With proactive apologies to stellaa, inspired by a conversation with Grandma, and because a friend has recently started a spreadsheet that tracks every single watt of electricty consumed by every single appliance/device in the house...
The Kill-A-Watt: So You'll Know How Much Keeping Your Laptop Running All The TIme Really Costs
I've given a bit of thought to those "Stop Wasting Your Money" articles you tend to find tucked between new car spreads and full-page heart medication ads in magazines like Money and Fortune and Budget Travel and Peek-a-Pug Owner Monthly.
Generally, the tips are sound...mathematically, at least. They're supposed to heighten awareness, I guess, of how little things add up to a lot over time, and to enlighten/shame you into changing your habits.
Because you're doing something stupid right now, see.
The advice will fix how you live. Straighten you up. Put you on the path of virtue. Put an end to your profligate ways once and for all.
- "Skip the daily latte and save $1300 a year!"
- "Don't buy magazines and books! Borrow them from the library! But walk there, don't drive! Because gasoline costs money! Amortized and calculated and compounded at 6% interest over the course of the next 30 years, you could retire with an extra $450,000 if you just stopped your subscriptions to Money and Fortune and Budget Travel and Peek-a-Pug Owner Monthly today!"
- "Don't just switch off lights and appliances--unplug them! HUNDREDS of dollars leak out of your wallet every year through power cords!"
I could go on, but I suspect you know what I'm talking about.
Reading articles like these always remind me of talking to Grandma. Just last night, for example.
"Hi, Grandma!"
"Oh, hello. Is that a new top?"
"Yes."
"Don't buy any more clothes! Save your money!"
"Grandma, this top was $12 at Marshall's and as I've ..."
"You don't need any more clothes!"
"...actually, Grandma, I do, because I've lost all that weight in the last year and all my old clothes were four sizes too big..."
"The old clothes were just fine!"
"Not when they threatened to reveal my preference for bikini vs. briefs any time I stood up, they weren't. But. Anyway, yes, Grandma, I was really careful and shopped smart and now I've got some new, inexpensive clothes that fit me perfectly, and I have enough now."
"Well, don't buy any more. You need to save your money."
"Yes, Grandma."
"And save the old ones. You might grow back into them."
Sigh.
"I already got rid of all the old ones, Grandma."
"But they were still good!"
"Good for somebody four sizes larger than me."
"You might gain a few pounds back."
"No, Grandma, that's not in the plan...uhm. Why is this pot holder charred and melted in three places? Did it catch on fire?!"
"Oh, that happened years ago! I should throw it away."
(She never throws anything away.)
"How did it catch on fire, Grandma? You have a flat electric cooktop..."
"Oh, I don't know. Here. Give it to me. I'll throw it away."
"About the FIRE, Grandma..."
"There. I threw it away."
(I just know she went back and picked it out of the garbage after everybody went home.)
Grandma, as I've mentioned before, lived through the Great Depression. At 92, she's still living in many ways as though it's 1935.
I can understand why that early life experience shaped her so deeply. Honestly, I can. But I've met other people her age who are not pathologically frugal, so I also know that others of her generation have managed to allow the 70+ years they've lived post-Depression to balance out the ten years of Depression and keep things in a bit of perspective.
Anyway. Here they are. 5 Tips.
Tip #1: Never, ever get rid of anything, no matter how old, tattered, torn, burnt, faded, or broken it may be. Use every item until it's held together in three places by sheer force of will, six pieces of off-brand scotch tape, and seventeen strained molecules of its original fabric, metal, plastic, or wood.
Tip #2: Hoard replacement items for the worn-out, shredded items you're keeping on life support per Tip #1. Buy them on sale. Leave them in their original wrapping. That way if you need to, you can return them, even fifteen years after you bought them. Keep ten to twenty brand new washcloths, towels, blouses, skirts, pants, socks, underwear, shower curtains, dishrags, bedspreads, and sheets stashed away "for good." Do not define when/what "good" is. On rare occasions when you do open one, ignore your family's dismayed comments about your stylish "new" harvest gold and avocado green pot-holders.
Tip #3: Buy one-ply toilet paper. Generic. At the Dollar Store. There is absolutely no reason to indulge in ass-wiping material that doesn't cause abrasions. Tough it up and develop callouses where it counts. (You could save HUNDREDS of dollars a year!) Better yet, question the need for toilet paper at all. Muse out loud that when your kids were little, there were no disposable diapers, that you pre-washed them by hand in the toilet and then boiled them in a big pot on the stove, and that flushing all that paper down the toilet seems wasteful sometimes. Do not elaborate further.
Tip #4: When it comes to birthdays and holidays, re-gift like a madwoman. Maybe they won't notice that the strawberry-scented lotion you put in a gift bag is perhaps just a little bit used. (Heck, even if you didn't like the smell, maybe they will). They may also not notice that the package design on the bath salts you just gave them is, er, vintage--from an era when "Calgon, Take Me Away!" was a hot, happening slogan. Believe with all your heart that a $5 bottle of olive oil plucked from your pantry says "I love you." (It's OK, Grandma. We know it does.)
Tip #5: Double-Knit Topstitched Polyester is Always In Style! When you need to get dressed up for a family wedding (or birthday party, or funeral), vocally and violently resist all efforts to take you shopping for a new dress. You have enough clothes! Reach for Old Faithful--that lime green pantsuit you've been photographed in thirty-seven times in the last forty years.
Oh, hell. I could go on. But why?
Everybody knows I'll never succeed at Saving My Money. And that's OK. I've already decided to die broke. In debt, actually. Making monthly minimum payments on as many credit cards as the financial institutions are stupid enough to let me have. I've got no heirs. No reason to stockpile cash. I'm going to screech across the finish line with the needle on Empty.
