A lot of things can be kept "alive" longer with good maintenance. I finally ran down the right Meltonian shoe polish (the best & in lots of colors) for a pair of my classic leather boar shoes and with some polish - voila! nicely respectable casual shoes again. You can also waterproof winter boots and protect them from salt damage. I spray fabric protector on canvas shoes and bags, etc. to help keep them clean longer. Learn which items can be handwashed. Just wore a linen blouse that said "dry clean," but you can certainly WASH & even bleach linen! Try to do as many small repairs as you can. I always keep needle & thread and a variety of glues on hand - as well as an assortment of nails & screws. Iron-on bonding fabric can be great for some rips. Cheap things for me are fashionable items that will only be ok for a season - so why splurge? I can then recycle them through a thrift shop! Remember, Goodwill, and so on have the capacity to sell used clothing as RAGS by the POUND - so a stained tshirt will have a 2nd or 3rd life after all!
In addition to the points by Chris I'd add most train stations are in the city centers, close to the sights and places you probably want to be. This saves time and money transporting yourself to and from the airport when traveling within Europe.
I own an infinitiy m45, I had a 6 inch wide dent in the bumper. And I was able to fix it with just heating up the bumper with the hair dryer while lightly pushing on the bumper from diffrent side to get it to pop and it did. The bumper look as good as new.
It's certainly easy to be led astray. Buying a cheap, crappy item that turns out to be so unsatisfactory that you never use it, so it never wears out, so you never get to replace it--it's a classic failure, and one that frugal people are perhaps more prone to than others.
Those no perfect escape. It helps to remember that, putting aside the very few things you actually need (water, food), the only good reason to buy anything is that you want it.
For me, like for Guest above, "wearing out" is largely an after-the-fact metric: If something wears out (as long as it doesn't wear out too quickly), it's a good sign. It means that I bought something that I actually used. It's always sad to find a "perfectly good" thing in the close--it means that I bought something that I didn't use.
Even better, of course, is to use something, and use something, and use something and have it just last and last. Bicycles often fall into that category. There's no reason that a bicycle can't last for decades (with occasional replacement of tires and handlebar tape, and less frequent replacement of cables, chains, gears, bearings, etc.).
I love how uneducated people claim the are "professionals" or "experts" and therefore MUST be right, when they have NO idea...LOL. If you understand basic chemistry and chemical reactions, you'll understand how the ammonia breaks down into nice, avaialble form of nitrogen, which your plants need to grow. Harmless once sprayed on the lawn, and very beneficial.
Learn your biology and you'll see the ingredients in the beer make a wonderful food source for the natural microorganisms that live in the soil. These microorganisms are THE key players in whether your plants grow well and healthy or not, so stimulating them is a great thing. The Coke , as long as it is NOT diet, provides sugars that feed the microorganisms as well, and also a phosphorous in the form of phosphoric acid, study Fluid Dynamics and you'll understand why the dish soap reduces surface tension of soil molecules, allowing the mixture to better penetrate, and if your mouthwash is like scope or listerine, they are mostly alcohol, which affects the reproductive cycle of insects. While adding a vast amount of alcohols to your lawn would be a disaster, the small quantity used here is harmless, certainly MUCH less harmless than the ingredients of most commercial non-organic fertilizers. Using Organic fertilizers is always a good thing, but, now that it is "cool" to be "green", there are a lot of shyster hucksters selling their "organic fertilizers" which really aren't organic, or worthwhile, and they want to charge a FORTUNE for that stuff. There are other ingredients that would work better, like blackstrap molasses instead of coke, etc, and you can study and find less expensive ingredients to use. The thing is, you can use the least expensive generic products; they are no better or worse than name brands. Both usually come from the same chemical factory in houston or new jersey anyway LOL The reason this may not work so well for you at first is because you may have ruined your soil by spraying fertilizers, pesticides, etc on it for years...you have killled the important constituents living in your soil. It takes time for them to build up to healthy levels again.
I think one of the most interesting changes has been the nearly complete loss of tinkers and repairmen as a class. It used to be that when most things broke -- especially due to some minor problem -- it was worth getting them repaired. These days, it's not. The combination of cheap energy, cheap global labor, and rapid technology change has resulted in a culture of disposable items. DVD players are a good example: they're so cheap to manufacture, you can buy a new one for less than you'd have to pay a repairman to even crack the case. There are still repairmen for big-ticket items, like cars and appliances, but tinkers, tailors, and cobblers have nearly gone out of existence.
