My husband gets made fun of at work for some of the things we do to save money. They include movies, videos, eating out, heating the home, home-repairs, vehicles, etc. It’s funny, because people cant imagine living like we live (planning where our money goes,) and I cant imagine living as they live (NOT giving every dollar a name!)
We cannot justify spending $7 a person to watch a movie in the afternoon. Todd’s co-worker goes out with his wife a couple times a month for dinner, a movie, and popcorn. This is a $50+ night out for them. We spend less than $20 for two tickets to the dollar theater and lunch. We are morning people – we cant stay up past 9 or 10 at night.
We see NO VALUE in buying DVD’s. Nor do we see the value of going and renting a DVD at $3 or $4 at the local movie rental place. Todd has a couple of new DVD’s, but they were bought by my mother for his birthday or Christmas, and he watches them frequently. They are Avatar & StarTrek. We get the majority of the new release movies from the library for FREE about 2-4 weeks after they come out on DVD. I’m glad we do this, because a lot of them are so D-U-M-B; I would be TICKED if I paid $4 from the movie rental place to see it. However, we DO subscribe to Netflix. We like having millions of movies at our fingertips whenever we want to watch something different, and the $7.99/month is worth it to us.
Eating Out: We mainly eat out with coupons or at lunch-time. We love a hibatchi-style restaurant in Akron. We went there just the other night for dinner. The thing is, we use our Entertainment Card and get BOGO. We both order waters, and we get the cheapest thing on the menu, and we can eat there for $20 including a nice 25% tip. This meal includes soup, salad, a few pieces of shrimp, our chicken & rice, and sherbert with fortune cookie for dessert. Todd’s co-worker keeps telling us we need to go to a place called Wasabi. The prices are really high, and I don’t see the point in going when we can get the same experience (and we know we love the food!) at our favorite place.
Vehicles:
Todd and I both love our vehicles. They get the best gas mileage in their class, and they both cost around $12,000. Todd constantly tells me about a hybrid car that gets LESS gas mileage than my vehicle and costs TWICE (or more) as much as mine did. It boggles my mind. I am so spoiled with Bianca that I don’t know if I could ever get another vehicle that gets worse gas mileage. Plus, she is so cute. I could never imagine paying more than $15,000 for a vehicle.
I am lucky that Todd agrees with me on all of these areas of our life. And he even wanted the fixer-upper we now live in. Not many husbands would get themselves into the mess we got into with home. We paid $35,000 for our home knowing it was worth a lot more when fixed up. Now, 4 years later, it has been appraised at $94,000, and the renovation isn’t even complete. The mortgage on the home is currently at $56,000 (we took money out for the new septic that was needed at $16,000 and a new roof at $5500.) I couldn’t imagine having a mortgage of $100,000+, even with our income. I LOVE watching our principal go down every month, and look forward to the day that the mortgage is paid off completely.
We are definitely frugal. Some people would call us cheap. But I don’t see our attitudes about money changing even if everything was paid off and we are making what we make at the moment.
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