Why, just this morning I made myself $1300 poorer.
I got a latte.
Yes, I did, and I will get a Latte again. And again. And again.
You know what's really going to take a bite out of my savings, though?
The medical bills and copays after I trip, fall, and break my leg in the dark while on a fool's errand to try to locate the power cord to the lamp I unplugged last night to save $56 a year.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
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Comments
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Odette, I'm actually more an online shopper for the very reasons you mention--if I do enter a brick/mortar I'm far more likely to emerge with things that later beg the question, "WHY?"
Bob...plaid? Really? Plaid?
I wonder why she bought them?
My grandmother went through the depression too, but as a young mother. She taught us all to be thrifty and to cook from scratch because it's cheaper and tastes better. I am now on my third expresso machine because we make our own. I have a latte any time I like.
Having some skills helps with keeping a thrifty home away from the ascetic end of the spectrum.
Those loose power cords kill more old ladies than just about anything else. And everyone thinks its an accident...
-rated-
so every time i catch myself thinking i could save that skimpier than half a serving of _____ for lunch tomorrow, i immediately throw it down the garbage disposal, burn a few cents' worth of electricity grinding it away and go buy a new pair of shoes.
And, I agree with Bobbitt...at least give up the lattes (or take them down to 1 or 2 a week as a deserved treat rather than indulgence). We make one large pot of coffee a day and it costs us about 30 cents a day.
And by the way we've got a whole drawer in the kitchen filled with those little plastic doohickeys used on bread bags and twist-ties. But, I quit saving margarine containers. Life is nasty when you've got 8 of them in the fridge and go in the fridge looking for BlueBonnet (89 cents) only to discover that you have no margarine and 8 containers of various colors of penicilin which used to be actual food.
Good post, Denise. It's obvious that you love and indulge your Grandma and that you're more like her than either of you would ever admit, but that you're proud of it just the same.
I don't understand the drawer full of dry pens though--I will sit in your house and throw out every dried up pen I find. It's my new service "Pen Lady!"
Her "tupperware" collections consists of a mash-up of old margarine tubs. I do love her dearly.
;-)
She performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
Corn Cobs...
{[R]}
Rated.
Grandma had four daughters. The last left home in 1977. She would have been 52 then. Nevertheless, she continued to buy boxes maxipads whenever there was a particularly good sale on them. When we were cleaning out her house in 2002, I "inherited" a whole year's supply, some of which needed belts.
I was an Americorps volunteer at the time and the money saved there came in quite handy!
sheeeeeeeeesh
Bonus Tip: When your grown children (in their 50s and 60s) give you extended cable for a year as a Christmas gift, throw a full-blown snit and cancel it the next day. Keep the refund. :-)
Back in the 80's he read how you can save big if, when dining out, you just drink water and don't order soda, coffee, drinks, whatev.
Save like crazy!
Rated and I still say you're a nut! :-D (in a good way)
Here's to our useful spendage on a good latte:)
R
R
or, they could have just not had kids, that would have been cheapest of all
The trouble is my inner Republican heiress; She makes it so that either I have LOTS of fiscal responsibility (not to the tune of unplugging appliances) or none at all. The bitch wants EVERYTHING and she wants it NEW. She hauled me into the cooking store last weekend, so I'm afraid my recent stretch of fiscal conservation is cracking under pressure.
I'd write more, but I have to unplug my computer now.
1) Always take dry items like pancake mix or flour out of the box and store them in a glass jar. This way, your adult kids won't know that the best-before date was several years ago. They'll probably be too polite to tell you their fresh cooked breakfast tastes a bit stale.
2) The secret to satisfying a crowd's craving for beer without the expense of a sixpack is having only one half bottle that's been in your fridge for a week. That way, if you offer your family a beer than remark there's only one, instead of a fight for the beer, you note how polite your kids and their spouses are, each nobly suggesting the other take the week-old beer.
3) Whole turkeys are often given away right after Christmas. They will last just fine in your freezer until Thanksgiving. Freezer burn? Smeezer burn.
4) It's a good idea to have enough food on hand to feed you and your kids (who are probably too foolish and don't take your advice on laying in their own stock) for several years. You never know when America's food supply will grind to a halt.
5) Food is often given away to Senior Citizens. Take all you can. Fill big bags of canned hotdogs and canned hearty-man meals that smell like dog food and give them to your kids. Ignore their feeble protests that they would never eat canned hot-dogs or hearty dog meals in a million years.
After all, they never lived under Stalin.
Did your avatar clandestinely mate with a redwing blackbird?
Not in Canada you can't ;)
My other thought: if everyone's money is pissed away on latte's (whatever they are), wouldn't it be a better tip to get on the other side of the counter where they are sold? Cause apparently that's where all the money is...and also the latte's (whatever they are, says aging rural Canadian guy.) You could latte it up with their money...
Congrats on the 40 lbs. What's the secret? Did you blog about this already?
Re-gifting is an art, with strict protocall you must follow. An example: If you re-gift an electric razor to someone, taking care to get all the scuffs off the original package, sealing the flaps carefully with adhesive, you may not remember if you cleaned the stubble from inside the razor head. If you can't remember, just add a comic handmade card that alludes to a funny re-gifting anecdote.
He pinched his pennies pretty hard to bestow me some financial freedom. I can't help but think I'm squandering his money because I haven't adopted all his thrifty habits. I also can't help but wonder how differently he would have lived his life had he known his fate. Perhaps not much. He took pride in bucking our consumerism culture. Deborah, thanks for the tip about "Die Broke" - I might check it out (from the library, natch) to alleviate some guilt.