Cheapwad Finds--Opposite of Blow That Dough!

Badger said:
When I was first dating my wife I found out she doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs (military), thinks flowers are a waste of money, doesn't care for jewelry, dresses attractively but looks for sales, likes to vacation by camping, etc. It does make it hard to BTD. But I'm not complaining. I'm just glad she agreed to marry me.



Cheers!
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I searched high and low for one of those but no luck. I had to settle for common garden variety! :facepalm::LOL:
 
calmloki said:
Today drove 18 miles to a Lowes for a free Kobalt headlamp. At 7AM. In the fog. Spent some time cluing in the customer service person on the Lowes promo (they hadn't been informed...), then drove 18 miles back. Car gets about 25mpg, gas alone was about $8, tires, wear and tear and such, figure about $0.50/mile so cost for the free headlamp was $18 + an hour or so of my precious time. Dunno if I can afford much more free stuff.
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So funny....
But with the high cost of gas, I did decide this summer not to drive 24 miles total to buy something on sale, as the car cost outweighed the sale savings.
 
calmloki said:
Today drove 18 miles to a Lowes for a free Kobalt headlamp. At 7AM. In the fog. Spent some time cluing in the customer service person on the Lowes promo (they hadn't been informed...), then drove 18 miles back. Car gets about 25mpg, gas alone was about $8, tires, wear and tear and such, figure about $0.50/mile so cost for the free headlamp was $18 + an hour or so of my precious time. Dunno if I can afford much more free stuff.
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This calculation goes thru my mind every time I go to any store. Cost of gas and wear and tear on the car are the primary concerns. This is why I buy a lot of my stuff from Amazon and eBay. Free delivery. Somethings, like tires, I just have to go out for one way or another.
 
CRLLS said:
This calculation goes thru my mind every time I go to any store. Cost of gas and wear and tear on the car are the primary concerns. This is why I buy a lot of my stuff from Amazon and eBay. Free delivery. Somethings, like tires, I just have to go out for one way or another.
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Don't even need to roll your car for tires. Tire Rack now offers mobile service and based on my experience, TR has some of the best tire prices.

https://m.tirerack.com/mobile-tire-installation
 
CRLLS said:
This calculation goes thru my mind every time I go to any store. Cost of gas and wear and tear on the car are the primary concerns. This is why I buy a lot of my stuff from Amazon and eBay. Free delivery.
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I've added Home Depot to that list of retailers. Almost all of what they sell has free delivery, and although usually they're not quite as fast as Amazon (sometimes they are) they don't drag their feet either. I figure three to four days, sometimes two, and on rare occasions it'll stretch to five.

And Home Depot's prices are at least competitive with Amazon and more often than not they're cheaper, especially on tools.
 
Walt34 said:
I've added Home Depot to that list of retailers. Almost all of what they sell has free delivery, and although usually they're not quite as fast as Amazon (sometimes they are) they don't drag their feet either. I figure three to four days, sometimes two, and on rare occasions it'll stretch to five.

And Home Depot's prices are at least competitive with Amazon and more often than not they're cheaper, especially on tools.
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Thanks, I'll have to check out Home Depot's home delivery service. I never really gave it a thought. Although, I do have a Menards about 2 minutes away and Home Depot is only a bit further, about 5 minutes. Most of the time, Menards is less $ than HD and that is before considering Menards' 11% rebate. Sometimes neither carry what I need and have to order somewhere. I like HD's practice of listing the aisle and shelf online.
 
CRLLS said:
Thanks, I'll have to check out Home Depot's home delivery service. I never really gave it a thought. Although, I do have a Menards about 2 minutes away and Home Depot is only a bit further, about 5 minutes. Most of the time, Menards is less $ than HD and that is before considering Menards' 11% rebate. Sometimes neither carry what I need and have to order somewhere. I like HD's practice of listing the aisle and shelf online.
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I love that. Walmart does it also. I can go right in and find it without delay. When I go to Menards, I'm on a hunt and seek mission. But, the one I hate the most is Costco - where they don't even tell you online if the product is in stock at the store. Almost every other store does that. Saves a lot of time if I am sure it's in stock before I go.

One time I really wanted an item. It was at HD. I went there and the item was not on the shelf. I asked an associate and they found it up above in the shipping box. With the staffing shortage, they had not restocked the shelves, but at least their inventory system was working properly. I left with what I came for.
 
Walt34 said:
And Home Depot's prices are at least competitive with Amazon and more often than not they're cheaper, especially on tools.
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These days Amazon is 80% about convenience and 20% price,IMO. I still use them but often it's for items I can't easily find locally or the drive to go get them costs more than whatever I might save.
 
Chuckanut said:
These days Amazon is 80% about convenience and 20% price,IMO. I still use them but often it's for items I can't easily find locally or the drive to go get them costs more than whatever I might save.
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I agree with that but price is still competitive if not usually the best. Walmart.com seems to beat Amazon on many items but not quite as convenient. In general though, the shipping has been pretty quick. I don't pay for Walmart+ so meeting the dollar value of the order for free shipping is inconvenient and they calculate it separate depending on if fulfilled by them or not so adding staples to the order to bring it up to the $ threshold isn't as easy. I have Amazon Prime but about 80% of the value is for media streaming for me (my only service) and the Prime shipping is convenient and gets them quite a bit of business for small things they'd otherwise lose.
 
