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Are You Prodigal?

August 19, 2013 By Shane Ede 11 Comments

I have to admit a bit of ignorance here folks.  For years, I associated the word Prodigal with the word Prodigious.  They have the exact same root structure, only different suffixes.  Prodig -al -ious.  Whoops.  The story of the Prodigal Son should have tipped me off, but never did.  It wasn’t until I was reading the opening chapter of Popes and Bankers (that I received for review) that I realized my mistake.  Here’s the definition of Prodigal as it is shown at dictionary.com:

–adjective
1.wastefully or recklessly extravagant: prodigal expenditure.
2.giving or yielding profusely; lavish (usually fol. by of or with): prodigal of smiles; prodigal with money.
3.lavishly abundant; profuse: nature’s prodigal resources.

–noun
4.a person who spends, or has spent, his or her money or substance with wasteful extravagance; spendthrift.

You can be prodigal, or you can be a prodigal.  To me, there are several words that jump out from that definition.  Wastefully.  Extravagant. Lavish.  With the exception of wastefully, the others are words that we’ve been conditioned to think of as good.  We want our things extravagant and lavish.  It’s a sign of money, right?

And yet, day after day, we read and write articles on sites just like this one about the other end of the spectrum.  Frugality, Savings, and even Cheap are words that are valued.  Even so, I think that each of us could find an example or two in our lives where we are prodigal.  A pretty strong argument could be made that cable TV is a prodigal expenditure.  A third car.  Eating Out.  Leaving your computer on.  If we keep going, we could create a very long list!

What’s my point, you may be asking?  My point is that, despite all our practicing of frugal lifestyles and saving money, we might still find ways in which we are prodigal.  Rather than beating ourselves up over it, however, I would suggest that we use those things as motivation to eliminate them.  Or to offset them as a whole.  Maybe you’ve chosen to keep cable TV.  Find a way to reduce spending in another area to make up for that monthly charge.  The single expenditure may remain prodigal, but your overall spending does not.

Which brings me to a further point.  We often beat ourselves (and each other) up over spending too much here or there.  We miss the forest for the trees.  Being prodigal in one area does not make you prodigal overall.  And let’s not forget that being miserly or cheap can be just as poorly looked upon.

Added: It looks like I’m not the only one thinking about these things today.  Check out The Balance between splurger and miser at Get Rich Slowly.

Note: This post was originally posted on March 18th, 2010.  It was somewhat popular then, and is worthy of a second look, so I’m re-posting it today.

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Frugality, General Finance, ShareMe Tagged With: cheap, extravagant, frugal, lavish, miserly, prodigal

Are You a Patient Purchaser?

January 18, 2013 By Shane Ede 12 Comments

Conventional wisdom, at least in frugal personal finance circles says you should wait several days (or even weeks) before making most purchases.  Especially large purchases.

Personally, I’m usually a pretty patient purchaser.  I hate paying retail for most things. When I decide I need something (or even want it), I usually start my search on eBay.  Only when the price on eBay is pretty close to retail, or when I just can’t get something at a discount will I purchase it through a retail outlet.  And even then, I generally wait for a sale.

Patience is a Virtue

The main reason that experts suggest that you wait on a purchase is that, after thinking about it for a few days, most people will decide that they don’t need the item, or that they don’t want to spend the money on it right then. It also prevents spontaneous purchases.  I seldom find that to be true.  Well, not entirely, anyways. There have been a few cases where I’ve decided that I really didn’t want the item.  I’m also frugal to a fault, and rarely make a spur-of-the-moment purchase.  If I see something that I want, I’m off to research it and find the best price for it.

Limited Time Offers

LTOs are my downfall.  Because of their limited timeline, I don’t have the luxury of waiting until I can do the same amount of research that I normally do.  I still have a hard time purchasing the item, but have been known to buckle under the pressure and pull out my card.  (That’s a debit card, thank you.)  And, that’s the reason that retailers will have LTOs.  Put under the pressure of a deadline, people will often put off doing the research they should and purchase on the spot to take advantage of a great deal.

How I Practice Patient Purchasing

Patient purchasing has probably saved me thousands of dollars over the years.  Here’s the method that I generally use.

  • Decide on the brand and model that you want.  This can be the super heavy duty research part of the purchase.  I’ll spend time shopping for the item, and then looking online at retailers to find a brand and model that I like as well as get an idea of the average price of the item.  e.g. when I last bought a pair of shoes, I first decided on the brand that I wanted to buy (New Balance) and then on the model.  Deciding on the model took the most time as they have many models that are built for different strides, pronations, etc.  I also found that the full retail for a pair was about $125, but that there were discount retail outlets that regularly sold them for about $100.
  • Set up a search on eBay.  I like eBay.  It gives me the ability to fine tune a search and then save it.  I also very rarely find that the price that I can get something for on eBay is more than what I can get it for at a retailer.  Most of the time it’s quite a bit less.  I usually start with a pretty generic search for the brand and model of the item I’m looking for and then fine tune it based on the other qualifications I’m looking for.  e.g. in the case of the shoes, I started with a search for “New Balance 757” and then refined the search with the shoe size, width, and maximum price I was willing to pay.
  • Exhibit Patience.  This is the part that some people find to be really hard, but that I find comes pretty easily.  I wait.  I check the saved search every two or three days (auctions can be run in 1,3,7, or 10 day lengths, but I’m willing to miss a few of the 1 day auctions) and add items that look like good possibilities to my watch list.  I then sort my watch list by the auctions that are ending soonest, and will place a bid on the first one for the maximum that I am willing to pay.  That usually involves figuring out how much shipping will be, subtracting it from the max I’m willing to pay and then bidding the remainder.

