I’m on the road talking about The New Frugality.  Wednesday night I gave a talk at Vroman’s. It’s an independent bookstore in Pasadena. Good questions from the audience. It was nice that Tess Vigeland, Stephan Hoffman and Michelle Philippe from Marketplace showed up. One young woman asked whether being frugal was the new cool. That was her experience with her friends. She called it a “new way of keeping up with the Jones.’” She didn’t mean it sarcastically.  I think its great. Frugality is cool.

Thursday the book reading was at the Hillside Club in Berkeley. The Club is a neat building on a residential street and it reminded me of a Quaker meeting house. The question and answer part of the evening was terrific and it felt as if the audience could have gone all night. I’ll have some pictures to post later. 

So far, the  message is resonating.

The past couple of years have been tough on young adults. The real wages of young college graduates have fallen since 2000 and the real cost of their student loan debt burdens has gone up. That’s an ominous combination. Well, the New York Times recently ran a fascinating story on the revival in Florida of the early bird special. But cheap meals are less for retired folks on a fixed income and more for young families and couples.

Part of it is purely business — promotions work when people have less money to spend — but restaurant owners, researchers and patrons say it also reflects a changing mood. It is a sign, they say, of shifting priorities, as Americans respond to tighter budgets with a demand for value and a willingness to alter their habits to enjoy a little fun.

Many restaurant owners, on Florida’s east and west coasts, now report seeing behavioral changes that remind them of the generation that survived the Depression. In addition to coming in early for specials, they said, more customers have been using coupons, sitting down only after studying the menu and wasting less food.

In my neighborhood pubs and coffee shops have improved the quality of their food and kept prices down. The value strategy seems to be working. Places are crowded.

A major theme of the New Frugality is that our love affair with consumer debt is over. More than half a century of people saving less and less and borrowing more and more is over. The consumer debt bubble has burst. Profligacy is out. Thrift is in.

There are plenty of reasons for the transformation. Banks have learned the hard way that consumers are a riskier credit than their traditional models suggested. Regulators are going to keep a close eye on bank lending practices. Households now know how vulnerable they are to financial setbacks, from medical illness to layoffs. Millions of Americans live on a financial high-wire every day, from the clerk making minimum wage at a big box retailer to the blue collar truck driver whose hours have been drastically reduced to the former manager printing out new business cards announcing that he’s now an independent business consultant.

Worst off are the unemployed. The latest numbers reinforce the message that the pressure to save more and borrow less isn’t about to let up anytime soon. The unemployment rate is at 10% and the number of unemployed people is 15.3 million. The government’s broadest measure of unemployment and under-employment combined is at 17.3%. With figures like these how many workers with a job will feel comfortable in 2010 walking into their boss’ office in and saying, “give me a 10% raise or else I’ll quit.”

The most likely answer will be, “We’ll miss you, but goodbye.”

Yet the New Frugality is far from a message of doom and gloom—far from it. The reason is that the change in our everyday money habits will also reflect living better. The shift in our outlook on debt and savings will endure even when the good times roll again—and they will someday.

Think back on some of the conversations you’ve had with family, friends, and colleagues during the Great Recession. A common thread of discussion was how much we realized that we treasured memorable experiences over buying stuff. We saw the value in a home-cooked meal, an over-50 hockey game on a frozen pond, and a 30 mile bike ride with thousands of strangers to raise money for a cause. More striking still, we all learned that being green and being frugal reinforce one another.

The personal economics of sustainability will make the transition toward financial conservatism practical and enjoyable and long-lasting. Sustainability has moved from society’s tributaries into the mainstream of daily life. The core argument of the New Frugality is that the sustainability message of conservative consumerism and the habit of creating a financial margin of safety will feed off, reinforce and draw energy from each other.

What I hope to accomplish with this blog is start a conversation about being frugal and being conscious of sustainability. I’ll be meeting all kinds of folks with good ideas on both in the coming year. I’ll post their insights and yours. This will be a fun journey.