"Thrift" - Restrained or disciplined spending habits

"(...) The Wall Street Journal says that the entire country is living on a precarious precipice of debt; the government is deeply in hock and so are most of its citizens. It's a joy ride, they add but nobody in Washington seems to give a damn.
In the old days, when people were poor they lived poor. Today they live rich. I've discussed this with many wage earners in the eight-to-ten-thousand-dollar-a-year class and, in most cases, they admit that almost everything they own, they don't - their automobiles, their television sets, their houses, and the furniture. Their philosophy seems to be, 'What the hell - we may be dead tomorrow!' However, if their prediction is a few decades off, many of them will spend their old age living off the state.
Cleanliness may be next to godliness, but to my mind thriftiness would be closer. I consider myself one of the last survivors of a dying era. I'm the type that turns out the lights when i leave the room. I turn the water taps securely to make sure they don't drip. Although i have a cook, i go to the supermarket myself and pick out the food that she will eventually ruin."

- Groucho Marx em "Memoirs of a Mangy Lover", escrito em 1963.