As an ultrarunner, I do very high mileage, so go through running shoes, but I'm not the sort who buys into the shoe industry's mantra that they should be replaced every 300 miles. I buy the sort of shoes that work best for me, wear them until they almost literally fall off my feet, then replace them with the same kind. And I have and still use some running shirts I've had for 15 years.
Buying a new TV might fall into your category of obsolescence. Ours was bought in 1992, and replaced one that was 19 years old that still had the twist handle channel changer on it, but was working fine. We bought the current one just because we wanted one that worked with a remote. Real high tech stuff, eh? One day I was perusing the lovely flat screen HD devices at Costco when I struck up a conversation with another consumer who, like me, has a perfectly functioning older TV. I said to him: "Sometimes I wish mine would just break!"
Yet another reason to buy something new is just because you want to. We moved into our present house last August. While it's a terrific place that we love, it's not perfect. My wife just hates the kitchen sink, and frankly so do I -- for various good reasons. So we're thinking about ways we might remodel that part.
I try to buy good quality items as much as possible. When I see something wearing out, I can't help but feel pleased and think "I've gotten my money's worth out of this item".
Interesting points :) Lately, I've been aiming to wear things out. I sometimes buy things and then don't want to wear or use them for fear of damaging them. But what's the point in having something that just sits on a shelve or hangs in the closet? I didn't buy a dress to look at it, after all.
P.S. Have you tried taking your shoes to a repair shop? Sometimes they can breath new life into an old pair. In the past, I've had expensive shoes re-soled for a fraction of a cost of what a new pair.
Great tips! I like the one about the update with accessories. I carry a pashmina with me, especially this time of year when air conditioning in offices gets cranked up!
One thing I would add is carry a sewing kit! A sewing kit stashed in the desk or car would cover a lot of the contingencies listed above.
I know people are going to say "well what if you don't know how to sew?", to which I respond "why don't you know how to sew?" It's a great skill to have if you're looking to save money.
How do you fail at pluging something in?! I feel bad for your boyfriend/girlfriend if you even have one. And for voiding the warranty and acting like you didn't know WOW that has earned you the "King Dumbass" title. Even a fucking chimp could tell you anything you do to any object with a warranty voids it. NO company covers retards like you sorry man companies just can't afford it to many dumb Americans like you lurking on the shortbus!
As for the external antenna jack and this all being a joke.....WRONG!! The external antenna jack is very real. This is something we've all done at some point may it have been on a radio, TV, or your car everyone has ghetto rigged an antenna before with some copper wire or coat hanger lol. Listen people please do yourself a favor.... If you don't have some basic reasoning skills don't attempt stuff like this. Exposed bare wires around electronic components is dangerous if you don't know how to take the proper steps to prevent damage to your phone.
Great post! I often feel people are disturbed by the fact that I can do something they can't do. I haven't bought into the more than you can afford treadmill . . .
If you spent the money then you should pay it back. BUT - and this is a huge but - the credit card companies have been increasing their fees, changing terms at will with little notice to the consumer, and charging exorbitant interest fees while reaping huge profits. When someone takes out a loan at, say, 10.99% to pay for something on their credit card the expectation is that if your account remains in good standing and you as a consumer follow the terms of the creditnagreement you will repay that loan at the initial APR of 10.99%. However, credit card companies are significantly increasing interest rates on even good customers' (e.g., those without any missed/late payments) cards making it near impossible for people to budget to pay off their credit cards. An ideal situation IMO would be to reduce the balance so that the the consumer pays for the purchases themselves and the credit card companies eat all of the fees/interest charges that they have tacked onto people's accounts unnecessarily.
@Carolyn: And here I thought Andrea just really enjoyed the post! Seriously, thanks Andrea, for the mention of my side hustle post. I enjoyed all the other links as well.
The article was very informative and written in an easy to read style. I also enjoyed almost all of the comments. I was especially impressed that only a very few people became negative. Thanks for the links that were shared. They have been stored in my bookmarks for future reference.
..they find it is cheaper than renting cars. They like the hourly concept. However, it leads to hurry up, we gotta finish dinner, our car's meter's running...usually a rent of a car is for the 24 hour period.
They say the cars shared has always been clean, but your mileage may vary, so to speak.
I like this article. It's more about how others perceive your actions & abstentions than about what kind of decisions you should you make. I hadn't really thought about how my personal decisions (like not eating out) might be perceived by my co-workers. I never thought about it in that way.
Still, you should always do what you think is right, even if others might not understand right away. Their opinions shouldn't coerce you going along with the crowd, but you need to take those opinions and misunderstandings into account. Seeing yourself the way other perceive you is very hard, and maybe it's a matter of having realistic expectations, not making others feel "left out" or trying to act "better than the rest of us." That doesn't win many converts.
