Frugal fatigue is now officially what ails us

Enough of us are apparently experiencing frugality fatigue that it's not only made it into the lexicon but may well soon be declared an official psychiatric disorder.

I am personally so relieved. Perhaps someone will come up with a 12-step program fashioned to control it? Forget group hugs; let's organize a group shop!

It seems it goes like this: Frugal fatigue, according to Word Spy, is the mental exhaustion caused by constant frugality during hard economic times. Gee, and here I thought it was plain old garden variety anxiety over losing my job and worrying about paying the mortgage.

Wrote Christopher Muther in Boston.com last month: "[I]t seems that after a year of watching our wallets, bank accounts, and 401(k) plans with the tenacity of a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart in an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, some are throwing up their hands, taking out their credit cards, and wading back into pre-recession spending habits. The official term for this behavior is frugal fatigue. It started creeping into the lexicon last spring, and now frugal fatigue -- the idea that we're getting worn down and stressed out by constantly watching our budgets -- may as well be an officially diagnosed psychiatric disorder."