Definition: That deep-seated, automatic reflex where your body defaults to extreme frugality protocols despite your bank account screaming otherwise. It’s the financially-induced reflex of checking restaurant menu prices before scanning the actual dishes, hunting clearance racks like a bloodhound even when shopping for designer threads, or aggressively policing light switches as if electricity bills are still a survival threat. This isn’t conscious budgeting—it’s a broke muscle memory glitch wired into your nervous system from years of scarcity. You could casually afford lobster but still feel visceral panic if the $18 soup appears first on the menu. It manifests as frugality glitches: cutting open toothpaste tubes to scrape polymer walls, treating grocery bags like sacred multi-purpose artifacts (trash liner? lunch sack? art project?), or reheating three-day-old pizza with religious devotion while fresh takeout cools nearby. The habit persists not from necessity, but because undoing that poverty PTSD feels like abandoning a survival superpower. Wealth might buy comfort, but it rarely overwrites the fiscal phantom limb reminding you scarcity could return by Tuesday.