We almost never eat out either, but our meals are on average tastier than what we get out. We both like to cook, and are good at it, and we plan the menu for the week depending on what is on sale at the grocery and what we have in the freezer. (Or what came from the garden in the summer.) We have a big library of cookbooks and it is easy to find recipes to use what ingredients you have on line. We usually do one or two new dishes a week.
Eating in restaurants all the time seems so limiting, since you have a small number of choices unless you are in a city, and even then a subset of dishes on each menu. We don’t avoid eating out for the cost but for convenience and quality.
Paying interest adds to the cost of an object, and that could be worth it if you legitimately need that thing before you could pay for it completely - like a house, in most cases. But if you don’t then I agree you’re throwing money down the sewer.
It’s just like Amazon shipping charges. If you delay long enough so that you have to pay a higher fee to get the thing in time, they could be worth it. But if you buy a Christmas present in early December, why pay for faster delivery?
When we DO eat out/take out/prepared foods, we’re almost always impressed with the amount of salt.
I’m not Overlyverbose, but having lots of time and almost no money, the choice is easy. I don’t know anything about cars, but still maintain my car myself. A relatively simple task often takes 6 - 8 hours of real time, because I have to learn as I go, from the ground up. But saving the 300+ I don’t have by not leaving it to the pros seals the deal. Learning is useful and rewarding by itself. I have an old enough car for this to work.
I’d say it took about 4-5 hours including the work itself, following the video and ordering parts. We didn’t have to get any special tools, which helped.
Like Toxylon said, it was also an interesting learning experience. And I liked my daughter seeing me do it and helping me - at first she came out and said, “Mom, you’re doing a boy’s job.” It was good for her to see that it’s just a job, not a boy’s or a girl’s and that a woman is every bit as capable of fixing a lawn mower as a man is.
Plus, for me, it was a low-risk operation. If it were plumbing above and beyond snaking the drain, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. We had severe water damage caused by a contractor who installed a water filter in our sink once. The damage was almost $50,000 and I thank the universe whenever I look at our sink that we used a licensed and insured company do the work, given that they paid to fix it and the resulting damage.
I’m sure this saves money, but it’s mostly convenience. We’ll make a big pot of something about once a week. Chili, soup, whatever. Zero problems eating the same thing for dinner 4-5 nights in a row. After all, it’s something I made to my tastes and I enjoy it.
As far as the convenience of it, well the closest restaurant is 5 miles away, open 4 days a week and it’s the only game in ‘town’. Next closest would be 15 miles. Two lane mountain highways. Ya just don’t decide to go out to dinner on a whim where we live.
I understand and respect that. My mower was having problems starting. I spent A LOT of time messing around w/ the carb/filters/etc, with no success. Very frustrating, s I KNEW it was such a simple machine, yet it was defeating me. Was glad the mower finally crapped out and I was able to replace it w/ a rechargeable.
I used to love working on my 62 Corvair. I used to say w/ a Phillips screwdriver and set of box wrenches, you could tear the whole thing down and put it back together again!
I had a similar experience with the central air in our new house. We had an HVAC technician come and inspect it, but he didn’t offer much besides charging the refrigerant (which I can’t do myself) and that “it was old”. Ultimately I fixed it myself with a few YouTube videos and a $12 part off Amazon.
That really was unfair to your friend. He sold some things he had. If he had gotten the purchase price worth of use out of each item, then yes, the TV was “free.” He wasn’t out any more money than he had spent already. Now, if he hadn’t gotten purchase price worth of use out of the stuff he sold, you’d have a case to snicker.
And just to shut down those of you who are composing the “but he could have recouped part of his initial investment by keeping the money from the sale” - so what? I could raise some ready cash by selling a kidney, too. What does that have to do with anything? If he can say that he got his money’s worth out of the original stuff, it’s all good.
If I sell my house and buy a new house, the new house isn’t free.
