We scrimp quite a lot at my house. On example occurred just the other day which thinking that might make an interesting thread in MPSIMS at the SDMB. Since the restructuring and corresponding massive layoffs (sniff sniff ) we have really been squeezing every single ml of tooth paste out of the tube.
“The Boss” thought of a new one the other day: open the near empty bottle of shampoo with an xacto knife and scrape every last ml of shampoo from the sides of the inside of the bottle with a spatula.
Could go on and on but won’t.
Finally circling back to the OP, Do you scrimp to save?
Someone once described it as ‘the whopper test’. A whopper meal is $5, so if a $30 meal isn’t six times better than the whopper meal, its not worth it.
I tend to spend with the utility of money in mind. What spending gives the most utility per unit of money spent. In that regard I scrimp but I have no issue spending money on something I want that provides utility. If a $20 blu ray isn’t 10x better than a used $2 DVD, I just get the DVD.
things like cutting open toothpaste don’t save much money though. A 6-8oz tube is about $1 if you shop around. same with shampoo, a dollar will get you a decent sized bottle. stuff like that involves doing a lot of work to save a few cents.
I scrimp on so many things, I’m a PRO at scrimping!
We’ve had lean times at various points of our married life. And scrimping helped us to survive! When my kids were little, Imtaught them how to grocery shop. To this day, BOTH of them hunt down the bargains. They look for the neon orange sticker that says “REDUCED!” I joke around that REDUCED is my favorite cut of meat!
Mr VOW and I are at a pretty good place now, with even a little extra money tucked away and we can help our kids when we can.
I wouldn’t go so far as to cut open a bottle of shampoo, but I’ll add a little water, shake it and use the slightly thinner shampoo. I shop at Goodwill. I bought a cheap, 50-yr old Yanmar tractor at auction for $1500 rather than buy my dream Kubota with a front end loader for $25-30K. Still, my next tractor will definitely have a ROPS system, at least.
It would be that much more impressive if you had told us in your post what ROPS meant. I’m curious though… did you really think folks here would be familiar with “ROPS”? What’s wrong with writing what you mean instead of manufacturing a little puzzle for us?
Everything that you say about scrimping to save is correct. It is generally horribly inefficient. Cutting open a bottle of shampoo to save maybe five cents is much work for little savings,
Bur (and here’s the big but) we scrimp because we hate to waste while we also get that warm satisfaction feeling from getting the most for our money.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to be in a secure, well-paying job that has been unaffected by the pandemic other than permanently working from home for the last few months (and for the foreseeable future). As such, I don’t “scrimp to save” as such. I do however use the following strategies:
Putting a large amount of salary into various savings before I get it. That way, rather than trying to budget each month so as to have enough left over for savings, I’ve done my savings already and just spend what I have left.
Virtually never buying clothes - just not interested, and the clothes I have I make last for years if not decades. Any items I do need I ask for as birthday/Christmas gifts.
Looking for bargains when grocery shopping, e.g. reduced or buy-one-get-one as appropriate.
I recently switched from shower gel to bar soap to cut out a bit of plastic waste, when the old bar is too small to use I’ll press it into the top of the new one to get maximum use out of it. On the rare occasions I need to use shampoo, like St Germain I will add a little water to the bottle and shake it up to get the last goodness out.
I have never bought/leased a car, much less a brand new one - I suspect what a lot of my peers are making in car payments I am instead saving for the future. I also cycle or walk where possible rather than using the car for short journeys.
So overall I would say I am definitely a scrimper/saver. On the other hand, when it comes to things like eating out/drinking, I am prepared to pay more than the average for good quality (e.g. steak, craft ale, scotch). And on the rare occasions (even before Covid) I hit the town, after a few drinks I find it hard to resist dropping a few hundred at the casino, if I have it to spare (of course, sometimes I win, but I’m under no illusions as to the proposition overall). So a weird mixture, but I’m happy with it.
My shampoo is Prell and, fortunately, the container has a flat top. So, when I’m down to the bottom, I just set it upside down and let gravity do the rest.
If the scrimping saves more than, say, a dollar for every minute spent scrimping, then sure. So yes, I’ll dilute the shampoo. But I’m not going to cut it open. Nor am I going to got out of my way to save $0.05/gal in gas.
I’m curious enough to google stuff like that ROPS. rollover protection structure. A roll cage.
See I like to scrimp on words and not ask questions I can figure out for myself.
I’m on an austerity budget these days. Especially this month, triple whammy to the budget with vet bills, dermatology bill, dentist bill and now qrtly sewer bill is also due.
All non essential expenses such as clothes shopping, dining out, books, music, overnight travel are out and have been out for a couple years.
I do squeeze the last dabs out of the toothpaste. It’s a pricy brand but my mouth is worth it.
We do this, too! Saving soap by mashing the leftover bit of the old soap into the new bar was what actually made me think of creating this THREAD. 100% yield! That’s what I’m talking about.
This is exactly the same thing that my high school Consumer Economics taught us: Never go out of your way to buy gas. Only buy gas at a gas station that is in your way to someplace else.
When have a half a tank and the Costco is 10-15 cents cheaper per gallon than anyone else in my neighborhood I’ll go there even if it adds 2 miles to my trip. Economically it’s worth a standalone trip IMHO.
Blanket statements like that may be right for 90 percent of circumstances, but not always. Sometimes you can come out on top by going a mile or even a few miles out of your way for cheap gas. Too many people only take into account whether the savings will pay for the extra gas burned to make the trip. (And some poor fools don’t even take that into consideration.) You should also calculate vehicle depreciation, the value of your time, etc. And yes, your time is worth money even if nobody is literally cutting you a paycheck to drive. I even wrote a simple computer script to help me decide when it’s worth driving out of my way to save money on gas, tolls, groceries, and so on. It has saved me enough money over the years to more than pay for the time I spent writing it.
I’m frugal as hell, but I have to be constantly on guard against the trap of becoming penny-wise and pound-foolish. For instance, I use the style of clothes pins that consist of two pieces of wood and a metal spring. When they broke apart, I used to collect the pieces and put them back together. But clothes pins are so cheap that I calculated I was earning only about $2 per hour doing that. So now I just throw them away when they break and buy new ones.
I turn the shampoo bottle over when it gets down to a few palm-fulls, but I don’t save soap slivers. I haven’t needed to scrimp since grad school. I put a lot of my salary into savings, including a 401K and I still never have to budget my spending. I figure once I retire, I’ll go back to my grad school ways.
) we have really been squeezing every single ml of tooth paste out of the tube.