• Washington Post, Thursday, May 21, 2009 11 AM

Ignoring the fact that "Around the Net in Brand Marketing" has been chronicling The New Frugality since November 2008, Michelle Singletary cites this morning a recent Time magazine cover and an earlier BusinessWeek feature this year that declares the recession has pushed us into "The New Frugality" age. But despite polling numbers by Pew Research Center confirming the trend, the personal finance columnist questions whether frugality has sticking power, which should be good news for marketers of most stripes (purveyors of energy-efficient vehicles and "relatively modest-priced" vodkas excluded).

"Frugality isn't like your basic black dress that is always in vogue," she says. "Frugality is a foul-weather trend quickly replaced by rampant consumerism the moment the economy begins to pick up."

Not that Singletary isn't a proponent of frugality. She goes on to attack, in particular, our burgeoning cell phone culture, including a personal experiment that would indicate that Pew's finding that 60% of the public under 30 considers a cell phone a necessity might be a modest figure indeed .

Read the whole story at Washington Post »