Spending Series Part 2: Ridiculously Over-the-Top Frugal Habits

While most of us in the FI community treat frugality as a badge of honor, sometimes we can take it TOO far.  Of course, deciding whether or not something goes too far is a matter of personal opinion.  However, as you can see from our examples below, there’s probably not much disagreement that from time-to-time we go a little overboard with our own frugality.

The Squire

I do have a number of frugal habits that I mentioned in the Spending Series Part 1: I comparison shop on everyday purchases, but I don’t always go with the cheapest item; We wait for sales on big items and look at Amazon reviews, but if we need it we get it; I typically pack lunch for work; When getting together with others we find ways to chip in together. However, I wouldn’t say that any of these habits are that extreme. Although there were brief times in my life that many of my meals were on the cheap side, when I entered the workforce after college my spending went back up. Scout on the other hand has some habits that are a bit more on the extreme side, so I’ll let him expose his crazy (only kidding) frugal practices alone…

Scout

In the Spending Series Part 1, I personally defined frugality as: being conscious of how & where I spend my money, not spending on frivolous things, trying to get the most use/life out of everything, and/or trying to get the best deal for something (usually meaning lowest price for a minimal-level of product quality).  Embarrassingly I sometimes take my own frugality to the extreme, especially by trying to maximize the useful life of an item or always looking for a good deal.  The strange part is that I usually act subconsciously and don’t even think of something as ridiculously over-the-top unless someone else points it out or I really spend time thinking about it after-the-fact.

• At restaurants I stick with lower-priced options.  Whenever I go to restaurants I tend to gravitate towards specials or options that seem like a good value (usually meaning a large quantity of food for a cheap price).  For clarity, I never order anything I dislike just because of perceived value, however most of the time I end up ordering something that’s just “okay” instead of something I’m really excited to try or have a strong craving for.

• I buy groceries based on lowest per unit cost.  I don’t shop at a bargain grocery store like Aldi, Grocery Outlet, or WinCo, but instead at the nearest store which is a low-to-moderate price option.  To save money I compare the per unit cost (i.e. price per ounce, price per lb, etc) and almost always choose the option that is lowest price.  I have absolutely no brand loyalty.  On occasion I’ll get “lucky” and end up with a name brand item if it’s on sale and ends up being the cheapest.  Some may consider this smart shopping, however when I look at the receipt my savings are usually pretty miniscule (a few dollars) and the trade-off is sometimes lower-quality food.

• I spend too much time on Amazon comparing items.  Like many of us in the FI community, I am a huge optimizer/maximizer, meaning that I want to get the best quality item for the lowest possible price.  I compare items by reading reviews, looking at customer ratings, and of course by price.  I usually narrow my search down to a few similar items then spend hours looking for the optimal one.  Similar to grocery shopping, when I finally choose an item the savings is usually pretty miniscule and I end up wasting so much time.  Recently I’ve been trying to experiment with satisficing, which means defining a minimum set of criteria/requirements then choosing any solution that meets this minimal threshold.  When shopping on Amazon this translates to  acknowledging that any items I’ve narrowed my search down to are probably all fairly equal so I should just choose one, order it, and move on with life.

• Picking up giveaway items, samples, & free stuff at fairs, sporting events, etc.  What else can I say?  I love to get things for free even if they are just little trinkets that are totally useless and usually end up getting tossed in my junk drawer at home.  I have so many (poorly-tinted) sunglasses, pens, and chapsticks than I’ll ever be able to use.  And the funny thing is, I know that I’ll keep adding to my collection in the future.

• Bringing home toiletries (sometimes even toilet paper) from hotels.  Unlike the samples & giveaway items from events (that are seemingly nice-to-have free items), at a hotel it feels like I’m already paying for any toiletries so I might as well take them.  My thought is that I can use these items for future travel or at the very least to use at home.  But honestly about 90% of these items get tossed in the closet immediately, never to be used again.  In the past I’ve usually left the toilet paper behind, but I’ve even started to  grab these rolls recently for wiping my dog’s butt (true story, he’s a pretty messer pooper).

• Free bottled water at the sports stadium.  I still can’t decide which frugal category this belongs in – “ridiculously over-the-top” or simply “smart”.  Bud Light sponsors a designated-driver program in the stadium and for those who sign up there’s a chance to win a prize package along with a free bottle of water.  In Part 1 of the Spending Series I mentioned that I don’t buy food or drinks at sporting events, including alcohol, since these items are priced so high. Since I know I won’t be having a beer & drinking anyways, I have no shame in signing up for the designated-driver program to earn a free water.  Automatic $6-7 savings right there!  Bonus frugal points: My wife & I usually end up taking the waters home, so we always have a fridge stocked with free water.

