I’m not the most frugal of people. I don’t particularly enjoy pinching pennies; I’d rather increase my income than try and figure out how to cut expenses.
That said, I don’t consider myself a spendthrift. I have specific spending priorities, and I live within my means. However, even though I try to be responsible with my money, there are some things that I’m willing to splurge on. As long as I have the cash available, I don’t mind paying a little extra for:
Food
I enjoy food. I like eating out at nice restaurants. I like buying good food at the grocery store to make delicious meals at home. My husband and I compare generic and name brand foods, and then buy what we like best. While sometimes this means that we go with the generic version, often it means we take the name brand. And if there are several name brands, we try several until we find just what we like. If this means paying $2 or $3 extra for something, we do it.
It’s the same reason that we buy our pastries from the local gourmet shop (using fresh and unprocessed ingredients) rather than buying the stuff they mass produce and package at the super-store.
Experience
I’m a big fan of enjoying the experience. If I travel, I don’t want to have to think about how to be cheap on my trip, so I pay for what gives me the best experience. Which means I stay (most of the time) in hotels with at least four stars, my husband and I buy tickets in the arena’s lower bowl when we watch a NBA game, and I get box seats for the opera. Yes, it means that I don’t buy a lot of gadgets (my phone is a Tracfone) and we have a cheap satellite TV package. But when I go somewhere for the experience, I have a great time.
Convenience
Yes, I pay the $1.50 convenience fee to buy movie tickets online — especially if it’s a big release. And I’ll pay an extra $50 to fly at a more convenient time. I know that convenience costs money, and many cases, I’m willing to pay the price. I save time, and, often, effort when I pay for convenience.
What’s Important to You
There are plenty of areas of my life where splurging is non-existent. My family lives in a modest home with a relatively small mortgage. I don’t spend a lot of money on clothes. We buy refurbished computers, and no one in my family has a smart phone. Our TV is “small” by neighborhood standards and we don’t have a snowblower (although this winter I’m starting to re-think that decision).
We decided on our preferred lifestyle, and determined which things we wanted to be able to splurge on. So, we make sure that there is room in our finances for the splurging we enjoy the most, and cut out the items that we don’t really care about.
What about you? What do you like to splurge on?
I splurge mostly on food. We don’t go out to eat much because my husband is an amazing cook, so when we do we want it to be a top-notch experience. We also buy the best ingredients we can for cooking and baking, even if that means spending more than the generic or processed version. I’d like to splurge more on experience but often try to cut costs by staying at bad hotels — definitely not recommended!
I like to splurge on experiences. I really want to go skydiving, but W doesn’t see the point in paying someone to almost kill you. He prefers material things (such as collectable guns, etc).