My main draw at Amazon is the cloud storage for DW’s pictures, which is included with Prime. I’d get rid of Prime were it not for the storage space. Were it not for Prime, I’d definitely shop around more at other stores.
 
Agree that Amazon is not the low price shopping it used to be. I find I can get better prices on things through ebay many times as an Amazon alternative.
 
Amazon used to be our go to especially when we were traveling all summer and moving often. The 2 day delivery made it much easier when buying something. Some of the areas we were in were pretty remote.
Then along came covid and the 2 day delivery has stretched into sometimes a week. Along with road construction at the entrance to the 5 mile mountain road to our community. And Amazon's insistence on using smartpost. The Post office is 20 miles from us and only open 4 hours each day. With the construction that easily takes 3-4 hours for a round trip.
So Amazon has become a "price to beat" for us.
 
As I was riding my bike this morning I thought I should share my hot pink riding gloves with the group. Size L hot pink ones were $7 but the same glove all black was $10. Saved 30% because most men won't buy hot pink gloves and most women have smaller hands than me. Sort of related, my ex-wife used to buy men's athletic shoes on clearance racks as there are a lot of smaller mens sizes on those racks and much cheaper than the women's shoes.
 
DH cuts and dyes my hair. I get compliments all the time. L'Oreal hair dye is $8.99. Hair cut free. If I go to a salon: easily $100+ with tip. I cut his hair as well.

We eat most of our meals at home. Learning new recipes and spices turned into a hobby.

We do not buy new furniture very often, if at all. We did buy a Sony 65" smart TV. But now go to a few if any movies. We used to go once or twice a week.

Our extended family share TV, movie aps. It evens out.
 
Rianne said:
DH cuts and dyes my hair. I get compliments all the time. L'Oreal hair dye is $8.99. Hair cut free. If I go to a salon: easily $100+ with tip. I cut his hair as well.

We eat most of our meals at home. Learning new recipes and spices turned into a hobby.

We do not buy new furniture very often, if at all. We did buy a Sony 65" smart TV. But now go to a few if any movies. We used to go once or twice a week.

Our extended family share TV, movie aps. It evens out.
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DW and I were trying to recall if we have EVER bought any new furniture for our condo (12 years now.) We came up with one thing. We bought a desk chair which lasted about 1 year. The cheap used ones we're using now in it's place are holding up just fine.

Several of our chairs were free from residents moving out of the building. We have a relatively high turn-over, so pickings are usually pretty good (cheap or free.) Who said Hawaii is expensive? (Full disclosure, everything else is expensive.) YMMV
 
Koolau said:
DW and I were trying to recall if we have EVER bought any new furniture for our condo (12 years now.) We came up with one thing. We bought a desk chair which lasted about 1 year. The cheap used ones we're using now in it's place are holding up just fine.

Several of our chairs were free from residents moving out of the building. We have a relatively high turn-over, so pickings are usually pretty good (cheap or free.) Who said Hawaii is expensive? (Full disclosure, everything else is expensive.) YMMV
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My stepson and his wife (recently married) moved from Texas to Hawaii. Don't ask why. They shipped two cars there ($16 K shipping fees). Then a year later got divorced. Then shipped both cars back....you can't fix stupid. I don't know what they did with the furniture.
 
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My friend is dying and we are giving his furniture to the workers in the facility and it’s all new within the past year. We are giving it to the aides that took good care of him.
 
FreeBear said:
650 bucks at Costco for new tires on our 2000-something Camry, after $150 on a new serpentine belt, installed. Not as cheap as Chinese takeout, but sure cheaper than $30-40K to replace it. Less work & headache as well. I hate new car shopping!

Probably will need a new battery since current Costco-Interstate is now over 7 years old, but reluctant to BTD. I've got an electronic battery tester (measures internal resistantance), so maybe I will wait a bit if it tests OK-ish. Love getting "full value" out of stuff! :dance:
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I like value as much as the next guy but I would absolutely replace that 7 year old battery. Keeping the old one is a false economy as I see it.
 
Music Lover said:
Thumb drives are ridiculously cheap. I wouldn't just rely on cloud storage alone.
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I’m far from relying on the cloud. If DW lost her pictures, in would be terrible terrible day. I take great measure to try to make that never happen.

Her computer has a RAID set up so that if one drive goes bad, I can just swap in a new drive. I also backup all her files to an external hard drive. And, they’re all in the cloud (Amazon). The one thing I should do, that I haven’t, is back them up on a different drive and take that drive over to my daughter’s house (get a copy off site). Hopefully, the cloud storage will cover a total loss at home.

In all seriousness, if there’s something else I should do, I’m all ears. She’s got more than 1T of pictures. Not sure exactly how many photos that is but it’s a lot.
 
aja8888 said:
My stepson and his wife (recently married) moved from Texas to Hawaii. Don't ask why. They shipped two cars there ($16 K sipping fees). Then a year later got divorced. Then shipped both cars back....you can't fix stupid. I don't know what they did with the furniture.
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Apparently Koolau has the furniture.
 
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