I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘musings’ Category

I remember when I first got married, I used to look at the mishmash of my spouse’s and my merged silverware and look forward to the day when we could buy a new set that all matched and looked nice together.  I needed new silverware that matched – or at least, that’s how I felt at the time.  The fact that this is one of my clearest memories of my early married days says something about me, or maybe how mundane and mellow our life was back then.

Today I look at that same silverware drawer (different location, same silverware) and see something completely different.  A collection of silverware that is functional, in good repair, and fills our needs.  Instead of wanting it to be coordinated and pretty, I simply need pieces we can use and are in good working order, and that’s what we have.

Some of it is even pretty. 

It is not just about becoming more consciously frugal – it is figuring out what, to us, really matters.   How has your perspective changed over the past year or several years (or even shorter than that) about what you want versus what you need?  Is there anything that you used to feel you needed that now, isn’t even a want?

Last year around this time, I talked about my love for gift cards.  Unlike many people, I love gift cards.  I understand that sometimes they can be an impersonal gift, and a poor substitute for just giving cash, but still I love them.  For me, a gift card is like giving the gift of shopping.  I may have tamed my spending ways, and I may be rekindling my inner saver spirit, but that does not mean that I have suddenly become a hater of shopping.  I find shopping fun (when I’m not overspending in the process) and although grocery and drug store shopping is a weekly treat for me, I also enjoy shopping just for the fun of it.   And gift cards are a way to do that, for me.

(Note on drug store shopping:  I have gotten to the point that I have not spent actual out of pocket money in Walgreens or CVS for several months now, I roll ECBs at CVS into new ECBs or use my Walgreens gift card to earn more money on my gift card.  I do not recommend randomly shopping at drug stores weekly for just general items with no plan – drug stores are expensive.)

Gift cards, like any other gift, can be a thoughtful one or a thoughtless one.  Gift cards get a bad rap in part because people just buy them without thinking and hand them out as gifts instead of learning what the person they are getting a gift for actually likes.    If you just buy a random gift card for a store you have no idea if the recipient likes (or even has in their area… it has happened to me!) then it isn’t a very good gift.  But if you are thoughtful about it, and choose a gift card you know the recipient will enjoy, a gift card is a perfectly valid gift.  For me. 

But this year, there is an added complexity – researching the company you are buying a gift card for to see if they are in imminent danger of bankruptcy.  If a company goes bankrupt, their gift cards may no longer be valid.  A gift card is like a loan you’ve made to the company.  Which in many cases is no problem, but sometimes, well…

At least I have already used all my Linens N Things gift cards.

So this year, if you are giving the gift of gift cards, do some research.  Research is no guarantee but you’ll at least have tried to avoid companies that may not make it to the new year.  Patrick at Cash Money Life put together a list of companies you might want to avoid, which is a good start to your “no bankrupt gift cards” research.

This year I’m asking for CVS gift cards. 

Now that yard sale season is over, I have a confession to make.  This year, I didn’t shop via yard sales hardly at all.  I did browse the ones in my own neighborhood the weekend we had our big annual association yard sale, but only because it was fun to take a walk with my kids and do so.  I also went out to yard sales the weekend my parents were in town, because my mom and I have fun together motoring about for deals.  But otherwise, I didn’t go out a single weekend and brave the yard sale frenzy that is my city of residence.

I used to be an avid yard sale shopper, and have sung the praises of the ability to find great deals by combing the yard sales, so what happened?  Yard sales are still a great place to find bargains.  But it just lost its appeal this year.  Basically there were three reasons I unplugged my yard sale habit.

It’s a lot of needle in a haystack hunting.  

Although fun, yard sales are a hodge podge of whatever the people had lying around, and I had specific items I was targeting.  As my kids get older the chances of finding them clothes at a yard sale, at least here, diminish significantly.  And since the kids also grow slower, the clothing gets a lot more use from the first owner than they did when the kids were babies.

