REVIEW: Meet the Frugalwoods by Elizabeth Willard Thames

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Synopsis

The 'deeply personal' story of how award-winning personal finance blogger Elizabeth Willard Thames abandoned a successful career in the city and embraced frugality to create a more meaningful, purpose-driven life, and retire to a homestead in the Vermont woods at age thirty-two with her husband and daughter.

Meet the Frugalwoods is the intriguing story of how Elizabeth and Nate realized that the mainstream path wasn't for them, crafted a lifestyle of sustainable frugality, and reached financial independence at age thirty-two. While not everyone wants to live in the woods, or quit their jobs, many of us want to have more control over our time and money and lead more meaningful, simplified lives. Following their advice, you too can live your best life. (Via Goodreads. What a load of crap.)


Review

I have never heard such whiny, judgmental, holier-than-thou and frankly useless bullshit. Before reading this I thought it would be an interesting look at a different lifestyle, like watching Tiny House Hunters or reading National Geographic. Boy, was I wrong. This woman is AWFUL.

First of all, the actual "instructional" portion that deals with their "lifestyle change" doesn't start until halfway through the book. The first half is just this woman complaining, preaching and judging others while also telling her life story. She preaches about how privileged she is and how this wouldn't be possible if she wasn't so privileged but it shouldn't be because privilege is wrong and just *so* unfair. The whole thing comes off about as sincere as a kid swearing up and down they didn't eat the cake with the cake still smeared all over their face. This preaching is insanely folded in to a non-stop litany of complaints about her life.

She has a (seemingly) very nice husband, her husband has a well paying job in a field he enjoys. She has a well paying job fundraising for a Boston NPR/PBS affiliate and an advanced degree that was payed for by another well paying job. They have a house they own in an area they seem to enjoy, a dog and enough free time to go on hikes and do activities together regularly. They even have the money to save 40-50% of their take home pay and still have enough left over to go out to eat and get nice haircuts! Yet ALL SHE DOES IS COMPLAIN. The first 3-ish hours of this book is just non-stop complaints about how "unfulfilling" their life together was. It was sickening. Just picture listening to Jeff Bezos talk about how much better his life would be if he wasn't the richest man in the world for 3 hours. What made it truly awful was that all of those complaints were served up with a whopping side of judgement for anyone who derives "genuine happiness" from all of the things she has but refused to enjoy.

This revolting combination of complaining, humble brags, judgement and just outright ignorance became absolutely intolerable at the chapter about makeup. I will admit, the only reason I kept listening after about the first 30 minutes was to revel in the awfulness of this person. It was the same impulse that makes you keep watching the speech of a politician with views you hate just so you can add more items to your private list of reasons why you hate both them and their views. But wow, this makeup chapter was just the most appalling load of hate I have ever heard.

In this chapter she details her (completely normal sounding, really below average) makeup usage and how she cut it out in the process of living a life with a "Zero Dollar Budget." This on its own is totally normal, makeup is a thing every person has the right to wear or not wear in whatever quantities they choose. But she doesn't stop there, she turns this in to a sermon about how makeup, all but the bare necessity of clothes, painting your nails, haircuts and really any act (no matter if it costs money or not) that contributes to vanity is worthless. That investing any time or money into vanity means you have no confidence or self worth and that you can never be a confident person! Oh, and you can never be happy either. Basically her views are that anyone who relies on any of these things is a worthless, shell of a human that can never know what feeling good about themselves means or contribute in a meaningful way to the world.

All this vitriolic hate is written behind the shield of her continually telling us what an awesome feminist she is. I had never understood some women's refusal to identify themselves as feminists until now. If I didn't know what being feminist truly means and I read this book, I would never want to identify myself as one at the risk of being associated with such close-minded, extremist hate. The real kicker is that this whole chapter comes right next to a discussion about how there was just no way she could give up her $300+ a month worth of yoga classes, so she started working at the yoga studio to continue attending the classes that had given her the "best body of her life." What a atrocious hypocrite. Anyway, that's where I turned it off and rage deleted the download from my phone. Basically this book is a worthless piece of sanctimonious garbage that no human with half a brain should ever have to endure.


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