quote:
Most Americans actually seek a good balance.
As others have mentioned in other threads, you shouldn't stereotype or make general statements.
My saving grace is that I happen to enjoy a lot of activities that don't cost a lot, or actually save me money (e.g. working on my car, cooking meals myself, shopping for sales, etc.). My cheapskat-ery is sort of built into my lifestyle because it's naturally reinforced.
As far as the quality vs. cost thing, I'm probably a moderate, but I do like to think of myself as a "smart shopper" instead of a penny pincher. A couple examples:
1) I roast my own coffee, which turns out to be about $5.25/lb after you figure in the water loss from roasting and whatnot. I get top quality beans for less than half of what I'd pay otherwise, and they're fresher too.
2) Chicken thighs. Nobody buys these at the store, and they practically give them away. Why? I don't know, people are insane, this is the best part of the chicken. Madness. johnsmith will gladly take them off their hands.
3) Irish whiskey. Lol, so many absolutely amazing Irish Whiskeys available for next to nothing because all the GQ-reading yuppies are "too refined" to be drinking such filth. Their loss. Pays to know your way around the beer/wine/spirits world. Shiraz, Riesling? Great wines available for nothing. If someone wants to spend 2 hours dissecting a glass of grape juice, they can. I want to enjoy my wine with a good meal for a decent price, not make love to it. When all else fails, try some good ol water. It’s not just for bathing in you know.
4) Renting. I am a big movie/music person, and am lucky to have three very large and well stocked libraries available to me. Books, music movies for free (legally), and the movie selection in two of them is a hundred times better than Blockbuster, et al. If I can’t find it there, we have a great campus movie store that specializes in obscure films, and rents movies cheap. Most of the movies they crank out nowadays in the theater are **** anyway, so I hardly ever go. (Except to see “Cars”, good movie, took little cousin to see it a week or two ago, and “An Inconvenient Truth”… have to stay up the global warming thing ya know).
5) "Shopping" for entertainment. **** paying big bucks for a night out. We go to see local artists for little or nothing, and take advantage of special events. I take my mom to "Bach's Lunch" in the spring/fall/winter, and it's around $10 for both of us. You get a small catered lunch (get the name now? cute huh?) along with a performance from a local artist, and they're always very good. Last time it was a father/daughter violin recital (child prodigy, she was amazing). Do I need to mention local sports? Have a kid? Children's museums/parks/forests/fishing/have them make dinner with you/take them on a bike ride/read to them/attend local programs and events for kids their age. You have to look for stuff in the papers and on bulletin boards, they're not going to advertise this stuff on television. Having fun doesn't need to cost a lot, and you can soak them in "cultural capital" at the same time. Kids will only know the difference if they're spoiled.
When I was little, my grandparents would pack a cooler full of sandwich stuff, cookies, soda, etc. and take us kids to a hotel to spend the night once in a while. It was always a nice hotel, but nothing fancy, and we would have a blast swimming and fighting until we couldn't take it anymore, and then we would watch movies in the room and eat stuff out of the cooler. They didn't have a lot of money, and we thought living somewhere else for a night was about the coolest thing ever, so it worked out great. If you live on the coast, it would probably be something like this, except on a beach instead. (Public pools around here are not that impressive.) How did I get off on a rabbit trail again? Geez...
6) Longer OCIs with the right oil, and cost-effective preventative maintenance, duh. Thanks BITOG!
7) Buying in bulk/swallowing your pride. You're not going to stop ******** or getting dirty until you're dead, so I stock up on TP and laundry detergent. I split my shopping between different stores, and buy cheap if it's not going to be a big deal. Oooh! I got my falafel mix out of the bulk bin instead of making it from scratch myself! Call the culinary police an have them lock me up! Guess what? Everyone’s going to be half drunk when they’re eating them anyway. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. Just throw in a handful of fresh parsley, and you're good to go. Run the fryer oil through a piece of cheesecloth and use it again within a few days/weeks. No one’s going to die. Best brownie mix in the entire world is from ALDI (rock-bottom-looks-like-a-food-bank budget grocery, saw a man get attacked by a woman with a brick there once). Always in the cart on my monthly trip. Farmer's Market on Saturdays for produce, avoid the overpriced items unless it's a special occasion. $$ for making a fresh peach pie = jack **** if you buy "seconds" from a roadside stand or FM vendor. (And they're better for pie making anyway).
8) Hmmm… this list could go on for a while. I think you get the point. As someone once sang though “you just can’t have it all”. You have to get out your wallet for some things, and the real trick is knowing the when and where to do that, and when to move on I think. Anyway, sorry, I haven’t dumped a big steaming pile on this board for at least a week or two now, hope you forgive me.