I see this I myself when I sell on craigslist. Buyers will say "I don't drive, but..." when I live near Glendale and they live in Santa Monica, as if because they don't drive I should drive over to them at my own time and expense so they can hem and haw over the price or decide whether they really want it. People like that are annoying and selfish. They have the internet (they're reading craigslist after all) so they have Google Maps. And they can see in my post where I live. So there's nothing stopping them from looking it up. I know it's hard with 2 strangers over email to negotiate a polite and fair agreement, so I try to be patient. I used to "not drive" and I remember being an imposition on others back then (always needing a ride, being limited by the bus schedule, etc.).
Vegetarians do this too. "Oh, I'm a vegetarian... I don't eat meat..." Yeah, you know you don't have to explain it to me. Most of us, by now, know what that means. The vegetarians who give all the other vegetarians a bad name are like finicky little 5 year olds who crinkle up their mouths unless you feed them only what they like. I feel like saying "Did you bring your own food?!" It's very manipulative, a way of forcing others to indulge you, unless you're a considerate vegetarian who does their best to be easy to feed. But I have my own eating preferences too (there's certain food I just can't bring myself to eat, not even to be polite!) and I remember how others have had to accommodate me at some point. I try to be easy to feed, but I find it too easy to get annoyed when other people claim "special needs" when it's really just something they decided at some point. Being lactose intolerant, that's not a decision or indulgence. Allergies too, you need to respect anything that can induce anaphylaxis. Kosher or religious diets, yeah, you've got to honor your mother and father. But diets people just pick up, just to feel special or superior, that's annoying.
But it's funny. I'm so quick to see this in others. But I'm so slow to see it in myself. It's like people who leave long, rambling replies to blog articles. Now that's annoying. I hate people like that. What are they thinking?!!
A lot of things can be kept "alive" longer with good maintenance. I finally ran down the right Meltonian shoe polish (the best & in lots of colors) for a pair of my classic leather boar shoes and with some polish - voila! nicely respectable casual shoes again. You can also waterproof winter boots and protect them from salt damage. I spray fabric protector on canvas shoes and bags, etc. to help keep them clean longer. Learn which items can be handwashed. Just wore a linen blouse that said "dry clean," but you can certainly WASH & even bleach linen! Try to do as many small repairs as you can. I always keep needle & thread and a variety of glues on hand - as well as an assortment of nails & screws. Iron-on bonding fabric can be great for some rips. Cheap things for me are fashionable items that will only be ok for a season - so why splurge? I can then recycle them through a thrift shop! Remember, Goodwill, and so on have the capacity to sell used clothing as RAGS by the POUND - so a stained tshirt will have a 2nd or 3rd life after all!
You can also get rid of bleach stains on black clothes by filling in with marker.
In addition to the points by Chris I'd add most train stations are in the city centers, close to the sights and places you probably want to be. This saves time and money transporting yourself to and from the airport when traveling within Europe.
This was the best post, because it instructed people on how to fight back (i.e. notify the Federal Reserve Consumer of Netspends hoax via http://www.federalreserveconsumerhelp.gov/FormComplaint.cfm)...thanks.
I own an infinitiy m45, I had a 6 inch wide dent in the bumper. And I was able to fix it with just heating up the bumper with the hair dryer while lightly pushing on the bumper from diffrent side to get it to pop and it did. The bumper look as good as new.
It's certainly easy to be led astray. Buying a cheap, crappy item that turns out to be so unsatisfactory that you never use it, so it never wears out, so you never get to replace it--it's a classic failure, and one that frugal people are perhaps more prone to than others.
Those no perfect escape. It helps to remember that, putting aside the very few things you actually need (water, food), the only good reason to buy anything is that you want it.
For me, like for Guest above, "wearing out" is largely an after-the-fact metric: If something wears out (as long as it doesn't wear out too quickly), it's a good sign. It means that I bought something that I actually used. It's always sad to find a "perfectly good" thing in the close--it means that I bought something that I didn't use.
Even better, of course, is to use something, and use something, and use something and have it just last and last. Bicycles often fall into that category. There's no reason that a bicycle can't last for decades (with occasional replacement of tires and handlebar tape, and less frequent replacement of cables, chains, gears, bearings, etc.).
@Lynn: Welcome! Good to see you here.
I love how uneducated people claim the are "professionals" or "experts" and therefore MUST be right, when they have NO idea...LOL. If you understand basic chemistry and chemical reactions, you'll understand how the ammonia breaks down into nice, avaialble form of nitrogen, which your plants need to grow. Harmless once sprayed on the lawn, and very beneficial.
