A groundbreaking new class teaches the value of Thrift to New York City high school students. Amber Lapp, the education coordinator for the John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity, isn’t satisfied to idly promote the concept; she’s taking thrift to the classroom.
Thrift as Thriving
“What is thrift?” I asked the handful of high school students who had sauntered into my 3rd and 4th period thrift elective. Most of them were students who had been absent when electives were chosen, so the administration shuffled them to my class, which was full of empty desks. Students get to choose their own electives, and I suspect that most of the students were wondering, “Who wants to learn about some outdated word when I can take photography or dance or fashion?”
I asked it again to the silent room, “What is thrift?” My question was met with blank stares. “I’ve heard of thrift stores before…” Tanisha ventured. Julio, who was slumping in the chair behind her interjected, “Isn’t it like saving money so you don’t go broke?” A few other students nodded their heads in agreement.
“Well, that’s definitely a very important part of it,” I say. In many of these students’ neighborhoods, busses to Atlantic City leave daily and payday lenders abound—with their flashy fast-food style signs that promise fast-cash. (At a price, of course—the average annual interest rate for a payday loan is 400% APR.) Banks and credit unions, on the other hand, are harder to come by. I once met an urban high school student who, upon receiving her first paycheck, had no idea what to do with it. She didn’t have a bank account, nor did her parents, so she figured she’d just go to a check cashing place—where they’d scrape off the first 10-20% of the check for themselves. Given the current lack of education and the prevalence of predatory anti-thrift institutions, especially in low-income urban areas, teaching money management skills is an essential part of teaching thrift.
More than Money Management
Yet, that is not all that thrift is. To reduce thrift to financial literacy would be like trying to drain a lake into a bathtub. There is much more water in a lake than will fit into a bathtub. Similarly, thrift is a word so rich and full of meaning that it cannot be contained in a category like “money skills,” even while it does include this valuable practice. Thrift is a concept that is interdisciplinary in nature—as much a part of history and literature and art as it is of math and economics.
In fact, there is a rich history of thrift in America—beginning with Ben Franklin who was dubbed “The Apostle of Thrift” for all his pithy sayings on the subject, and reaching its zenith in the zeal of the thrift movement that stormed the country in the first half of the twentieth century. These early thrift reformers, many of whom were involved in other progressive reforms of the era, wanted to rescue the word thrift from all its negative connotations. Through annual National Thrift Week Celebrations, which were accompanied by presidential proclamations, parades, thrift exhibits, luncheons, school savings programs, and more, early thrift advocates sought to rid Americans of misconceptions and show them the true meaning of thrift.
The True Meaning of Thrift
So what is the true meaning of thrift?
If I had to say it in a sentence, I’d tell you that thrift is the wise use of all resources—not just money, but time, health, property, and the environment. But it’s also more complex than that. In his book, Thrift: A Cyclopedia, David Blankenhorn spends almost 300 pages tracing the narrative of thrift’s many meanings over the centuries, drawing on quotes from sources as diverse as Lao Tzu to Shakespeare to Warren Buffet. Blankenhorn explains:
“Thrift is a particular way of seeing the world – a set of principles and ethical guidelines intended to orient us toward certain goals. Thrift concerns not only the material world – the world of material goods and the money to buy them – but also the natural, spiritual, and aesthetic worlds. Put most simply, thrift is the moral discipline of wisest use. The root of “thrift” is “thrive.” Thrift says: Use all that you have in the wisest way, to promote thriving.”
Thus, thrift is a life philosophy, a way of seeing the world and your role in it. The ethic of thrift can spur us to take better care of the planet, to donate unwanted items to thrift stores and reuse other people’s stuff by shopping there ourselves, to grow our own fruits and veggies in containers on apartment balconies, and to forgo that daily cup of Starbuck’s to save for a vacation to Paris. Even more importantly, thrift as a lifestyle means that we have more to give to others.
Goodbye, Ebenezer Scrooge
While this connection between thrift and thriving is something that was central to the message of earlier thrift advocates, it is something new to my students…and to most Americans. In a forthcoming nationally representative survey by the John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity, 54% of respondents believe that being generous is the opposite of being thrifty. These folks would be more likely to associate thrift with miserliness—to assume that to be thrifty is to be a Scrooge.
