Category: Frugal Living

“He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.” — Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Most of us treat “enough” like a moving target. We hit the number we wanted last year, then quietly raise it. New gadgets, a nicer car, another streaming plan we barely open. The finish line keeps jogging ahead,…

“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.” Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Seneca wrote that line almost two thousand years ago, and it still lands because it flips the usual story. Poverty, in his view, isn’t a number in your bank account. It’s the…

Most advice about money starts with earning more. Epictetus started with wanting less. He was born enslaved in Hierapolis, taught philosophy in Rome, and wrote like someone who had already tested the math on both sides of the ledger. “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” Epictetus That line is…

Thoreau’s line about wealth as what you can leave alone, and one almost-purchase this week you do not buy.