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如何让守财奴学会多花一点钱

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2009-12-21 21:00:29 作者： 来源：《华尔街日报》中文网

Writing this column has had a disturbing effect on me: I'm getting less cheap.

Have I become a free spender? Hardly. In the coming months, I will be singing the virtues of everything from cheap haircuts to greasy-spoon restaurants. Still, I've noticed some small but noticeable changes in my spending habits.

The biggest is tipping. As a former busboy, I never stiffed waiters. But I used to think a 15% tip was just fine unless the service was outstanding. I learned through writing a column on the subject that 20% is rapidly becoming the standard tip. So that's pretty much what I give now.

Of course, if I thought 20% was outrageous, I wouldn't care what other people tip. But waiting tables is a tough, underpaid job, and I decided tipping an extra 5% made more difference to the waiter than it did to me. （It amounts to only an extra dollar on a $20 meal.）

The more subtle change has been around the house. I'm generally getting less bent out of shape when my wife, Clarissa, and the kids spend money on things I consider a waste. The shift has been subtle enough that Clarissa says she's barely noticed. 'Just a smidgen,' she told me. 'Or as we say in cooking, 'A dash.''

Well, it has seemed like more than a smidgen to me. But I'll come back to that.

The more pressing question: Why would writing a column on being cheap make a person less so? Wouldn't it have the opposite effect?

I talked to some academics who have researched tightwads, and they weren't surprised. Cheapskates have an emotional aversion to spending -- they can actually experience pain when they spend. The pain can be out of proportion to the amount spent.

So if you want to make a person less cheap, the cognitive side of his personality has to override the emotional. One way to do this is to make that person explain in writing why he's being cheap.

The goal is to encourage 'heightened deliberations,' says Scott Rick, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Michigan. 'That will tend to extinguish the influence of emotion.'

Thanks to The Wall Street Journal, I've conducted a giant writing experiment on being cheap, penning thousands of words on the subject over the past 18 months.

And I haven't liked everything I've learned about myself. I've had to ponder the times when my penny-pinching irritated my family or when I denied myself some small pleasure because it wasn't the cheapest choice.

The result: I'm making an effort to not be automatically against every expenditure. I try to bear in mind that it isn't usually the little purchases that drag down a household budget. Far more important is how big a house you buy, how expensive a car you drive, where you send your kids to school.

It's not an easy transformation for me. Wasting money on little things still bothers me quite a bit. Let me give you an example. We had some friends over for dinner a couple of months ago. So Clarissa ran out and bought a large electric coffee maker for $40 before the dinner.

I thought it wasteful. I don't drink coffee, and our children, all now adults, don't either. Clarissa drinks just one cup a day. So we're never going to use this coffee maker unless we have company over.

After that dinner, Clarissa asked who wanted coffee, and nobody did. So the coffee maker went unopened. It sat there. I asked Clarissa about it once, and she said she planned to return it to the store. She didn't. It's still sitting in our den because Clarissa says she might need it some day.

Before, I would have nagged her several times about the pot. The thought of us owning another appliance we didn't need would have bugged me. More so than the $40.

This time I bit my tongue, mainly. To me, that's a change. To Clarissa, the fact I mentioned the coffee pot at all shows I haven't really changed. In any event, Clarissa thinks any talk from me about not being as cheap as before is beside the point.

'You were never as cheap as you thought,' she informed me. 'Because I was spending the money anyway.'

写这个专栏给我带来了一种让我不安的影响：我没那么节俭了。

是不是已经变得大手大脚？很难这么说。接下来的几个月，我会歌颂从进便宜理发店到进普通餐馆的各种好处。但我也注意到自己的花钱习惯出现了一些细微但看得见的变化。

最大的变化是付小费。曾经在餐厅收过盘子的我从来没有不给服务员小费，但我曾经以为，如果服务不是格外出色的话，给15%的小费足够了。当我在写一篇有关小费的专栏时了解到，20%已经很快地成了付小费的标准比例，所以我现在很多时候都是按照这个比例来付。

当然，如果我觉得20%很多，我才不去管别人付多少。但当餐馆服务员是一件苦差事，工资也很低，所以我觉得，多付5%对服务员来说意义很大，我自己损失的相比之下不算什么。（毕竟20美元的一顿饭只多付1美元而已。）

更细微的变化发生在家里。当我妻子克拉丽莎（Clarissa）和孩子们把钱花在我觉得不值的东西上时，我一般不会像以前那么动肝火了。但变化程度小到克拉丽莎说，她基本没有注意到我花钱习惯的改变。她是这么说的：仅仅是"一点点",用厨师的话来说就是"少许".

但对我自己来说，似乎不只是一点点。我以后会再做解释。

更急迫的问题是，为什么写 "锱铢必较"专栏的人，反倒变得不那么节俭了呢？岂非适得其反？

我跟一些研究过吝啬鬼的学者谈了这个问题，他们并不感到意外。守财奴对花钱有一种情绪上的排斥──花钱的时候他们觉得很痛苦，而这种痛苦可能跟花的那点钱不成比例。

所以如果你要让一个人别那么节俭，就必须让其性格中的理性成分战胜感性成分。一个办法是让这个人写出来自己节俭的原因。

其目的是鼓励这个人"加深考虑".密歇根大学（University of Michigan）市场学助理教授里克（Scott Rick）说，这样做往往会清除情绪的影响。

因为在《华尔街日报》写专栏的缘故，我针对过节俭日子的问题做了一个大型书面实验，过去18个月里，就这个主题洋洋洒洒写了很多。

在做这个实验的过程中，我并不喜欢在我自己身上的所有发现。有时候，自己的锱铢必较让家人生气；有时候，因为想买的东西不是最便宜的，我不得不忍痛放弃。为了撰写专栏，这些情景我都得一样一样地回味。

其实我这是在努力改掉不假思索反对每一笔支出的习惯。我努力让自己记住，拖累家庭财务的，不是那些零碎的花费，比这些花费更为重要的是你买多大的房子，开多贵的车，还有把孩子送到哪间学校上学。

这种转变不是轻易就能实现的。把钱浪费在小东西上，还是让我颇感烦恼。我来举个例子吧。几个月前，我们请了几位朋友来家吃晚餐。于是在吃饭之前，克拉丽莎跑出去买了一台大大的电子咖啡壶，花了40美元。

我觉得花得不值。我不喝咖啡，现在已经长大成人的孩子们也不喝，克拉丽莎每天只喝一杯，所以如果家里没有客人，我们从来不会用到咖啡壶。

晚饭过后，克拉丽莎问谁要咖啡，没人回答。所以咖啡壶就没有开箱，搁在了那里。有一次我跟克拉丽莎提起，她说她打算把它退给店里。但她没有退，任其一直趴在我们家里，因为她说，某一天可能还会用到它。

换了以前，我早就数落她好几回了。一想到我们又添了一件多余的电器，我会如芒在背，不只是那40块钱的问题。

这一次我基本上是缄默不语。对我自己来说，这是个变化。但对克拉丽莎来说，我毕竟还是提到过咖啡壶，说明我并没有真正改变。不管怎么样，克拉丽莎都觉得，我说自己不如从前节俭的话都是没道理的。

她提醒我说，你从来都不像你想象的那样抠门，因为不管怎么样我一直都在花钱