Frugal in the Fruitlands

Welcome, readers brought in by one of my most popular search terms! If you like this article, you might also like Coupons vs. Generics: Contact Solution, Ten (Other) Ways to Make Your College Education Pay Dividends, or my Spendthrift Sunday series.

Garage sales, yard sales, rummage sales, tag sales, estate sales - whatever they’re called, my husband and I love them. When we lived in Watertown we used to hit all the sales within walking distance. Our set of pilsener glasses came from a rummage sale ($2), as did our queen-sized mattress ($40, and the seller helped us carry it up the hill to our apartment) and a few rare board games (Tales of the Arabian Nights for 50 cents). Altogether, it was a thrifty, healthy way for us to spend couple time together and get out some of the shopping urges.

Alas, Lunenburg is not so pedestrian-friendly, and that, combined with the price of gas, has kept us away from the garage sale finds this year. Recently, however, I was inspired by “Garage sales hunts: using the net to make your hunt more effective” on The Dollar Stretcher, and decided to plan my own gas- and time-saving garage sale route for this weekend. In the process I discovered a wealth of web resources for planning a garage sale hunt.

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Ketsugami raised some interesting points in response to my last article. Specifically, he pointed out that I failed to take into account opportunity cost in my calculations of my true cost for washing a car by hand.

A few points we discussed re: frugality vs. opportunity cost:

• Many frugality guides make the assumption that everyone has infinite time. When considering the value of a particular frugality strategy, it’s important to consider that this is not true Instead, consider what the opportunity cost of that action is–what you save relative what you could be doing with that time instead.
• Your opportunity cost depends on what else is valuable in your life. If you work, your time is worth more, as your amount of available time is decreased. Ketsugami argues that for this reason, a lot of these frugality tips are most optimal to those who don’t work–I think this is probably true.
• If you work, you can conveniently think of your time cost in terms of salary. If you’re a white collar professional, this is roughly equivalent to $20-$30 an hour. However, if you’re working minimum wage, your time cost is much lower.
• Education and location make your time more or less valuable. If you’re highly educated, you can be employed for a greater sum of money, leading to a higher time value. Similarly, if you live in a region with fewer good jobs, your time cost would be less. Think of it this way: if you spend an hour clipping coupons, and save $10, are you saving less than you would be making working for that amount of time? If you work for minimum wage in an area with few jobs (i.e. a rural area), then it may be worth it. For us urban types in white collar jobs, not so much. This is not to knock rural, mimimum wage folks–but there is a reason this type of frugality conjures up scenes from The Waltons.
• This whole equation is complicated by the fact that time and money are not on linear scales, nor are they 100% correlated. For example: you want to give your dying grandmother a gift. Likely the time you put into it is worth more than the money you spend!
• If being frugal is really important to you–for intangible reasons having nothing to do with time or cost–then ignore this. For example, Trent at The Simple Dollar makes his own laundry detergent. From what I can tell, he does this in part because he enjoys making green goo in the kitchen–he has pointed out that you could save about as much money buying detergent from a wholesale club.

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One of the more significant differences between my husband and me is that I take more seriously what I see in print than he does. Hence why I read so many frugality/productivity blogs—I’m looking for advice I can take to heart. Thus, there’s always a point of cognitive dissonance when I see something that personally doesn’t work for me.

Consistently, one of the points that comes up frequently amidst lists of ways to save money or be more frugal is, to quote this article, “Never use a commercial car wash, always do it at home.” I’ll admit, on the face of it, it seems a reasonable way to save money. I’d say it’s about $5-$8 to get your car washed each time, and assuming you have all the equipment you can do it a half hour or less for relatively inexpensive. Right?

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