Using that method, I can usually get an item that I want at a price that I want.  Being patient is key though.  Sometimes it can take me weeks to finally win an auction.  In the example I used above (shoes), I think it took me about 3 weeks to get a pair of shoes that I wanted at the price I wanted.  In the end, I paid just under $60 (including shipping) for a pair of shoes that I would have paid about $125 for at a retail shoe store.

Is the savings I got worth the time I put into it?  If you break down the savings and figure out an hourly savings based on the amount of hours I put into getting the shoes, it would probably not be a very good rate.  Below minimum wage for sure.  But, for the most part, the time I spent on it is time that I likely would have wasted on watching TV or something anyways.  In other words, it was non-productive time and therefore had little monetary value associated to it in the first place.  I got a new pair of shoes, and saved money doing.

Are you a patient purchaser?  What are your methods for buying bigger ticket items?

img credit:gemb1 on Flickr

Shane Ede

I started this blog to share what I know and what I was learning about personal finance. Along the way I’ve met and found many blogging friends. Please feel free to connect with me on the Beating Broke accounts: Twitter and Facebook.

You can also connect with me personally at Novelnaut, Thatedeguy, Shane Ede, and my personal Twitter.

www.beatingbroke.com

Filed Under: Consumerism, Frugality, Saving, ShareMe Tagged With: Consumerism, frugal, Frugality, patient purchasing, Saving

Need Money Quick? Have a Flash Savings Challenge

November 19, 2012 By MelissaB 3 Comments

The last few months have not been kind to my family.  As Dave Ramsey says, “Murphy came to visit.”  Within the last few months, I have had several medical tests run, my computer broke so I had to buy a new one, my husband’s pay was docked $750 for two months in a row because his employer didn’t take out enough taxes, and my husband had to pay $1,700 out of pocket for a conference for work and we are waiting for reimbursement.

IOU Piggy BankBecause we were trying to pay off as much as possible as quickly as possible on our debt, we had very little in emergency savings (only about $1,000).  All of our unexpected expenses cost much more than that, so we not only used most of our emergency fund, we also added to our credit card debt.

Because we had paid down our credit card debt for 10 straight months, having to add to it for the last two months was difficult.  Even though we didn’t come close to erasing all of our progress from the last year of gazelle intensity, we definitely knew we were moving in the wrong direction.

Righting Our Situation:  A Flash Savings Challenge

My natural urge, now that everything has settled down, was to once again try to throw as much on debt as possible.  While it might have made me feel better in the short term, I realize that the next time Murphy comes to visit (and I know he’ll be back some time), we would end up in the same situation.

Instead, my husband and I decided to focus on growing our emergency fund, and quickly, before hitting the debt hard again.

Paying the minimum on our debt for the next few months so we can grow our emergency fund is almost as difficult as watching our credit card balance increase the last two months, but we both know a healthy emergency fund is necessary.  Since I am self-employed and bring in 1/3 to 1/2 of our income and work can sometimes be sporadic, we decided not to follow Dave Ramsey’s advice of a $1,000 emergency fund (because clearly that was not enough last time); instead we are aiming for $5,000.

To get started, we challenged ourselves to have $3,000 in our emergency fund by December 9th.  We started with $611 in the emergency fund, so that meant we had to come up with $2,389 in 4 weeks.

How We Are Earning $2,389 Extra in 4 Weeks

We are only one week into the challenge, but here is what we have earned so far:

  • Sold my 8 year old breast pump: $60 (Yes, it has been sitting in the basement for 7 years.  Why didn’t I sell sooner?!)
  • Sold 2 window guards to protect kids from falling:  $40
  • Listed my kids outgrown clothes on eBay:  $124 so far, but the auctions won’t end for 2 more days, so I imagine it will be more
  • 3 unexpected jobs I got as a freelancer:  $64.67
  • Turned in our change in a jar:  $62.67
  • Returned unopened vitamins I didn’t need:  $32
  • Redeemed 10,000 Swagbucks for PayPal cash:  $100

Our total so far, one week in is $483.34

Over the next few weeks, we intend to do more things to raise the additional money:

  • Put my husband’s reimbursement check in savings
  • Cash out reward points from our credit card and use them as a credit card payment.  Put the same amount in our savings since we won’t have to pay that money on the credit card
  • Put more stuff on Craigslist and eBay (We have kids’ clothes, toys, and equipment to list as well as some of my husband’s tools he hasn’t used for years.)

Why  a Flash Savings Challenge Is Working for Us

I have known that I have a lot of stuff to sell around the house, but I just never got to it.  Now, because we have set a short goal of just 4 weeks and also an ambitious goal of over $2,300 to raise, I am motivated.  Yes, listing all of this stuff is time consuming, but it is nice to get some money in the emergency fund to make us feel more secure, and I also like getting rid of our “stuff”.

If you have extra stuff around the house, especially toys and holiday clothes, now is the perfect time to sell it and make some cash.

Have you had a flash savings challenge like this?  What were your results?

img credit:Images_of_Money, on Flickr

MelissaB
MelissaB

Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.

www.momsplans.com/

Filed Under: Debt Reduction, Emergency Fund, Financial Mistakes, Saving, ShareMe Tagged With: Debt Reduction, emergency fund, flash savings, frugal, Frugality, Saving

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