From a personal development point of view frugality as a lifestyle is flawed. It is not flawed in the sense that it does not work, but it is flawed because it makes you aim your focus at the wrong things.

Human beings are all full of desires that makes us want this and that; due to this fact being frugal is actually pretty hard for most people. The desires are the remnants of strategies that have worked very well for human beings in the past, so evolutionally speaking the desires have been immensely important but at the same time they have also played out their role. You can see the results of this in most developed countries, even though there is no shortage of food people are still eating like a famine is just around the corner - and scientist have actually discovered that if you start to eat less the body responds instinctively by lowering your metabolism and increasing the desire for food through chemical changes in the hypothalamus, effectively making it very difficult to loose weight. And this is not only a principle you see regarding food, but also a general psychological principle.

I am reminded of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer watches one of the home shopping-channels on TV, one of the products gets him really excited (I do not remember what it was though) and when the speaker mentions that the stock of the product is limited Homer gasps