11–20 of 211 posts
You can skimp on the things you merely want, and still be happy.
Think of all the things you really need, the things you would be really miserable without. These are the ones you should splurge on. I mean, really, spend 2x as much as you think the average person would spend on them. Totally own it. Then you will always feel like your life is good. Because you don't sweat the small stuff :)
On one hand I kind of agree with this, there certainly is something to be said for buying nice stuff now and then, especially when it is stuff you love doing. For play, I use a ratio I call the Fun Factor. Essentially, that's the $/hr of fun I get out of something. So if you go see a movie and it is $10, and it is the rare money that is actually fun to watch, then the fun factor is roughly $5. So then you apply it to…
As to the "lasting forever bit", I don't think it's necessary that things last literally forever; the point is more that making very long term purchases is a worthy goal. 15-20 years maybe. That said, I do try to buy things that literally will last me forever, though the list isn't very long, yet:
I try to buy tools that will last forever, or close to. With things like digital cameras (or any consumer electronics), it's silly to expect anything to last more than 10 years, on the very long end.
But, with power tools, I buy things expecting them to last forever (with routine maintenance and not heavy duty use). I more or less expect my nice knives to last forever. I expect most of my furniture to last forever. I expect my weight set to last forever.
Though that's now that I consider being Frugal. Being frugal is not only being practical with my money (buying what I need and knowing what I won't use). I had a strong desire of buying an iPad, but really I know I won't use it. It also involves making sure I take care of my things, I check my tires and oil on my car regularly. Doing the little things to keep your stuff going and not spending frivolously is being frugal.
The idea being, or rather my interpretation of it is: something of high quality that's 2x the price of something else of low quality is probably wroth 10x more, so it's actually "cheap" in the sense that you get a lot more than what you pay for.
My experience of wearing out shoes was interesting. I used to buy 'cross trainers' or whatever the 'general use' canvas/plastic tennis shoe was at Big-5 when they went on sale every year. Every year I'd get a new pair of shoes for $10 to $15 and think "Wow look how much I'm saving over buying leather shoes for like $100 - $150." And then someone pointed out that they had leather shoes that they hadn't replaced in 10 years and it occurred to me that maybe I was looking at acquisition cost and not lifetime cost.
I did the math and bought my first pair of Clark's. They lasted 7 years and came out costing roughly $11/year for those 7 years. I replaced them with the same exact model that was on sale for $75. Not only did they look better than tennis shoes, they fit better, and 'wore' better. If I added the time spent shopping, the cost to get the car to/from the Big5 every year, the Clarks were 'cheaper' by being more expensive but of better durability.
So it was still being 'Frugal' but it was being a bit more intelligent about going about calculating the costs. I've long since learned to value my time more reasonably than 'free.'
The strange hate for people who are "cheap" is one of the more bizarre about Americans. I don't think I've ever heard of frugality used as a pejorative anywhere else in the English-speaking world.
> The strange hate for people who are "cheap" is one of the more bizarre about Americans. I also find strange the stigma attached to being a "loser".
Just count the number of hours you use an item in a week. Anything you use for a large part of the week should be of high quality.
Bed, office chair, desk, computer screen, computer, cooking utensils if you cook a lot, phone - in my case.
My car is 10 years old and doesn't have an a/c but I use it irregularly for Kiteboarding purposes and don't care.
In essence, it's much harder to bear a small pain for a long time than it is to bear a big pain for a small amount of time. And the mental stress from the smaller and longer pain is much much more IMHO.
There's a social cost to making an ass of yourself arguing +/- $0.30 on a loaf of bread, so I don't do it. And--I jest not--I get chided by "frugal" people for not spending a half hour going through my pile of 50+ coupon clippings in front of the register in the express lane, ten people waiting in line behind me be damned.
Nobody in the startup scene here likes a customer that rides them about price no matter the discount, and appears to be fixated solely on price and not on value. Nobody likes the message that sends about the customer's priorities, their character, or the value they attach to the product or service. There is a moral and a psychological valence to the whole thing. It's off-putting, because it says that you don't realise that sometimes there is more to life than cold, rational economic calculus. So why do it to others?
Negotiating big-ticket items like salaries, houses and cars has always been okay in this culture, and there are considerable practical reasons to do it; thousands of dollars are on the line, and the people on the other end of the table have a pricing structure and a sales methodology designed specifically to maximise gains on people reluctant or unable to negotiate. Obviously, I'm not saying you should allow yourself to be screwed for the sake of eschewing confrontation.
However, at the risk of sounding culturally chauvinist, as a Soviet immigrant, one of the things I have always liked about the US and for which I have taken pride in my adopted homeland is the fact that we're above petty bazaar culture here--haggling for the sake of haggling, or being obscenely preoccupied with price. Let's not lose that. Those of us from other cultures that have fewer compunctions about wheel-dealing in petty crap know where that leads, and it's a really detestable trait when not mandated by the necessities of poverty.
Beds. Yes, you spend 1/3 your life in bed. And you spend it unconscious. You spend about 0.03% of your conscious life in bed while falling asleep (30 mins a day).
But more importantly: Relax. Just because you make a certain decision doesn't mean everyone else needs to.