But if you sell a house that you aren’t living in or using in any other way, you are converting an unused asset to money. The friend sold old assets he wasn’t using to buy a TV he is using. Seems like close enough to free for a “friend” to cut him some slack.
You described me. I have always done everything myself: cleaning, lawn & land maintenance (I live on 15 acres), home maintenance & improvements, fixing cars, etc. Everything. But I’m 54 now, and I know I won’t be able to do these things forever. I suspect it’s really going to irk me when I have to pay someone to do something.
Yeah, it’s a hard step to take. But if you find someone good, it works out well. And, if it’s a big project and a crew comes in, it goes much faster (usually). I’m 61, and still do things myself, like plow my snow and stuff.
Same here. I’ve been in construction for almost 30 years. I was a GC in Telluride for the last 15. We moved to Bozeman 3 years ago and planned to build a house. I’m 54 and arthritic, so no framing for me anymore. And NO ONE would return my calls. Call a major plumbing company and leave a message that I had a $150,000 plumbing/heating project I’d like them to look at? Crickets. So I hired a local contractor to co-contract the build, and now we’re in our new house and I got to ski last winter instead (in addition) to obsessing over the build all day.
If I have $4000 cash sitting in a safe. It’s not being used in any way (not earning interest for example). I then use it to buy a TV. The TV isn’t free, it cost $4000 that could’ve been spent on something else.
It can be if increasing housing prices have built up enough equity. I could sell my current house for enough of a profit to pay off the remainder of my mortgage, and have enough left over to buy a new, smaller place outright. The value of my current place has more than doubled since I bought it.
A new place with no mortgage frees up my monthly mortgage payments, so it’s essentially free housing.
The trick is finding a house/location I like at that price point. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
It kind of depends. I like to cook, so I don’t count pennies at the grocery store, I just get what I want. That said, if there’s a good deal on something I’ll stock up. For instance, this time of year frozen hams and turkeys are going for $1/pound or better so I toss a few of each into the freezer for surprises like turkey dinners in July or whatever. My philosophy on home appliances is evolving. It used to be that if you spent money you’d get commensurate lifespan and performance. With nearly everything being made in China these days, that’s just not the case–it’s all junk so I’m starting to go cheap with the understanding I’ll be replacing the thing in 5 years anyway. I do search for USA-made stuff first, and am willing to pay a bit extra for it because it’s turning out to be better quality, rarely ‘accidentally’ toxic, and customer service is starting to be more domestic again. Like others, I haven’t always had the luxury of choice, or of buying stuff before the old wears out. But now that I can, I find that being proactive prevents emergency purchases which almost always end up screwing the buyer. So I guess to answer the OP, convenience first, savings second.
You don’t say.
The most important thing in a friendship is to be right on the small stuff.
Absolutely 
It’s the same kind of tortured logic I use ironically myself but if the friend is genuinely trying to say the TV is free and his wife is not pleased about it then he’s being a bit of a dick. He should acknowledge the fact that instead of getting a “free” TV he could’ve got $4000 worth of “free” stuff that she wanted, or share the windfall between them.
Eating in restaurants all the time seems so limiting, since you have a small number of choices…
This made me say, “What?” In restaurants I can get thousands of different choices from around that world, many of which I have never heard of and could never prepare myself.
…unless you are in a city
Ah! I am in San Francisco, where we have over 4,000 restaurants. While eating at home is definitely much less expensive, the selection could never rival what you can get here by eating out.
That said, my #1 financial indulgence is heat. When I first put myself on a budget, I followed recommendations to keep the thermostat down, turn it down at night, etc. I was miserable. Being cold makes me less productive, less inclined to do projects like housecleaning and organizing, and more likely to curl up under a blanket to watch T.V. I decided that the savings was not worth the trouble. Now I keep my apartment feeling tropical, and try to make up for it in other ways. I may be saving and reusing every Ziploc bag, but at least I am warm and toasty.