enough. You have an acorn, but you haven’t planted it yet: you don’t know much about oaks and you’ve heard that trees take a lot of water.

Now, imagine that your bucket has holes: Thousands of pinprick holes that allow the water to seep out without your even noticing. Imagine that almost half of your hard-earned water disappears before you’ve even had a chance to decide what to do with it. The path up the hill is green with weeds that only get in your way, and your oak tree, the one that could have supplied shade for you and your children, never got planted.

The bucket is your money: hard to earn, easy to spend, easier still to waste. Frugality is nothing more than refusing to let your money fall in the dirt, leaving you nothing but worthless clutter to show for it. In a culture where billions of dollars in advertising is spent on convincing you to spend, spend, spend, being a Tightwad means bucking the system. Some even consider it subversive. I think it’s just common sense that our country, our state, our cities, our communities and our families would be better off if everyone would re-use and recycle, part with their money only for things of real value, spend less than what they earn, and use the rest to save for the future. That oak tree is the more important than anything else beyond basic survival. Plant it. Water it. Watch it grow.