Frugal in the Fruitlands

Today I’d like to share with you both a link I enjoyed and a link that troubled me.

The Happiness Project writes about Six tips for designing your happiness commandments. As they occur to me I’ve been adding my own happiness commandments to a list. I’m afraid mine suffer from a lack of brevity, and I’m not 100% sure I haven’t confused them with her “Secrets of Adulthood.” So far mine are:

• Be Lise
• If people dislike you for being Lise, they’re not worth your time
• Move
• Start for just 30 minutes now
• Personal appearance reflects inner confidence
• Always bring a book

The Digerati Life hosted a guest post this week, The Cost of Being Overweight. I will give SVB majors kudos to taking care of my biggest objection to this post, which was the headless picture of an overweight person. Ever notice how every article about “the obesity epidemic” is scattered with these? Way to dehumanize the overweight, folks.

I’m not against losing weight, per se, and I applaud Weight Ladder’s (the guest poster’s) tremendous efforts, but my major objection to this article is: why are we not instead outraged the overweight go through life paying by the pound? I have a friend who loves roller coasters, and I am pissed off that he can’t enjoy them because of his weight. It would never occur to me to say, “By the way, if you lost weight, you could fit on more roller coasters!” Why is it okay to say such a thing on a blog, but not to a friend?

I know the guest poster means well, but the posts reads like so many articles already out there about obesity, and again operates from the faulty assumption that the overweight don’t know they’re fat even though the fact is shoved down their throat day after day. Can we put aside the assumption that fat = unhealthy for a moment and applaud any effort to be healthy at any size?

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Right now I’m wearing a cheap black cardigan with shiny buttons that I inherited from my mother. I can be seen wearing it most days, even in summer, as my hedge against overambitious air conditioning. Since I wear it most of the work day, the elbows rub against my desk constantly, and right now there’s a thin spot on the elbow which will soon become a hole. At that point I’ll have to stop wearing it to work.

If this only happened to cheap black cardigans, my story would end there. But I’ve also destroyed not-so-cheap cashmere and wool sweaters in the same way. My elbows + my desk are lethal to clothing.

In Pants Don’t Need a Mission Statement I wrote about the dangers of buying cheap, poorly made clothes. But here are two examples of when it’s better to shop by price than to shop by long-term quality:

1. Heavy duty wear and tear. The wear and tear I put on the elbows of my sweaters is above and beyond normal usage. I love Lands’ End products, but it’s not worth buying a $40 cardigan from them when a $10 cardigan from Target is going to last just as long. Short of finding a sweater made of Kevlar, in fact, I don’t think that spending more will net me a sweater that will last longer. If the wear and tear you put on an item is greater than can be accommodated by buying a higher-quality product, buying cheap will save you money in the long run.

2. Limited time use. I’m at a phase in my life where I’m changing weight a lot (unfortunately, mostly increasing). There was a point in time where I could not fit into clothes I bought six months previous. Thankfully, I had purchased those clothes on sale at Marshall’s. I’m at the point now where if I gain anymore weight, however, those $100 Lands’ End wool pants are not gonna fit, and that’s a depressing thought.

Similarly, I purchased an electric lawn mower for $20 at a garage sale. It’s not heavy duty by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s light and easy to use and will last until I manage to eradicate all traces of my lawn with permanent plantings or hardscapes. In this case the amount you spend should be in proportion to how long you can expect to use the tool.

Readers: are there any other circumstances you can think of when it’s better to buy cheap than to buy quality?

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Many, many moons ago, my article Let’s Not Forget Depression is a Dirty Word appeared in the Festival of Frugality #132, hosted at Budgets Are Sexy. Some of my favorite articles from that edition included:

• Top Ten Tips - Taking A Staycation at Tip Diva. I need to do this. Every time I come back from a vaction I come back exhausted, feeling like I need a vacation from THAT vacation. It just seems more logical to stay at home and enjoy what you have.
• The Importance of Learning to Let Go at The Personal Financier. I think this dovetails well with my own entry in the festival.

I also wanted to share this article of note:

• Ten Tactics for Improving Your Luck at The Simple Dollar. I’m not sure I agree with #2, “keep a reasonable amount of cash on you at all times,” but I’ve already discussed why cash flows through my hands like water.

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