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I've found it's not that hard to balance frugality with, well, spending money. They can actually work quite well together. So while most of my wardrobe is still acquired from thrift-shops, I also bought my most recent car without taking out a loan. I liked not having car payments, but needed a new car for a road trip we're taking next year, so I tuned my budget and saved cash to buy a car outright. Just because you're frugal doesn't mean you can't have nice things. My wife just bought me a $600 leather jacket (that I've admittedly been too frugal to pull the trigger on) -- for $450, new, via eBay. My 10 year old set of Sennheisers were showing their age, so I bought HD595s. MRSP $329, Craigslist price? $100, new in the box. My other car's radiator was shot - and if I can develop loan disbursement software and ecommerce stuff, surely I can handle changing the radiator in my car, and did, saving myself hundreds of dollars. And these are just things I buy, not even going into the stuff I do. On that last one though, there is definitely a balance you have to find between doing stuff yourself and better spending your time. My father would always wash his own car, but I can drive two blocks and spend $20 to have 8 guys and a giant machine wash it more quickly, and I'll pay someone else to change the oil. In short, I think that your idea that "you'll probably be stuck that way for life" is absurd, and you're mistakenly mixing up the terms frugal and cheap. |
Only if your time is worthless.
I say this not to be snarky, but because I found myself having to re-think these same decisions as I moved on from graduate school (where my time really was almost worthless...on a monetary basis), to having a real job that consumes most of my week. Life is too short to spend part of a weekend day (or more) changing a radiator. Much better to pay someone skilled at radiator replacement to make the problem go away (or in my case, to outsource the problem of owning a vehicle to Zipcar).
More generally, the older I get, the more stuff I try to outsource in an effort to viciously guard my spare time. Sometimes it feels a bit bourgoise (e.g. am I really so important that I'd pay someone to clean my apartment?) but it definitely helps to be able to put a dollar value on each hour of your life, and answer the question "would I pay someone $X an hour to do this?" If the answer is no, it's probably better to outsource.