Anath  says:
3 weeks ago

I spend at least £10 a week in chocolates, I guess I could do without it!

robertsloan2  says:
3 weeks ago

You nailed it with one phrase -- impulse buying of things you don't actually even want or enjoy. That and finding what you want cheaper than you'd pay for it shopping at the obvious place that an ad just reminded you it was there. It means reading the sales coupons to see if they actually save or not -- if you wouldn't have bought it in the first place, getting 10% off is not a bargain.

Art supplies always pay for themselves. I discovered that around 1990 and it's true to this day. Even for someone just taking up art, the supplies are an investment in a future emergency reserve, because once you are good enough at drawing to manage at least one popular subject at salable quality, you can count on getting commissions from someone who wants it done their way right now.

The other thing about sweets and treats is that it's way too easy to take them for granted and not actually enjoy them as much. Just gobble them down and think of them as normal food, which they aren't.

The difference between hot cereal and cold cereal is a big one. Cold cereal in boxes that you just throw milk and sugar on to eat is very popular in the USA. To the point that it's taken for granted as part of normal life every single day. About half of these cereals are sweet and they're about like candy for sugar intake, may have some added vitamins to make them sound healthful and cost five or six dollars for a box with half a dozen servings.

Hot cereal, which takes about five minutes to cook on the stove and could have sugar put on it to taste by the person eating it or be used in inventive ways as fillers in meatloaf and recipes like that, costs quite a bit less than a box of cold cereal -- and has a lot more servings per box, maybe about ten times, because it doesn't bulk up till it's cooked. Even the instant ones are a fair amount cheaper than the cold cereal.

Then as one step farther in the direction of improved quality and paying less, my daughter discovered that you can get steel-cut oats and barley in fifty pound bags at a price that makes the round-box Quaker Oats look expensive. It has more nutrition and it stores indefinitely, they buy it a couple of times a year and use it in everything. They buy restaurant sized cans of dried raspberries, blueberries and other berries at the same supplier.

Those last indefinitely too. Those only come in those expensive boxes of cold cereal normally or the most expensive instant hot cereals. The big-bag steel cut oats have more protein than the processed oatmeal and the dried fruit adds vitamins and nutrition as well as sweetening it.

Make pancakes with whole-wheat flour and you're adding more protein to the diet, they do that too and put the dried fruits in them sometimes.

So as my daughter and son in law find these food bargains, the actual quality of what we eat goes up and up. The cost is that they do wind up taking a while every day to prepare breakfast instead of just shaking it out of a box. That convenience of the cold-cereal box seems like it saves a lot of time -- but what happens with many people is that the time saved vanishes into more overwork and soon it's just "the way things are" and not an extra few minutes actually enjoyed doing something you really wanted to do.

One of the things about the green-frugal lifestyle is that it helps to look at time and money both as things that are easily lost through carelessness and casually doing what other people want you to do. The emotional impact of advertising is only a little bit diluted by its not being a live person right there making a suggestion.

Much of the waste in society, and it is massive, comes from this peer pressure, a human social instinct that gets taken advantage of by advertisers. Not with any sort of conspiracy or anything, just that they want to sell their goods and won't unless people know about them and want them. Resisting advertising is a complex, difficult thing to do. It's much easier to go along with it.

You watch TV and the restaurant ads make you think of food, not your budget or your health. You ate an hour ago. But you might grab a snack because the appetizer on that restaurant ad looked good. Or happy memories around fast food get you going out for some -- but you already ate. There starts obesity and budget-obesity.

Self control, self discipline gets presented as self deprivation. As giving up things you want in order to be more virtuous and practical. It's often presented as giving up pleasures in life in favor of long term practical goals that aren't exciting, or getting ahead of debt, which trades pleasure for dealing with trouble. It can get grim.

I think of that whole social view of it as bogus. Because you can save fortunes and stay out of debt just by stepping back from the television and understanding the difference between what you actually want and enjoy, versus what assorted advertisers and the people around you (a secondary but real source of pressure) want you to want.

It means making decisions consciously for yourself instead of delegating them to whatever someone just suggested -- including the commercials, which exist only to suggest to X percent of viewers or readers they need to buy this now and raise sales.

To me both eating well and frugal living are a matter of taking charge of yourself for your own goals. Understanding what you really enjoy and putting that higher on the budget than things other people want you to want. Not cutting out all luxury. Putting luxury into a context where you get the most out of it, both the most enjoyment in the time you spend on it and the most enjoyment in the money spent on it.

My computer and the Internet are very cost effective. I'm housebound, that IS my social life. It's less intrusive than the television advertising because it doesn't present as a person with voice and body language talking to me -- it doesn't fool the social instincts as well. Internet ads are generally more passive like magazine ads and running next to the material I want to read or see -- so I am more able to ignore them or deliberately seek them for information if it's something I have a real interest in.

Which is better for them because it's targeted. They want the people who have the niche interest. I purchase a lot of art supplies and I'm exactly the customer those art supply companies are wooing -- interested in new mediums, want lots of information on them, want a good range of colors, looking for a bargain or a trial and best of all willing to review them and post my opinions online.

I'm not actually selling art but I do write about it and that's cost effective, it's climbing up toward self supporting even without selling art, a break-even way of enjoying myself. I enjoy doing it. That's a biggie in itself.

Just some thoughts and a morning ramble on thrift that's probably another Hub in a comment. lol

Robert