Don't be Cheap

Angie says:

I know that here on this site we're trying to save money, but part of saving money and being thrifty is knowing what to spend money on and what not to spend money on. I'm notoriously cheap when it comes to certain things. Let me tell you about a few lessons learned about this.

A few years ago my husband and I bought a vinyl shed to put our stuff in. for $50 bucks the store would come and put it together for us. Nope, I was going to save $50 bucks and do it myself because I'm a handy person. About $150 and three days taken off of work (to get it done before the snow fell) later I was kicking myself for being cheap. That shed was really hard to figure out. My brother even came over for a few days to help and didn't have much better luck.


If a company offers to put something together FOR you, for a good deal, let them. That shed was a pain in the tuckus.


My next lesson was just recently. In order to save money on painting our house my husband and I have been doing it by hand (I hate T-11 siding, oh how I hate it). Because it has rained almost all the time since we started we've been running outside whenever the sun peeks out. We haven't done anything really this summer because we've been staying home in case it turns out sunny. I broke down and rented a paint sprayer yesterday. Best thing that I did in a long time.

So the moral is: be cheap elsewhere, make your own coffee, don't buy trendy clothes, don't buy a plasma tv when your tv works just fine. Do rent a paint sprayer if it's been raining non-stop for over a month; Do let someone else put together an extremely complicated shed.