A campaign to make cheapskates the cool ones

Jeff Yeager, a former chief executive with various nonprofits in Washington, D.C., launched his career as "the ultimate cheapskate" five years ago, and has started a website, www.ultimatecheapskate.com, and authored a book, "The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches." These days he is increasingly in demand as people look for creative ways to save money. He spoke with us by phone from his Maryland home.

Q. Has being cheap hurt your relationships?

A. No, I have a lot of fun with the title cheapskate. To me, it's just the opposite of being a conspicuous consumer. They spend and consume at warp speed just to show off to others. Cheapskates like me, we're too self-confident and too smart to spend money on things we don't need and, if we stop and think about it, we probably don't want.

Q. What do you waste money on right now that you shouldn't?

A. Oh, I don't really waste money. I do lead a very frugal life. Sometimes people ask me, if money wasn't an object, what would you splurge on? I'd say I like to travel. We travel on the cheap. Maybe I'd do more of that. What I write about is the whole idea of enough and deciding what's enough for you. Everybody's answer is different. Most people don't seem to ever stop and ask themselves that question. All they know is that they want some more. More than they have right now.

Q. Do you really take barf bags off airplanes and use them as lunch bags?

A. I take those things when I can. I like to have some fun with being cheap. Right now, I'm experimenting with dryer lint.

Q. What do you use that for?

A. It's very flammable, so you can use it to start your wood furnace.

Q. Is lint a great thing to burn?

A. You can compost it easily. Dryer lint is kind of symbolic for me because it represents tremendous waste. It's your clothes having the life being beaten out of them. You're better off hanging them on a line.

Q. You also have this thing where you try to spend a dollar a pound. What's a perfect example of a healthy food that's that cheap?

A. Lentils are probably the all-time perfect food. The things we're supposed to eat the most of, they cost the least. It's the things that are the worst that cost the most.

Q. Like what?

A. Red meat. Processed foods.

Q. But I'm a big believer in wild salmon. That's not cheap.

A. I'm not saying you can buy any food you want for a dollar a pound, but I'm taking on this common myth that it costs more to eat healthy. You can score beans and rice and whole grains, legumes.

Q. Tell me two things people can do to save money.

A. First, simplify your life. By that, I mean everything from staying around home more to eating lower on the food chain to using up stuff you have on hand. In general, whenever you simplify, you save money, live lighter on the planet, and it makes you happier.

Second, contact your insurance company, phone company, bank, cable company, et cetera and ask them how they can help you reduce the amount you pay them every month.

Q. Can this economic downturn actually be good news for a guy like you?

A. It is. We're fighting a cultural battle here. My quest is to make cheap, as I defined it, the new cool. I'm trying to tick that pendulum back and say maybe that waste is not cool. The current rates of spending and consumption in America are unsustainable on the earth. . . . A victory in my camp I would point to would be the rapid decline of the Hummer in the United States.

Q. Do you own a house?

A. It's the only house we've ever owned, and we've been here 20 some years. My theory is finish in your starter home. Buy a modest home, pay it off as quickly as you can, and stay in it as long as you can. We started with a 30-year mortgage, reduced it to 15, and ended up paying it off by 13 years.

Q. If you were Bill Gates, would you act this way? What sorts of things might you allow yourself?

A. I'm not opposed to having money. But . . . I don't think I would change my life at all with the possible exception that I would maybe travel more, though I'd maybe travel on the cheap. I'm not a rich person by certain standards, but my wife and I decided this is the life we want.

Q. Who is to blame for the economic collapse?

A. You mean consumers? I think there's plenty of blame to go around. Certainly at the core of this problem we're having has been greed and excess and blind ambition to amassing more money. Many consumers are guilty of that. But certainly our institutions and banks have been guilty of the same thing. This is a financial orgy we've been going through.

Q. Wouldn't another Great Depression be the ultimate lesson?

A. I think we're getting that. It's a question of what degree you need to inflict that pain. A whole bunch of people are learning a very hard-earned lesson. That's part of the learning exercise.

I feel like the government probably ought to do something to help out. I bristle at the thought government money might be used to pay off people's mortgages and put them back in homes they couldn't afford in the first place.

Those people were stupid and greedy, and I don't think that should be rewarded. At the same time, I don't want to see people out on the streets.