rinse your razor blades, dry them, then put them blade side down in a little container of mineral oil. That will keep the blades going for an amazing amount of time, because it will prevent corrosion on the edge of the blade, which is what actually causes razor blades to lose their sharpness far before mere use (cutting hair) would. You might save even more than $100 a year if you do it this way.

I bet wd 40 would do a bang up job too, come to think of it, because it was designed to stop rust. (WD-40 means Water Displacement formula #40,as the 40th attempt was the one that worked and they stuck with. It was designed for the Apollo rocket program.

However wd40 might me a bit more toxic than mere mineral oil

Otherwise, I am perfectly happy to let people spend what they will. Somebody needs to throw cash around to make certain businesses exist, and as long as it’s someone else and I get a piece of the change, that’s fine with me.

If everyone bought 10 year old cars or kept their cars for the 20 to even 30 years they will (easily) last my 10 year old car would have been a lot more expensive than it was. So I guess I’m glad that some have different priorities than me financially and with their spending.

I understand where you’re coming from with the college financial aid bit, but it’s worth noting that the same system will in fact make any intelligent child with no family resources much better able to attend the college of their choice. The system supports those that do not have the resources to support themselves because we value education as a society (which is good), but has no view as to how they came to be in that state.

It seems unlikely that income doesn’t come into play at all, and I imagine someone with your resources but half your income would likely receive more aid as well (though this is unverified). In as much as you rely on either income or wealth to determine financial aid, there are benefits and downsides to each. Think of someone with high income but terrible spending habits (and thereby no wealth), but also of the person with a large inheritance but is lazy and never bothers to earn a dime or contribute to society (and thereby has no income). The more you rely one way or the other, the more one of those two examples will be able to manipulate the system, but either way, the productive person with no resources to get a good job (yet) will still benefit, which is the goal.

Funny you should write that, Trent. You yourself have posted that you have not put up a clothesline in your yard to take advantage of free drying, because of ‘what will the neighbors think?’ I find that a sad commentary on your neighbors and yourself, really.

Never mind that it’s a frugal choice, it’s also an extremely green choice. I should think that the green effects would offset any small negativity on the part of your neighbors and yourself.

You claim to be all for CFL’s, nevermind the cleanup difficulties. You claim to not be bothered by driving an old(er) truck, and walking, and growing your own garden. Why would you let others dictate whether you run out a clothesline?

For those people who cannot afford to live otherwise and rely upon buying the cheapest of absolutely everything, going without many things and scrimping and scraping to make ends meet, frugality is often no fun at all. And the reality is often cheap, low quality and miserly. Many families/people live in this way. But not nearly as many people who should be of course!:)

For those with the view that frugality is about the bigger picture, thinking longer term, searching out the best deals and prioritising where to spend one’s money, then of course frugality can be fun. But it can also have varying moments of being cheap, as in when one buys the cheapest x so they can splurge on y.

Nuveena – anyone who knows how long their razor blade has lasted (not ‘about seven weeks’, but ’seven weeks’) is most definitely frugal! Very true about your WW viewpoint. I must be off to the gym myself now …..

I saw this idea proven recently: A friend of mine recently lost most of his possessions in a fire. He told me that he grieved for a few days and made plans for “buying back all that stuff.” But he said he woke up one morning a week after the fire and suddenly realized that he felt a lot better, a lot lighter, as if he’d lost a lot of weight. He said, “I realized I don’t need 90% of that stuff,” and told me he’s looking forward to a much simpler life than the one he’d gradually bought into over the past ten or twenty years. I have to admit that he seems happier than he ever has as long as I’ve known him.

I like the way you wrote that post. I use Venus too, by the way.

Isn’t it ironic that we can be criticized by the frugal and nonfrugal?

On the flip side, my car was totaled in a car accident about six weeks ago, and I get funny looks from others because we decided that we were not going to over extend ourselves and have a second car payment when we couldn’t afford it. Instead, we took the money I got from my insurance company for my car and used it to pay down the loan on our other vehicle. When our stimulus check comes, we’ll probably put that towards our van, too. Hopefully, after that, we’ll have the van paid off by the fall (which would be nine months sooner than what the original loan was for). But then I get funny looks because we also decided to save up as much as possible first using the money that was our van payment and finance as little as possible on a new car.

Being frugal is about the value of what you are doing as much as it’s about the money you are actually saving. Being frugal is about the bigger picture and about the future and what works for you. Being frugal is not about deprivation and not having fun. You have to find what works the best for you and has value for you and do it.

Too many people confuse being frugal with being cheap and miserly and I think that’s a huge part of the perception problem.

I dry off my razor blades after I use them to make them last longer. Some people may view this as being cheap. Given how much a pack of refill cartridges cost, I don’t see it as being cheap. I see it as being frugal. I see it as saving at least one hundred dollars a year on razor blades and using that one hundred dollars towards something else. I buy the Venus razors, which is probably not very frugal of me, and would cause copious amounts of scorn and derision heaped upon me by the frugal proselytizers because I’m not using the cheap 10 cent disposables. The cheap disposables give me some pretty nasty razor burn and that is not worth the money I’d be saving by using them. Because of this, I still buy the 14 dollar four pack and dry them off and not leave them in the shower to make the blades last longer. I’ve had the same blade on my razor for seven weeks and it still works as well as it did when first took it out of the package.

You can’t enjoy being frugal until you see it for what it really is.

Jennifer

The college financial aid system is not fair. Given that schools only have a limited amount of money to go towards financial aid, no system could be fair for everyone.

The main place where frugality goes wrong is when people don’t focus on enjoying themselves and expend far too much energy over saving money. Hence the thoughts about it being focused on the future, or cheap. You can enjoy free community activities without focusing on them being free. I patronize my library all the time (especially now that I work there) but my brain doesn’t say “Oh hey, this is free.” It’s just that when a book comes out I look for it there. Or if I see one for sale I suggest to myself that I should check the library.

I also agree with another point put forth by Carlos in comment #6 – why buy something less than what you want if any other purchase will simply leave you with regret? I’m a closet audiophile – I’d rather spend $200 on quality Senn or Grado headphones than some $50 Sonys or JVCs from Target. Similarly, when I have some disposable income at dinner time, I’d rather buy a $15 pizza, provided it’s delicious and fills me up, than a $7 pizza that will leave me dissatisfied and hungry. Naturally, moderation is key – the former situation or derivative thereof only presents itself about once a year in my life; the latter, only about once a month.

I think that this ideal is carried, in small part, by the consumerist hoi polloi. How many people do you know of that buy store brand soda over Coke or Pepsi products? Probably not too many, even though the store brand, 99% of the time, offers a much lower ppu.