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shampson@globeandmail.com

Take pity on the cheapskate.

That guy you dated who couldn't bring himself to spend the $12 to enter a museum even though he had travelled half way across the world (on airline points)? "Can't we just look at the pictures of the objects and say we saw them?" he pleaded.

Pat him on the back. Go ahead, hug him.

He is not necessarily an example of the "culture of thrift," as some have called the current tightness of purse strings. That would be commendable.

Consider the possibility that Mr. Reluctant is a different beast. He may defensively assert that "I am frugal, not cheap," but could he be suffering from a phobia ?

Shrinks describe some oversavers as excessive money-hoarders, which sounds about as bad as having ophidiophobia - a fear of snakes. (There is not an official medical term for money phobia - yet.)

In an e-mail interview, a 24-year-old employed single man admitted to suffering panic attacks after a major purchase. "I have to decide before buying something whether or not it will be worth feeling guilty and upset for a few days after. Sadly, the one thing I've had to come to terms with is that I cannot control my reaction to a purchase. I may feel fine. I may feel fine for a few hours. But I may feel horrible about it, too."

He recently bought a $5,000 camera that he had carefully saved up for and could easily justify - his side business is wedding photography - but then he returned it.

"It didn't feel right," he explains.

"Money phobia is ... definitely a behavioural phenomenon," says James Gottfurcht, a Los Angeles-based psychologist, money coach and president of Psychology of Money Consultants. "If your parents themselves are excessive hoarders or had a lot of anxiety reactions to spending money then obviously they are role-modelling that and that anxiety can transfer onto the child," he notes. (He adds that such childhood "carry-overs" can also create a spendthrift as "a rebellious, punishing acting out.")

We are not just what we eat. We are what we spend. Or not spend, as the case may be.

Dr. Gottfurcht also explains that people who feel they have limited employment opportunities often control their anxiety about money not by trying to make more in a better job or by improving their education - as some might. They curtail their spending.

Behavioural economics also sheds new light on the relationship people have with money. Kathleen Vohs, a marketing psychologist at the Carlson School of Business at the University of Minnesota, has conducted recent studies showing that the possession of money serves to mitigate people's pain, both physical and emotional. "People hoarding money may in fact be a way of buffering oneself against different kinds of stressful or painful experiences that people are going to naturally encounter. It's a really interesting psychological coping mechanism," Dr. Vohs explains.

Ran Kivetz, a marketing professor at Columbia Business School in New York, was the first to apply the term hyperopia, medical jargon for far-sightedness, to consumer behaviour. "It describes people who are being overly far-sighted; overly self-controlled," he explains. "They under-indulge" because they are so worried about the future. The condition, which he found to be as prevalent as its opposite - a myopic view of heedless spending in the short-term without regard for long-term consequences - often results in saver's remorse. Later in life, "some people have a wistful feeling of missing out on the pleasures of life," Dr. Kivetz says.

The existence of the oversaver has gone under the cultural and academic radar for many years largely because the behaviour is covert. Oversaving is not on display in malls the way foolish spending is. And it is considered less dangerous, of course.

Financial planners are the ones who often see it.

"A professional needed to give them a prescription for spending," says Kelly Keehn, an Alberta-based financial expert, speaker and author, who is describing a wealthy couple in her previous job as an investment manager. "I had to tell them, 'I am forcing you to spend money.' It relaxed them. They started having more fun. I wasn't telling them not to still be frugal. [But] they had worked their whole lives, and never stood back."

Of course, people's money habits are as individual as their sexual ones, and who knows when smart prudence becomes unhealthy? Dr. Gottfurcht says that a person crosses that line when his habit interferes with daily functioning, "It's the same definition you would give to an alcoholic."

But might there be a new anti-consumerist behaviour at play that is not so much about obsessively saving money (although that's what often takes place) as it is about not falling into lock-step as gullible shoppers who can't resist the messages of advertisers who spend millions to woo them?

Saying no can feel like turning down a charming, but dangerous, suitor.

Enter Latham Hunter, a 33-year-old mother of three children under the age of 4½ , who lives with her husband in Carlisle, Ont. A breeder of dogs and blogger who is currently on maternity leave from her full-time job as a professor of popular culture at Mohawk College, she doesn't think of her consumer behaviour as miserly, just highly selective.

She and her husband don't drink alcohol. They don't travel. They don't go out to dinner. She doesn't buy makeup, face creams, hair-care products, purses or expensive shoes and clothing. "I always had buyer's remorse when I used to buy certain clothes. I would only wear them once, and there was always a feeling of letdown."

The family's priorities are paying down their mortgage - they are on track to have the six-figure amount paid off in five years, she says - and contributing to RESPs for their children. Their credit card is paid off in full every month. She admits that "growing up, a lot of people in my family were concerned and overwhelmed by money, and I didn't want that." She likes to keep a $3,000 float in their joint chequing account and describes her satisfaction in "nurturing the numbers along" in their various savings accounts, which she checks three times a week.

"But I never feel I am missing out on anything. The pleasure of being in control outweighs other pleasures." In the consumerist culture, "all you see around you is disaster with debt, and I don't want to be in a position of powerlessness with finances that I see a lot of people in. And it's not as if I don't spend. Someone is installing a geo-thermal system in our house that will save us lots of money in the long run, and I am looking out my window right now as someone lays a flagstone patio in my backyard. I spend money on things that I consider to have value."

One of her favourite pastimes? She watches the TV show, Till Debt Do Us Part, in which a financial planner tries to solve families' destructive spending habits.

"That show makes me feel really good," Dr. Hunter practically squeals with delight.

"I'm like, 'Oh, you suckers!' "