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The Summer, the Problem, and the Decision Not to Buy
In the summer of 2022, the space I needed to cool was awkward, not quite a full room, not a small corner. The commercial air coolers that would work were either too big, too ugly, too expensive, or all three. And somewhere in the irritation of browsing product pages and reading reviews, I thought: this is just a fan blowing air over a wet surface. How hard can this actually be?
It turned out to be not hard at all. Total cost: under Rs 2,000. Time to build: one afternoon. Performance: better than a mid-range commercial cooler, and honest about what it is.
How It Works (The Basics)
An evaporative cooler works on a simple principle: when water evaporates, it absorbs heat from the surrounding air, reducing the air temperature. Every cooler on the market, whether it costs Rs 3,000 or Rs 30,000, is doing this same thing. The fancy ones add a water pump, a timer, remote control, a branded body with embossed logos, and a retail markup that reflects none of these additions proportionally.
My build: a standard table fan, a metal frame made from locally sourced mild steel rods, cooling pads (the same khus or synthetic cellulose pads used in commercial coolers, available at hardware stores for very little), a small submersible pump recycled from an aquarium, a shallow water tray, and a timer plug I already owned. Wired together with basic electrician’s tape and a few cable ties.
The pump circulates water over the cooling pads. The fan pulls air through the wet pads. Cooler air comes out the front. It works. It works well.
Jugaad Is Not About Poverty, It Is About Thinking
There is a tendency to associate jugaad, the Indian term for frugal, improvisational problem-solving, with necessity-born workarounds. Jugaad is what you do when you cannot afford the real solution. That framing misses something important.
The cooler I built was not a compromise. It was a choice. I had the option to spend Rs 8,000-15,000 on a commercial unit. I chose not to, not because I could not afford it, but because the problem did not require that solution. The commercial unit would have added features I did not want, materials that would degrade faster than the simple construction I used, and a price that was mostly paying for brand and packaging.
Jugaad as a mindset means interrogating whether the standard solution actually fits the problem, or whether convention, marketing, and social signalling have convinced you that it does when it does not. That interrogation is available to anyone, regardless of budget. It is a thinking habit, not a poverty workaround.
What This Has to Do With Personal Finance
The personal finance parallel is direct. Most spending decisions in a modern urban life are structured around the assumption that the premium solution is the right solution, that spending more signals sensibility, that the branded version is worth its premium, that the standard market offering is the appropriate benchmark.
It often is not. The returns on frugality compound in the same way that investment returns compound. Rs 13,000 not spent on a commercial cooler, invested instead, and left for 10 years at a reasonable equity return, becomes something considerably more useful than a slightly more polished cooling experience. And more importantly, the habit of interrogating spend before committing to it changes your relationship to money in ways that extend far beyond any individual purchase.
I am not arguing for deprivation. The cooler worked. I was comfortable. I did not sacrifice anything meaningful. That is the point: frugality done right is not about discomfort. It is about precision, spending where the spend is justified, and not spending where it is not.
The Joy of Making vs the Convenience of Buying
There is also something else going on that is harder to quantify: the satisfaction of making a thing that works. This sounds nostalgic, possibly precious. But I think it is real and worth naming.
When you buy a product, your relationship to it is as a consumer. When you build it, your relationship is different, you understand it, you can repair it, you know what it actually is rather than what the marketing says it is. The cooler broke once (the pump got clogged). I fixed it in ten minutes because I knew exactly how it was put together. A commercial unit of the same vintage would have required a service call or a replacement part.
The most durable frugality is not about spending less for its own sake, it is about building competence that reduces dependence on expensive solutions.
I am not suggesting everyone should build their own appliances. That would be absurd. But I do think the underlying principle, interrogating whether the standard solution is truly necessary, developing enough competence to know the difference, finding satisfaction in resourcefulness rather than consumption, is worth cultivating regardless of your income level. It is one of the most useful things jugaad has ever taught me, and it cost nothing to learn.
For more on how these frugality habits connect to building long-term wealth, you might enjoy reading about what banana trees taught me about long-term investing, and the broader themes of patience and compounding explored there. Frugality and patience are two sides of the same coin.