Frugality

   / Frugality #121  
Wife will come home with a bag of specials from the supermarket, use by date tomorrow and just useless stuff we don't need, usually gets thrown out but she sees it as saving.
I buy a coupe of eye fillets for $20 and she complains but still eats it.
Still can't grasp that I spend less than her.
Go out ffor lunch and a beer is $9, I can buy a carton of 24 for $50, I have water, free and pass a breath test when they are out which is often.
Pay over $100 for a bottle of scotch which is cheaper than a few beers at a pub but people say it is extravagant, I don't see the logic.

I quit drinking over 7 years ago and have saved a ton of money on alcohol. I've spent that money on other things and don't know how I spent so much on alcohol :)
 
   / Frugality #122  
I should have said that I don't buy milk at a restaurant, but drink over a gallon a week. I would never order Soda Pop anyways. I drink enough Pepsi with Rum, buying the Pepsi for twelve cans at $3.99 CDN, and probably throw half of it out. No point mixing expensive Rum with Flat Pepsi.
 
   / Frugality #123  
I quit drinking over 7 years ago and have saved a ton of money on alcohol. I've spent that money on other things and don't know how I spent so much on alcohol :)

That is my only vice and a carton lasts a month, don't smoke or gamble, I enjoy spending on something I want and won't compromise on cheap if it is not up to the task.
I spend a lot on fuel but that is out of my control, currently about USD5.70 per USG.
Coffee I like and costs 60c a cup at home, one a day and rarely when I go out at $4-5 a cup.
We buy pepsi but never coke, don't like coke and it is twice the price and i don't know why but water is what we drink most.
 
   / Frugality #124  
How many times over did they loose $100 in lost productivity of the drivers? How much did they loose when they sold them? The epic penny pinchers almost always loose money doing it.

Without a doubt much productivity was lost and even more hate and discontent among the employees. Then there was the air conditioning thing. They finally got enough complaints from customers about sweat covered tech's showing up at business's to do service work that they gave in and the next bunch of trucks had AC and power steering.
I worked there 21 years and it took a long time for them to get any sense. Of course the family of owners grew up during the depression. I am sure that mentalatiy carried into their business decisions. Of course all of their expensive Lincoln's Land Rovers and Porsche's were all company cars, and you every drop of gasoline and the insurance that went into them was on the company tab. You can bet that all had power steering and AC too!. :)
 
   / Frugality #125  
You needed three catagories here. Cheap. Frugal. And Stupid.
Cheap means you put a 15 year roof on a house you intend to live in for 30 years.
Frugal means you put a 35 year roof.
Stupid means you bought a 15 year roof and then intended to do it yourself 15 years later.

If there was one trade I could call myself, it would be a Refurbisher. I fix old things and make them work like new again. Cheap gets in the way. There are so many items now that are made "Not to last" and they are made that way intentionally. You can see it in the design and in the ways people designed the item so that it can't be repaired or put into a new use cycle. Bic Lighters are like this, as are most shaving razors and air "fresheners." Red Devil Vacuums, Big wads of plastic that only can be used once.
A cheap person just buys the low number. A frugal person looks at the overal cost. A stupid person works counter to both statagies, thinking they are doing one or the other.
I've been all three. Stupid in the sense that I buy used weed eaters and then spend many hours attempting to fix then. And they end up being burned out because someone didn't use the right Gas/Oil mix. More costly to fix then to buy new. Or think I'm going to repair something that was never intended to be repaired.
Cheap. I buy cheap Chain Saws. Its all about the sharpness of the chain. Run them till they have no usefull life left and then buy another. The mainteince I've seen on PRO saws out weights the cost of a new saw. Just the way it is.
Frugal. I maintain my '93 Ford Festiva. Its our pick up truck once the rear seats were removed.
Frugal is buying an entire case of canned string beans when they are on sale at 48 Cents per. You can't do that on your own. Cheap and Stupid would be attempting to CAN if you can buy the same thing at a lower cost than you could do it yourself.

I don't think Cheap ever works in the long run.
And sometimes thinking you are working on the cheap is stupid. Like, I got tired of rebuilding lawn mowers. I'm geting tired of rebuilding things.

New sometimes is the Frugal choice. If you are spending many hours to refurbish something then sometimes that is a loss.
As if I made 25 Dollars an hour, that thing, to repair, isn't worth my time.
And now you can buy anything so cheap, its odd to consider. What is frugal, what is cheap and what is stupid.
If you have a plan it is frugal, if you want something NOW it is cheap. If you want to maintain the Cheap things that you have, then you are Stupid.
 
   / Frugality #126  
Fleet vehicles in this country including Police, were historically always very poorly equipped. I always maintained that it was never wise for business owners to show up at work in expensive cars. Especially new ones, sometimes just days after announcing little annual raises on account of poor profits. Pretty STUPID for moral if you ask me.
 
   / Frugality #127  
We had fleet vehicles when I was with the government, we called them poverty packs, vinyl upholstery, plastic floor mats, no aircon or ps and 4WD had split rims, management cars had all the fruit and couldn't understand why the troops were not happy driving around glued to the seats on 40 degree days.
A little later cars north of the dividing range got ac, the south gets as hot in summer but for about one month less.
Broken windows were not fixed and we had a car with a broken fuel gauge so we were instructed to check the log book before going out so we knew roughly how much fuel we had despite it being a warranty problem, just didn't want the car off the road.
Meanwhile prison vans had aircon for the villains but not the driver, civil liberty groups saw to that.
 
   / Frugality #128  
I once had the pleasure of being given a Ford Areostar Van for my service vehicle. 4 banger, manual transmission, no windows, no A/C, and something like the smallest 13" wheels you could buy. I had arguments with FORD dealerships insisting they never made a 4 banger. It did serve me well when I picked up my first 1000 pound, FORD 917 Flail mower. Slipped right in there like it was made for it.
 
   / Frugality #129  
I am quite certain you cannot plant, grow, fertilize and cultivate and pick, prepare and can green beans for what you can buy them for in the store each day every day. And I cannot tell that our canned green beans are any better than the ones you buy in the supermarket. We don't can green beans. I don't think you can do most vegetables yourself compared to buying them.
 
   / Frugality #130  
The cost of produce here is crazy. Everything I grow seems to die, but I would love to play with a greenhouse. Kind of changes the situation a little. No, not much point having your own produce in season, when it's all around you cheap. Heck, I come across boxes of vegies on the side of the road that say FREE!
 

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