I am cheap in many ways. I need to learn how to buy things for quality over quantity.
As you all know, last week I asked you all on Twitter if $70 was too cheap for unclogging our kitchen drain. A lot of you said it seemed cheap. I wasn't sure because last year we easily found a plumber for $90 to unclog our bathroom sink.
Well of course it turns out that $70 is way too cheap. I chose cheapness over quality workmanship.
The $70 plumbers were young. The owner of the plumbing company was only 2 years older than me (yes I Facebook creeped). They also weren't as knowledgeable as the plumbers who came to fix their mess.
We finally finished all of the plumbing yesterday. The new plumber we hired (who is our friend) came over and we decided to replace the rest of the copper piping in our house and it ended up costing $300 altogether. We still need to fix the wall and hire someone to patch it back in, but that won't cost too too much.
If I would have kept searching for a plumber who had a good reputation, I most likely could have avoided all of this. But I am glad it's all done! If the dumb plumbers wouldn't have messed up, then we wouldn't have noticed that our other pipes needed to be replaced within the next year. So thankfully we got to find out before our walls flooded from a busted pipe.
We found out that we do have roots growing in our pipe (the part of the pipe which is under the basement). The plumber said this is a common problem in many houses nowadays. Anyone else ever had to deal with this?
Another cheap thing that I'm guilty of is that I buy a lot of clothes from Forever 21. The clothes are cute, but not things that I'd wear for multiple years. The quality stinks and doesn't last long, and usually the items aren't “classic” pieces which will always look good.
This is something that I need to stop! Cheap clothing overtakes my closet but I should be going to better stores. I need to learn from Bridget badly!
Other things that I do that are cheap and definitely not frugal nor healthy, is that when I can't find something healthy to make, sometimes I'll just throw random crap in a bag for my work lunch and eat it all. It's usually extremely random things and lots of unhealthy things such as lots of different chips.
This is definitely cheap. I'm foregoing my health for a couple of dollars of savings. I don't do this often, but every now and then.
I consider myself not cheap (but yet still frugal) in many ways:
- I always make sure to tip well. I would never be so cheap as to where I leave minimal or $0 tips.
- I will always buy higher quality food for my dogs. They are worth it.
- I always take good care of my car. I want it to last awhile and that means that I have to take care of it.
- I always fall for warranties. This is something that's bad though (and NOT frugal). I feel like items always break when I buy warranties for them, but when I decide not to buy one, they break immediately. So now I always buy the extra insurance (such as for a rental car).
- I do buy quality electronics and other items. Such as TV's, cars, phones, etc. I do believe cheap and good quality items are worth it (except of course I need to learn for clothes).