• I reuse envelopes.  Okay, this is a strange one that I just started doing earlier this year… Because my wife and I are into travel hacking, we use multiple credit cards simultaneously (and are constantly switching based on new cards, limited-time points bonuses, etc).  I like to keep credit card receipts for a while in case I notice any mischarges on my monthly statements.  I use envelopes to keep track of these receipts and label each one with credit card name & billing dates.  Whenever I tossed my receipts in the past, I used to toss the envelopes as well.  But with ~90-100 envelopes being thrown away each year I decided to reuse them by just crossing out the old information and replacing it with new.  This is so silly because I realize that a pack of new envelopes is only a couple dollars, but I just hate to waste!

• Reusing plastic grocery bags.  Another borderline “ridiculously over-the-top” habit or perhaps just smart… Back in the day, plastic bags at grocery stores were all the rage and we always came home each week with at least half a dozen.
  Smart: While many people just threw these bags away, my wife & I used them around the house in various capacities: to line our bathroom wastebaskets, to empty dirt from our vacuum, etc.  We hated letting these bags go to waste.
  Trending towards over-the-top: When grocery stores in our area announced they would ban plastic bags, we purposely tried to accumulate as many as we could.  Once the ban went into effect, we realized that the smaller produce bags were not part of the ban and switched to using these in our household.  So now years later we’ve accumulated a surplus (i.e. closet-full) of both regular grocery bags & produce bags that we are very unlikely to ever run out of.

• The upper range of the thermostat is set to 80.  Ever since I’ve lived on my own, I’ve always set the upper end of my household thermostat to start cooling at 80°F (26.7°C).  Yes, even the upper-70s starts to get hot but it’s not completely unbearable since we use fans as well, especially at night.  I do admit that sometimes it takes a while to fall asleep at night, but I hate thinking about using the A/C since it costs money.  I think this habit originated as I was growing up because my childhood home didn’t have A/C and we always opened windows and/or used fans in the summer.  I’ve started to lighten up in the past couple years and I now turn my thermostat down to 76° or 77° on very hot summer days/nights.  I do admit that my wife and I always chuckle when visitors sometimes complain how hot our house is while we feel like it’s the perfect temperature.

• Turning off lights when leaving the room.  Similar to running the A/C, it always felt silly to pay money to have lights on in a room when nobody is there.  This may have made sense a long time ago when there were only incandescent light bulbs, but with the advent & efficiency of CFLs and LEDs, leaving lights on costs mere pennies.

• I use cold water instead of hot water.  In theory cold water is cheaper because it doesn’t take energy to heat like hot water.  So I have a habit of always using cold water at home, whether it’s for washing clothes or washing my hands.  Unsanitary?  The jury is still out.  Saves money?  Most likely not.  Ridiculously over-the-top?  Of course.  Will I continue to do this?  Absolutely.

• I’ve used the same electric razor for over a decade.  For most of the men who work in an office environment, shaving daily is a necessary evil.  Just doing the math, shaving 5 days a week, 50+ weeks a year is a LOT and should put significant wear & tear on any electronic device. So to my amazement, the electric razor I started using back in early 2014 is still holding up, which makes for a seemingly smart frugal win.  Where it gets ridiculous is that I’ve also been using the SAME blades for over 10 years as well.  Those who use any sort of shaving device know that blades dull over time and for electric razors specifically, the recommended replacement period is every 12-18 months.  Saying that I’m a little overdue is not an over-exaggeration in the least.  So what if it takes me a little longer to shave (because I have to keep going over the same area of my face multiple times), at least I don’t have to shell out $15 minimum on Amazon for new blades!

• I wear the same clothes forever.  This one is probably the culmination of all my natural tendencies – wanting to save money, hating waste, wanting to optimize, and not caring much about aesthetics.  Plus I hate shopping for clothes because nothing seems to fit right anymore – I feel that I’m between sizes and each clothing brand has a different standard of what “large” means to them.  So all of this results in me wearing clothes for as long as I can, literally until they get enough holes & rips that I need to toss them.  I wore my last pair of shoes so long that all the tread wore off and my feet were literally getting wet when it rained due to holes in the soles.  The cool thing is that I still have many clothes from high school & college (~25 years old).  The uncool thing is that I know I could easily afford new clothes every once in a while, especially from somewhere inexpensive like Costco, Target, or Walmart.  Bonus frugal points: Since I’ve been retired and don’t leave the house too often on a day-to-day basis, I usually just wear a single plain-color shirt constantly (dark gray since it matches everything fairly well).  I bought my current shirt at Walmart for $7, but just went to Michael’s (art store) and found that they sell similar, single plain-color shirts for only $2.99!  I bought one to test out and it actually fits better than my Walmart shirt for less than half the price.  Who knew that I’d ever start shopping for clothes at an arts & crafts store!