Learn your biology and you'll see the ingredients in the beer make a wonderful food source for the natural microorganisms that live in the soil. These microorganisms are THE key players in whether your plants grow well and healthy or not, so stimulating them is a great thing. The Coke , as long as it is NOT diet, provides sugars that feed the microorganisms as well, and also a phosphorous in the form of phosphoric acid, study Fluid Dynamics and you'll understand why the dish soap reduces surface tension of soil molecules, allowing the mixture to better penetrate, and if your mouthwash is like scope or listerine, they are mostly alcohol, which affects the reproductive cycle of insects. While adding a vast amount of alcohols to your lawn would be a disaster, the small quantity used here is harmless, certainly MUCH less harmless than the ingredients of most commercial non-organic fertilizers. Using Organic fertilizers is always a good thing, but, now that it is "cool" to be "green", there are a lot of shyster hucksters selling their "organic fertilizers" which really aren't organic, or worthwhile, and they want to charge a FORTUNE for that stuff. There are other ingredients that would work better, like blackstrap molasses instead of coke, etc, and you can study and find less expensive ingredients to use. The thing is, you can use the least expensive generic products; they are no better or worse than name brands. Both usually come from the same chemical factory in houston or new jersey anyway LOL The reason this may not work so well for you at first is because you may have ruined your soil by spraying fertilizers, pesticides, etc on it for years...you have killled the important constituents living in your soil. It takes time for them to build up to healthy levels again.
I think one of the most interesting changes has been the nearly complete loss of tinkers and repairmen as a class. It used to be that when most things broke -- especially due to some minor problem -- it was worth getting them repaired. These days, it's not. The combination of cheap energy, cheap global labor, and rapid technology change has resulted in a culture of disposable items. DVD players are a good example: they're so cheap to manufacture, you can buy a new one for less than you'd have to pay a repairman to even crack the case. There are still repairmen for big-ticket items, like cars and appliances, but tinkers, tailors, and cobblers have nearly gone out of existence.
This would be an interesting read. Yes, please.
As an ultrarunner, I do very high mileage, so go through running shoes, but I'm not the sort who buys into the shoe industry's mantra that they should be replaced every 300 miles. I buy the sort of shoes that work best for me, wear them until they almost literally fall off my feet, then replace them with the same kind. And I have and still use some running shirts I've had for 15 years.
Buying a new TV might fall into your category of obsolescence. Ours was bought in 1992, and replaced one that was 19 years old that still had the twist handle channel changer on it, but was working fine. We bought the current one just because we wanted one that worked with a remote. Real high tech stuff, eh? One day I was perusing the lovely flat screen HD devices at Costco when I struck up a conversation with another consumer who, like me, has a perfectly functioning older TV. I said to him: "Sometimes I wish mine would just break!"
Yet another reason to buy something new is just because you want to. We moved into our present house last August. While it's a terrific place that we love, it's not perfect. My wife just hates the kitchen sink, and frankly so do I -- for various good reasons. So we're thinking about ways we might remodel that part.
I try to buy good quality items as much as possible. When I see something wearing out, I can't help but feel pleased and think "I've gotten my money's worth out of this item".
Good post!
Interesting points :) Lately, I've been aiming to wear things out. I sometimes buy things and then don't want to wear or use them for fear of damaging them. But what's the point in having something that just sits on a shelve or hangs in the closet? I didn't buy a dress to look at it, after all.
P.S. Have you tried taking your shoes to a repair shop? Sometimes they can breath new life into an old pair. In the past, I've had expensive shoes re-soled for a fraction of a cost of what a new pair.
Great tips! I like the one about the update with accessories. I carry a pashmina with me, especially this time of year when air conditioning in offices gets cranked up!
One thing I would add is carry a sewing kit! A sewing kit stashed in the desk or car would cover a lot of the contingencies listed above.
I know people are going to say "well what if you don't know how to sew?", to which I respond "why don't you know how to sew?" It's a great skill to have if you're looking to save money.
How do you fail at pluging something in?! I feel bad for your boyfriend/girlfriend if you even have one. And for voiding the warranty and acting like you didn't know WOW that has earned you the "King Dumbass" title. Even a fucking chimp could tell you anything you do to any object with a warranty voids it. NO company covers retards like you sorry man companies just can't afford it to many dumb Americans like you lurking on the shortbus!
