tmm99
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- May 15, 2008
- Messages
- 5,223
Just that there is cheap, and there is foolishly splurging (obviously both judgement calls) and there is a large universe in between where someone buys something they really want and will make good use of and gets a good deal on it even if it's not the cheapest option. I don't call the latter foolish splurging although some folks might.
Oh, I get it now. Thanks. I don't call that foolish splurging either if you buy something you truly want and can make good use of it even if it costs more, but I would still call it foolish splurging if you buy something you can't afford, no matter how much you may like it or you can make use of it. Like my brother's case, he liked high-end stuff and bought things according to his taste, and he was happy with his purchases, and that's all good, but he borrowed money from my mom to pay off some debt. So all the luxury stuff he bought is foolish splurging in my book.
As for me, I bought an alkaline water ionizer machine for over $1,000. This was maybe 15 years ago. This was foolish splurging because it was an impulsive buy, and I had no use for it (or got any benefit from it.) But even my foolish splurging isn't very big.
I should have said "frugal" instead of "cheap". I sometimes fall into the cheap useless trap, but I'm getting better at staying on the "good stuff for cheap" side. One extreme example, a pair of summer pajama shorts for $20 seemed expensive to me, so I bought a pair of pillowcases ($10? Can't remember, maybe cheaper) and made two pairs of shorts out of them using a sewing machine. They turned out great, so I have no complaints, but I don't even know why I even bothered to do that. I wouldn't do that now. I'd rather spend my time doing something else since sewing isn't my thing. It was the first year of my retirement, and I think I wanted to tighten the belt as much as I could to see how frugal I could go, or I was simply afraid to spend money.
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