But because thrift is about thriving, it is also about generosity. In fact, a thrifty person over the course of a lifetime will have more to spend and more to give, because he makes wise investments that make his money grow.
Money without Meaning
Which reminds me of that first day of class, when after I explained thrift to the students, their blank stares were replaced with gleaming eyes—it was almost as if blinking dollar signs had been plugged into their eye sockets. “I want to make a lot of money!” exclaimed Yvette, as she worked on making a weekly savings goal like I had assigned. This was not the reaction I had been hoping for. I was glad the students were excited about saving, but I also wanted to make sure they understood that thrift is not about hoarding money for themselves.
A John Wesley quote—one that sums up what the thrift ethic is all about—came to mind, and I wrote it on the whiteboard in neon blue dry erase marker: “Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” After some discussion about the materialism rampant on New York streets—in so and so’s jeans and such and such sneakers and that little boutique with purses that cost as much as cars—Julio commented, “Sometimes people think that stuff will make you happy…But it doesn’t.” Without generosity, money becomes meaningless. Thrift and generosity are two sides of the same coin.
That night, I was happy to see that Tanisha had posted a new status on her Facebook profile: “Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. J Thanx Amber Lapp!”
A Thrifting Renaissance
But in today’s world, what kinds of models of thrift exist for young adults?
Certainly, many neighborhood institutions do not do a good job of promoting thrift: corner stores with shelves of Twinkies, Snickers, cigarettes, and Scratch lotto tickets; payday lenders; rent-to-owns with no payment down and high interest later.
But there is one institution that embodies thrift to a t: thrift stores!
Not only is thrifting a great money-savings strategy (who wouldn’t get excited about finding a set of someone’s grandmother’s dishes for 25 cents apiece instead of spending extra for the same vintage look at Anthropologie?), but thrift stores also flaunt thrift’s other great features. They encourage work and self-help by providing jobs in the stores for people of modest means, and they stand front and center for conservation, reuse and repurposing, low and affordable prices, and the toning down of consumerism run amok.
The genius of thrift stores is that they teach savings and giving. And if there’s one thing I want the students to take away from this thrift class, it’s that thrift is more than just saving money. It’s an ethic with implications for daily life: one less soda from the vending machine each day, three more sandwiches brown-bagged from home each week, and a new outfit for a sixth of the price at Goodwill means more money to buy flowers for Mom on a whim, or to host a lavish dinner party for friends, or donate food (and volunteer time, too!) to the local food pantry.
The image of thrift stores seems to be constantly improving—it’s no longer just home school moms shopping for overalls and jean skirts that haunt these shops, but hipsters looking to make a statement. Allison Humes reports in an essay in Franklin’s Thrift: The Lost History of an American Virtue that, “While overall U.S. retail sales grew 24 percent from 1997 to 2002 (to $3.1 trillion), the Census Bureau reports that over the same five-year period, used-merchandise stores grew by 29 percent to $7.8 billion in sales.”
As thrift stores are flourishing, it’s my hope that the concept of thrift will also see its renaissance—not only in the form of a higher savings rate, but in a greater spirit of generosity and goodwill. Goodbye grumpy old men sitting on piles of gold, hello generous givers who use their gold to do good. And it’d be great if my students would be among those generous givers.
Amber Lapp is the thrift education coordinator for the John Templeton Center for Thrift and Generosity, located at the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank based in New York City. She enjoys teaching a weekly thrift class and is a big fan of Thrift Store Confidential. For more information about the thrift initiative, check out www.newthrift.org.
Update: I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Amber’s students, from the Evangel Christian School, and taking them on a field trip to the Goodwill Outlet in Queens, which is an enormous warehouse loaded with bins of unsorted clothing (read: not for the unguided amateur!). I made them get in there and sort through the bins, bless their hearts. I told them I’d spring for $50 worth of stuff (which, at $1.69 a pound is a lot). Though they got overwhelmed (and who wouldn’t), they were able to walk out with armfuls of stuffed animals, which they seemed pleased with (and me too – grand total of $16.98!) Amber told me later that they were impressed with my thrifted outfit and said “that lady is crazy about thrift!” Hey. It’s a start.
Want more? Check out Thrift as a Luxurious Lifestyle
Hi there. I'm Nicole. I live in New York City, in a small apartment full of strange little things. In addition to running Thrift Store Confidential 
