Wednesday, April 24, 2019

I Think We Are Weird

As Dave Ramsey says, "be weird!"  And judging by the reaction of our recent guests, I think we are.  Cases in point...

  • I make our lunches and pack beverages in the morning when we leave our house.  "But you don't work!" said one SIL.  It still saves us from eating out everyday when we are out and about all day.
  • When we go out to restaurants the hubby and I always split one meal (and usually need a box to take home leftovers).  The SILs looked at us oddly but saw that indeed, we didn't even finish a single meal between the two of us.
  • Why don't you have a printer for your computer?  I took one SIL to the local office store and showed her how I printed out needed documents for 12 cents a page instead of buying expensive printer ink that dries out before we can even use it.  She actually loved this idea and said she would do the same in the future.
  • Why do you cook so much?  All during the SILs visit, I cooked breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert at home most days, plus enough for leftovers.  Many retirees we know who live in Vegas eat out multiple times a day--it's fast, it's convenient, and it is relatively inexpensive.  But cooking most of our meals at home means we save even more money and the food is healthier as well.  Note they got used to eating home-cooked meals with us and seemed to like it by the end of their stay.
  • Anytime the SILs needed something, I hopped on the computer to see if there was a discount for the things they needed.  I found a Groupon for a local massage place, buy-one-get-one-free buffet coupons when we all went out to dinner, a quick application for the SIL who qualified for a tax exemption which saved her hundreds on her car registration, half price movie tickets on senior day at the local casino, and really inexpensive Megabus tickets to LA (instead of flying for 10 times the cost of the bus ticket).
Since both SILs are newly retired, they were amazed/amused at the lengths we went to in order to live on a small fixed income.  And both said "we need to do more things like you guys do" so I guess they may have though us odd but not too extreme since they will most likely institute some of our money-saving ideas.

8 comments:

  1. You are not weird. You are awesome!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know I am considered the frugal one, or the weird one, in my family, but we all like weird. Once people get that it is not being opposed to spending money, but rather maximizing funds for the things that are more important, the weirdness seems well, less weird.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. We enjoy spending money on things we like, we just don't want to spend money on every single consumer product we see. I'm feeling less weird now :)

      Delete
  3. That is all great! Not weird at all!

    ReplyDelete