As for the external antenna jack and this all being a joke.....WRONG!! The external antenna jack is very real. This is something we've all done at some point may it have been on a radio, TV, or your car everyone has ghetto rigged an antenna before with some copper wire or coat hanger lol. Listen people please do yourself a favor.... If you don't have some basic reasoning skills don't attempt stuff like this. Exposed bare wires around electronic components is dangerous if you don't know how to take the proper steps to prevent damage to your phone.
Great post! I often feel people are disturbed by the fact that I can do something they can't do. I haven't bought into the more than you can afford treadmill . . .
Great list! People fall into the cycle of easy-- and easy is expensive . . .
If you spent the money then you should pay it back. BUT - and this is a huge but - the credit card companies have been increasing their fees, changing terms at will with little notice to the consumer, and charging exorbitant interest fees while reaping huge profits. When someone takes out a loan at, say, 10.99% to pay for something on their credit card the expectation is that if your account remains in good standing and you as a consumer follow the terms of the creditnagreement you will repay that loan at the initial APR of 10.99%. However, credit card companies are significantly increasing interest rates on even good customers' (e.g., those without any missed/late payments) cards making it near impossible for people to budget to pay off their credit cards. An ideal situation IMO would be to reduce the balance so that the the consumer pays for the purchases themselves and the credit card companies eat all of the fees/interest charges that they have tacked onto people's accounts unnecessarily.
@Carolyn: And here I thought Andrea just really enjoyed the post! Seriously, thanks Andrea, for the mention of my side hustle post. I enjoyed all the other links as well.
I was contacted by the law firm of Dewy, Cheatham , and Howe for a debt I never owed. Could this be a scam?
Thanks for the comments all - I certainly plan to use car share programs when I'm living in urban centres.
And thanks for the attention to detail: "air" has been fixed. Cheers!
The article was very informative and written in an easy to read style. I also enjoyed almost all of the comments. I was especially impressed that only a very few people became negative. Thanks for the links that were shared. They have been stored in my bookmarks for future reference.
Hi friends, there ist the possibility to deposit money in a swiss bank. Swiss bank are absolutly secret for swiss people.
Simply obtain a credit from a swiss citzen and deposit the money to his bank account.
I will do this for 5-10% of the deposit amount.
..they find it is cheaper than renting cars. They like the hourly concept. However, it leads to hurry up, we gotta finish dinner, our car's meter's running...usually a rent of a car is for the 24 hour period.
They say the cars shared has always been clean, but your mileage may vary, so to speak.
I like this article. It's more about how others perceive your actions & abstentions than about what kind of decisions you should you make. I hadn't really thought about how my personal decisions (like not eating out) might be perceived by my co-workers. I never thought about it in that way.
Still, you should always do what you think is right, even if others might not understand right away. Their opinions shouldn't coerce you going along with the crowd, but you need to take those opinions and misunderstandings into account. Seeing yourself the way other perceive you is very hard, and maybe it's a matter of having realistic expectations, not making others feel "left out" or trying to act "better than the rest of us." That doesn't win many converts.
I see this I myself when I sell on craigslist. Buyers will say "I don't drive, but..." when I live near Glendale and they live in Santa Monica, as if because they don't drive I should drive over to them at my own time and expense so they can hem and haw over the price or decide whether they really want it. People like that are annoying and selfish. They have the internet (they're reading craigslist after all) so they have Google Maps. And they can see in my post where I live. So there's nothing stopping them from looking it up. I know it's hard with 2 strangers over email to negotiate a polite and fair agreement, so I try to be patient. I used to "not drive" and I remember being an imposition on others back then (always needing a ride, being limited by the bus schedule, etc.).
Vegetarians do this too. "Oh, I'm a vegetarian... I don't eat meat..." Yeah, you know you don't have to explain it to me. Most of us, by now, know what that means. The vegetarians who give all the other vegetarians a bad name are like finicky little 5 year olds who crinkle up their mouths unless you feed them only what they like. I feel like saying "Did you bring your own food?!" It's very manipulative, a way of forcing others to indulge you, unless you're a considerate vegetarian who does their best to be easy to feed. But I have my own eating preferences too (there's certain food I just can't bring myself to eat, not even to be polite!) and I remember how others have had to accommodate me at some point. I try to be easy to feed, but I find it too easy to get annoyed when other people claim "special needs" when it's really just something they decided at some point. Being lactose intolerant, that's not a decision or indulgence. Allergies too, you need to respect anything that can induce anaphylaxis. Kosher or religious diets, yeah, you've got to honor your mother and father. But diets people just pick up, just to feel special or superior, that's annoying.
But it's funny. I'm so quick to see this in others. But I'm so slow to see it in myself. It's like people who leave long, rambling replies to blog articles. Now that's annoying. I hate people like that. What are they thinking?!!