• I use the same towels forever.  As you’d probably expect, I treat my towels the exact same way as I treat my clothes.  I use a single towel over and over and over until it gets thin enough to see through and I only toss it when there are a significant number of holes.  This is the opposite of how I was raised – when I was living at home with my parents I would use a new towel each day and they were always fluffy & fresh.  When I went to college I bought 7 new towels so that I’d still be able to use a different one each day of the week.  But as my habits changed over the years and I started shifting to using a single towel repeatedly, I surprisingly realized that I’m actually still using some of these same towels over 25 years later!  (I think I have 1 or 2 left of my original 7)

• Samples at Costco.  A variety of free food in bite-size portions… what more do I even have to say?  I mean, my family shops there anyways, so who can pass up some snacks along the way?  My only complaint is that the peak number of sample stations are in the middle of the day, which is precisely the time I try to avoid Costco due to large crowds.

• Eating dinner at Costco every Friday night.   In Part 1 of the Spending Series I mentioned that we mostly eat at home.  Like most families we get tired from a long week of work & school and don’t always feel like cooking.  But instead of going to a normal restaurant that might cost a lot, we used to go to Costco instead.  Sidenote: I’ve been a huge fan of the Costco food court my entire life and still remember when it was called Cafe 150 (in honor of the $1.50 hotdog/drink combo).  When the kids were younger we could easily order dinner AND dessert for our entire family for under $10.  We actually saw a handful of familiar faces each Friday evening, so we knew that we weren’t the only ones with this ingenious (or perhaps crazy) idea.  We kept this tradition until COVID shut things down in early 2020, but have since shifted to ordering a whole Costco pizza to-go and eating it at home instead.  My kids loved Costco food so much that at one point in time my parents asked what their favorite restaurant was and they said “Costco”.  R.I.P. polish sausage and combo pizza.

• Hanging out at Walmart on Saturday nights.  After just reading about our Friday night plans, it should come as no shock that we also used to hang out at Walmart for fun each Saturday.  To be fair, we made the trip to Walmart primarily to take advantage of  significantly cheaper prices, but we turned it into a “fun” event and just another way to get out of the house.  Sometimes we’d buy cheap, little things for the kids in the $1 section, but most of the time we’d just browse and window-shop.  Afterwards we’d either go to Wendy’s (for one of their ever-present limited-time cheap meal deals) or Burger King (because I’d always get coupons in the mail).  Like Costco, our tradition ended because of COVID.  For a while we switched to eating at McDonald’s every Saturday night (curbside pickup) because the food was better quality and it was much closer.  However, since I retired we’ve recently cut-down on McDonald’s and have been cooking more Saturday meals at home since we have a little more time available (and also fully acknowledge that McDonald’s once a week isn’t too healthy).

• My computer is so old… This may sound like the start of a “Yo Mama” joke, but my computer is actually so old that it takes ~30 minutes to boot up.  I’ll turn it on every morning then get coffee and go do something else for half-an-hour until I can start using it.  I admit that I could probably pay to declutter my computer (in fact my anti-virus software offers this service), but I hate to think about spending money on this.  The larger issue is that my computer has a hard time handling all the (podcast) video editing that I’m starting to get into.  Once again, I know that I could probably buy more RAM to speed up my computer, however I hate to spend the money and I’m fine monitoring the number of apps I have open simultaneously to free up memory.

• Purposely not using things to avoid wear & tear.  A couple recurring themes in my life are trying to optimize everything and not wanting to spend money unnecessarily.  One way that I incorporate both of these is by trying to avoid wear & tear on seemingly common items.  For example, I don’t like to use the volume button on my car’s steering wheel or the heated seats because I fear that “excessive use” might lead to eventual replacement (which of course costs money).  I have nice Bose headphones that I’ve never opened because I’m still trying to get as much life as I can out of my 15-year-old cheap Sony headphones (that have long ago lost the foam padding against my ears).  In Part 1 of the Spending Series I mentioned that I was proud of an iPod that I bought on Craigslist.  This is very true, except that I also bought a replacement on Ebay (exact same model), but I’ve avoided using the replacement because I’m still trying to optimize the life of the original, even though it’s falling apart and on its last legs.

• Driving across town to find cheap gas.  This is not a current habit that I have, but I know so many people who do this, including my dad.  On a superficial level I can see where people fixate ONLY on price, while failing to take into account how much gas they burn driving to out-of-the-way places just to save a few cents per gallon.  When I eventually came to this realization myself, I ran the numbers in my head and quickly stopped this practice.  Full disclosure: we actually have a Costco gas station right up the street from us, so fortunately we have the best of both worlds (nearby location & cheapest gas in town), so we fully take advantage of this.

While Part 1 & Part 2 of this Spending Series focused on frugality and saving money, stay tuned for Part 3 where we discuss non-essential spending and then end with Part 4 where we describe the times we actually like to spend a LOT of money.

Links/Resources

• Definition of “Maximization”
• Definition of “Satisficing”
• Taste of Home, “22 Things You Never Knew About the Costco Food Court”

Reader Questions

• What are some ridiculously over-the-top frugal habits you have in your own life?

Leave your answers or comments below – or email us directly at info@epicfinancialjourney.com