My Financial Journey

I would consider myself a frugal person. I live well within my means and never make a purchasing decision without painstakingly going over the details to make sure I really “need” the item and that I am getting the best absolute price. However always looking to save money can lead you to tread a fine line when it comes to being frugal vs being cheap OR being frugal and being unethical or even worse. I want to discuss some of these borderline issues, give examples of where maybe I stepped over the line, and hopefully get some feedback from my readers as to where they think the line is on these issues.

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Today I went clothes shopping. I bought a lot of new clothes. In fact I spent more money on clothes today than I probably have in the last seven years combined. Now to put that in perspective I can only think of one piece of clothing I have bought in the last 5 years or so (a pair of jeans last year) and well I really only spent $225 today, which for some people may be a casual shopping trip. I never buy clothes, in fact a majority of my wardrobe consists of clothes I wore when I was still in high school. The rest are clothes I’ve received for birthday and Christmas presents from friends and family or received as freebies through work or conferences.
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Well I just talked about the true cost of owning a home and well if I want to stay happily married I’m going to have to spend some money on landscaping this summer. So obviously I want to figure out the most cost effective way to do my landscaping and still end up with a product that my wife would be happy with. I already start the process of frugal lawn care last summer after the Chemlawn guy stopped by an challenged my green thumb manhood and to be honest my lawn ended up looking great. So while I know next to nothing as I write this article about landscaping I do know that if you aren’t careful landscaping can cost a fortune (we just had some professionals stop by last night with some plans and a quote – thus somewhat like the Chemlawn incident I feel personally challenged to show them I can do a much better job for a fraction of the cost)

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The check engine light came on in one of our cars sometime last week. Now before someone starts saying “I told you so that’s what you get for driving a POS”, it’s not on my Ford Escort – that one burned out a long time ago The light came on in my wife’s 1999 Honda Accord which well it’s worth at least 7 Escorts so I actually go to worry about the car getting wrecked which means I’m going to have to do something about the light.

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The Festival of Frugality #59 is up at  Thetaoofmakingmoney.  I always find the festival of frugality to be full of great new ideas on how to save money and this one is no different.  Golbguru did an excellent job of hosting and organizing the carnival into distinct categories.  As usual the carnival is huge and for those of you that haven’t had the opportunity to host a carnival yet, it really is a lot of work.  Anyway my article is down in the car section, go check it out!!

Well if there was one thing and one thing only that I could recommend to people really looking for ways to save money to get out of debt or save some extra money for retirement it would be don’t ever buy a new car. In fact I would go one step further and say spend as little money as possible on your cars.

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I am curious to see what kind of vehicles my readers drive and why they drive the vehicles that they do. Purchasing a vehicle is usually a pretty major decision/expense and depending upon what kind vehicle you buy, how you pay for it (cash, credit), and how you maintain your vehicle can really affect your overall financial picture.

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