Sometimes I see people talking about frugal choices that genuinely puzzle me. You know that there are some choices that take more work to do than they save you money-wise... Right?
an example is the landlord here on the property I live on. He spelled out his plan to get those timers for all the lights in the house so that no light will be on for more than a few minutes... and the same guy is confused when he comes into the space at night and I'm doing things in the mostly dark house without turning on lights, because my eyes are dark adapted. He's convinced himself that the frugal choices is to buy and install a dozen timers in the house lighting, at something like 20$ each, to save maybe 10c a year in LED bulbs power use.
sometime the immediate frugal choice actually changes the situation such that a future choice that could have had a bigger impact is no longer an option.
and sometimes the frugal choice is to spend the money on the thing: for example a world map shower curtain tore through a couple of the holes and no longer hung right. I was about to spend a half hour trimming a bit of material from an area that it wouldn't be noticed, warm up the household iron get some scrap baking parchment a fuse a reinforcemt strip to the top that also closed the tear outs, and use a hole punch to punch the holes for the curtain rings to hang it up again... until my housemate said, "You could do all that, or spend a dollar at the dollar store for a replacement."
Focus your frugal on the choices that get the biggest benefit. The whole 20 percent of the effort in the right areas gets you 80 percent of the return. After that there are points of diminishing returns. And never forget to include the value of your time and energy, lest you you work for an hour to save a nickle, when you could spend a nickle and use the hour in another area that benefits you more.
March 03, 2023 at 02:23AM