I could find as good (or close to) deals elsewhere with attention and effort.

Shopping the clearance aisle at the appropriate stores didn’t always yield as good a deal as I could find at a yard sale, but often if I paid attention, it could come close.  And it was one-stop shopping.  I didn’t have to drive around an entire neighborhood (or several).

Gas is expensive, and I had to cut costs.

Driving around several neighborhoods this past summer each weekend could easily have added an entire tank of gas per month to our costs.  And when a tank of gas is $50 or even more, that’s a significant cost to find bargains.

I still find yard sales fun, and I may do some yard sale shopping next year for sport.  But as my ability to shop effectively at retail stores increases, the bargain side of yard sale shopping diminishes.  Although if I still had a tiny baby – I’d probably hit up a yard sale.  90% of yard sales here have baby clothes. 

Last night we put up our Christmas tree.  We typically spend the actual holiday with my parents and inlaws, so we haven’t had a huge tree or decorations at our own house for several years now.  But my son is now four, and notices things like Christmas trees and decorations, and requested that we do something at our house this year.

So we got our tree out of the attic and put it up.  It is a small tree – my spouse likes to call it the “Charlie Brown Tree” after the cartoon special with the tiny tree.  I was worried that my son would be unhappy and disappointed in the tree and its lack of grandeur.  But he was truly thrilled.  I collected some bows and other festive odds and ends we had around the house to use as ornaments, and a string of green lights that was originally meant to be an outside Halloween decoration, and we livened up the little tree for display in our playroom.

And as I watched my son look upon the tree with delight, I realized that it was my own internal expectations of what I thought Christmas decorations and a tree should be that was shaping my expectation of my son’s reaction.  I thought my son would be disappointed because I internally expect a Christmas tree to be a huge thing with tons of lights and fancy decorations.  But my son has no such expectation.  he probably will in the future, but for now, he is very happy to have what we have.

So, going forward, I am attempting to try and let go of my preconceived notions.  A lot of what I think is normal or average or expected is based upon ideas I’ve picked up somewhere about how something should be.  But it doesn’t have to be.  Life can be what we make it, not what I expect it to be from the start.  As long as I realize that my expectations are built from what I’ve observed instead of what I truly need.

A few days ago, the “Check Engine” light came on my car.  As some of you might recall, we had our engine completely replaced last January, and it had a 12 month/12,000 warranty.  So I asked my spouse to drop the car off at the dealer we had the engine replaced at to see if the repair needed was covered under said warranty.

Imagine my surprise when my spouse emailed me and said that the repair needed (an oxygen sensor) wasn’t covered, but in fact, if we chose to have the work done elsewhere we’d have to pay a $70 fee just for telling us what was wrong.  I’m not surprised the work isn’t covered, but the $70 fee really irks me considering that we have a warranty on the engine.  I called Saturn and argued with the service manager for a while about the absurdity of having a warranty that I have to pay $70 to see if I can use it, but eventually I lost that battle.

And for the convenience part.  The car (again not surprisingly) needs more work.   Rear brakes and there is a power steering leak.  And we got a quote for all that too.  An absurdly high quote (it is the dealer, after all).   It’d be simple to just leave the car there and have it fixed, it is already there, after all.  And with a busy life, it is a pain to coordinate things to get the car fixed as it is.  I must admit, the thought of just having everything done there today crossed my mind.

But lucky for me, my spouse has Friday off, and even though using my “Black Friday” to get my car fixed wasn’t the plan, that’s what I’m doing.  I called a few places, looked up a few online coupons, and am bringing my car somewhere else Friday morning for most of the work for significantly less cost.

Except the oxygen sensor.  With the $70 fee we have to pay if we don’t have the work done there, if I refuse that I can’t get it done anywhere else for less.  So this time, Saturn wins.  I’ll know better next time.   Since my warranty runs out in less than 2 months anyway, with any luck I won’t have another reason to try and enforce it, and I definitely won’t be taking the car there again for other unrelated repairs.