It seems making ends meet is tougher than ever these days, what with an affordability crisis, a housing crisis, and the looming threat of tariffs (and who knows what else) from our southern neighbour. Now comes a new book seemingly tailor-made for these times. Cheapskate in Lotusland: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget is the latest title from Vancouver-based writer Steve Burgess.

It turns out he knows his subject very well.

“Before I became a freelance writer, I was always a notorious cheapskate,” he said.

Burgess admits while he’s always been something of a tightwad, being a freelance journalist in a city as expensive as Vancouver made him frugal out of necessity.

“I’ve often said that finding moldy cheese and getting them to knock a couple of bucks off it is the key to being a good freelancer.”

A veteran of Vancouver radio, TV, and print media, these days Burgess is a contributing editor at The Tyee. Despite his relatively modest income, he has managed to live in Vancouver for decades. Cheapskate in Lotusland combines a lifetime of his penny-pinching wisdom along with expert analysis.

Burgess says writing a book is an education, and he admits he had some very good teachers. For instance, he cites the work of Dr. Maren Ingrid Kropfeld, a German researcher, who identifies four types of consumers: spendthrifts, frugals, tightwads, and voluntary simplifiers.

“I’m a tightwad. I’m very definitely a tightwad,” said Burgess.

“Tightwads are people for whom the idea of spending causes physical pain. They wired these people’s brains and discovered that the idea of spending actually causes pain. That’s me.”

But if your frugality is motivated by more than just saving a buck but also saving the planet, Burgess says you may be a voluntary simplifier.

“If you are a frugal person, it can dovetail very well with environmentalism because waste is a massive problem in our society and part of being frugal is not wasting,” he said.

“The people who have the most impact on reducing their consumption and reducing their footprint are the people who identify as voluntary simplifiers,” he said.

Burgess also devotes an entire chapter to his love of free stuff, from a microwave he rescued from a back alley to a smart TV gifted by friends. But perhaps his most interesting find is a pair of boxer shorts he found at the side of Point Grey Road.

“Oh, everybody wants to know about this. It’s my own fault, I put it in the book,” he said before launching into the story.

“So, I’m walking along with a stick, and I see something in the sand, and I poke at it, and I fish it out. What is it? It’s a pair of boxer shorts! Well, these boxer shorts, they look like they’re in perfectly good shape, they don’t look dirty, and they look like they’re my size,” he said.

“So, I just pick it up with the stick, drop it into the plastic bag, home it goes into the washing machine, because that’s what washing machines are for, and I now have this pair of boxer shorts, which are part of my regular rotation.”

“I think I’ll probably lose friends over this when they realize how I’m being swaddled in beach flotsam,” he said.

While Cheapskate in Lotusland is filled with his trademark wit, what Burgess really wants to do is to make the reader think a little harder about what and how much they consume.

“When I was talking to people for this book, [I found] the levels of waste that we have in our society were astounding. It was astonishing. Talking to the people from Second Harvest and Vancouver Food Runners and just the amount of food that is thrown away could feed the entire country every single day,” he said.

He has this advice for anyone seriously thinking about changing their shopping habits.

“Something that was important to me in my life was finding my priorities and then focusing my money on my priorities,” he said.

“Sit down and think, ‘What is important to me?’ That’s what you want to focus your money on and not throw your money around on things that are not that important.”

“A lot of frugality comes down to being conscious, not being careless about what you buy and how you spend but thinking about the purchases you make,” he said.

Cheapskate in Lotusland: The Philosophy and Practice of Living Well on a Small Budget is published by Douglas & McIntyre.