As I washed out an empty Cool Whip container so I could keep the left-over Thanksgiving gravy, a conversation I had with my dad ran through my head:

            “You’re cheap,” he said, watching me tear an old towel into cloths I could use for cleaning purposes.

            “I’m not cheap,” I countered. “I’m frugal.”

            “Cheap.”

            “Frugal.”

            I have to admit that I often wonder where’s the line between cheap and frugal and if I’ve crossed it. First, I seldom pay full price for anything. There’s always a sale, especially at the stores I frequent.

            Is there anybody who pays full price at Hobby Lobby for anything? Between everything being on sale at some time in a two-week period and the 40-percent-off coupon you can get on your phone or in the newspaper, I’d be crazy to pay full price.

            Even though there’s only two of us in the house, I still clip coupons. Most of the time, I forget them in the car, but I can’t bring myself to recycle the Sunday paper without looking through the coupon inserts.

            There’s nothing wrong with bargain shopping. My sons could recognize the word “sale” long before they could read, and they understood early what the word “clearance” meant at Target.

            There’s also the matter of clothes. I refuse to pay more than $20 for any item of clothing, except shoes because a gal has to have her heels. Besides, I’ll either dribble coffee or spaghetti sauce down the front of my white shirt so why would I buy expensive ones.

            I can count the number of times I’ve gotten a manicure on one self-manicured hand and I use a home perm kit to give my hair that extra bounce instead of paying $75 in a hair salon.

            We’ve never had a housekeeper or a lawn service, we eat leftovers until they’re all gone and chicken is a staple in our house, not steak.

            I found a great, easy recipe for pizza, so we’ve stopped ordering take-out. We go to the movies before 6 p.m. so we can get the matinee price and I always ask for the senior discount, even though I’m not quite ready for Social Security. One never knows where that age limit starts and I want to take advantage of it if I can.

            We had a minivan years ago with 140,000 miles on it and we decided it was time to buy a new car. I had a trip to Baton Rouge planned, and I wanted to put the mileage on the old van instead of a new vehicle. Despite my husband’s warnings, I drove the van to Louisiana.

            On the way back, my son and I had to stop every 50 miles because the engine was overheating. My son loved it because we waited for the engine to cool down at truck stops, and I think he ordered a chicken-fried steak at every single one.

            I finally pulled over in Beaumont and my husband came and got us. All because I didn’t want to put 600 miles on a new vehicle.

            So when my dad accused me of being cheap, I had to admit he wasn’t far off from the truth. But this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I once caught my dad cutting out cardboard inserts for his shoes because he didn’t want to buy a new pair.

            “Dad, that’s the definition of cheap,” I remember telling him.

            “No, that’s being smart because I like these shoes,” he countered.

            “Cheap,” I said.

            “Frugal,” he said.

            Either way, both of us were happy we had a few extra coins jingling in our pocket at the end of the week. So perhaps there is something to this cheap, I mean frugal, way of living.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.