The fact that you have friends at all bodes pretty well. There are, of course, those poor souls at the other end of the spectrum who think any attempt at economizing is being cheap. The distinction comes down to whether you're pulling your own weight or letting others pull for you. A frugal person dines out infrequently and often uses coupons. A frugal person might take a date to a museum, the zoo or a picnic.
Frugal people arrange their affairs to minimize their taxes as much as reasonably possible.
Of course, the most telling distinctions are internal. Frugal people can be thoughtful, generous and secure, knowing they're providing for themselves and their families by tending to their futures as well as enjoying life in the present. You mentioned in an earlier column that the key selling point of annuities is their tax-deferred status, and that's why they may not be a good fit for individual retirement accounts, because IRAs already offer tax deferral. My agent told me that if I died when the market was down, my heirs would get at least the amount of money that I had put into it even if the annuity's actual value had dropped. Insurance agents often use the death benefit as a selling point to persuade you to buy an annuity.