My brother is a cheapskate
Which could also be the title of an entry on his blog.
I, too, have not purchased a pair of running shoes that wasn't on sale or cheap as hell. Ever. My last pair I bought just last month on base were around $29. It is amazing to me that sneakers can cost more than $100, even $200. Maybe more. Who knows. I'm no Dion Sanders.
I am fine with inflation. Because I know how much gas costs in the rest of the world ($7/gallon in England, last I checked), these newsbusting headlines of $3 gas in California don't bother me. Just because cars cost $8,000 in 1982 doesn't mean that I think they should now.
But I'm all about bargains, sales, hunting for lower prices for the same quality. Then I splurge when necessary and take my wife to the Plaza or get Really Interesting Pop-Tart Flavors for my brother for Christmas.
I think I've always been like this. I remember moving back to the states when I was 15 and my parents said they would set up a separate cable hookup for my bedroom, but when I heard it was an extra ten bucks a month, I told them not to bother. Their eyes met. "What a boy we've raised," their expression seemed to say.
The military does not make one rich, but you can be comfortable if you live within your means. As recently as 2001, I was still struggling to make ends meet while owning my first house and first dog, often living paycheck to paycheck (me, not her). College, I would not have survived but for a monthly stipend from my father to augment my lowly Ponderosa tips.
I remember when I was a Second Lieutenant at my first training base in Denver, where the big thing was to play ping-pong on breaks, to the point where if the table in the break room was occupied, we'd slam two tables together and jam binders into the cracks to act as the net. One night at the mall, I decided to buy a six-pack of ping-pong balls, and it occurred to me that five months earlier, my hourly wage for filling the food bar with shredded carrots and wiping spills off of tables could barely fill my freezer with forty-nine-cent Kroger frozen pizzas, and here I was, "rich" enough to blow $1.98 on ping-pong balls.
Today, with the wife and I living a yes for now we'll go on living separate lives, I think we're both doing a good job of keeping costs down. I haven't seen a movie at the regular theater since the end of May. I can see recent (about a month old) movies on base for $3.50 and slightly older ones at the dollar theater. And I've also taken advantage of a little quirk they have in Ohio charging sales tax: if you get a food order to go, there is no sales tax added. So people basically have to pay the State government for the privilege of warming a restaurant's seats with their buttcheeks. So what do I do? Go in, order something to go, and sit in the parking lot eating it in the car, perhaps reading a magazine, waving at the people inside subsidising local school districts. Subway, Chipotle, Schlotsky's Deli, Boston Market, everywhere. I save from forty to eighty cents each time. It's silly, I know. But if I hit five places in a week, that's a couple bucks, eight bucks a month, maybe seventy-five bucks a year.
And that buys a lot of Pop-Tarts.
I, too, have not purchased a pair of running shoes that wasn't on sale or cheap as hell. Ever. My last pair I bought just last month on base were around $29. It is amazing to me that sneakers can cost more than $100, even $200. Maybe more. Who knows. I'm no Dion Sanders.
I am fine with inflation. Because I know how much gas costs in the rest of the world ($7/gallon in England, last I checked), these newsbusting headlines of $3 gas in California don't bother me. Just because cars cost $8,000 in 1982 doesn't mean that I think they should now.
But I'm all about bargains, sales, hunting for lower prices for the same quality. Then I splurge when necessary and take my wife to the Plaza or get Really Interesting Pop-Tart Flavors for my brother for Christmas.
I think I've always been like this. I remember moving back to the states when I was 15 and my parents said they would set up a separate cable hookup for my bedroom, but when I heard it was an extra ten bucks a month, I told them not to bother. Their eyes met. "What a boy we've raised," their expression seemed to say.
The military does not make one rich, but you can be comfortable if you live within your means. As recently as 2001, I was still struggling to make ends meet while owning my first house and first dog, often living paycheck to paycheck (me, not her). College, I would not have survived but for a monthly stipend from my father to augment my lowly Ponderosa tips.
I remember when I was a Second Lieutenant at my first training base in Denver, where the big thing was to play ping-pong on breaks, to the point where if the table in the break room was occupied, we'd slam two tables together and jam binders into the cracks to act as the net. One night at the mall, I decided to buy a six-pack of ping-pong balls, and it occurred to me that five months earlier, my hourly wage for filling the food bar with shredded carrots and wiping spills off of tables could barely fill my freezer with forty-nine-cent Kroger frozen pizzas, and here I was, "rich" enough to blow $1.98 on ping-pong balls.
Today, with the wife and I living a yes for now we'll go on living separate lives, I think we're both doing a good job of keeping costs down. I haven't seen a movie at the regular theater since the end of May. I can see recent (about a month old) movies on base for $3.50 and slightly older ones at the dollar theater. And I've also taken advantage of a little quirk they have in Ohio charging sales tax: if you get a food order to go, there is no sales tax added. So people basically have to pay the State government for the privilege of warming a restaurant's seats with their buttcheeks. So what do I do? Go in, order something to go, and sit in the parking lot eating it in the car, perhaps reading a magazine, waving at the people inside subsidising local school districts. Subway, Chipotle, Schlotsky's Deli, Boston Market, everywhere. I save from forty to eighty cents each time. It's silly, I know. But if I hit five places in a week, that's a couple bucks, eight bucks a month, maybe seventy-five bucks a year.
And that buys a lot of Pop-Tarts.
posted by Dan at 9:25 PM
1 Comments:
Just you wait until I title my next blog entry.
And, I could do with just plain 'ol grape if you could find them.
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