Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Erin writes in: Making our own wedding favors. It’s so expensive to buy them, so I tried making my own, which ended up costing about as much as just buying them would have and was no where worth the effort even if we had saved a ton of money. I wish we would have just skipped them all together, no one would have noticed and we would have saved a bunch of money.

First of all, I don’t think wedding favors are necessary at all. The vast majority of the wedding favors I’ve ever received wound up in a cupboard within a few days of the wedding and were largely forgotten until I found it a few days later. If you’re getting married and are thinking about giving away a “traditional” wedding favor, I’d just skip it. It’s expensive, not particularly personal, and quite forgettable for the guests.

That being said, I have actually been to a few weddings (or heard of a few weddings from friends) where the wedding favor was quite memorable:

+ At one wedding, where the wedding couple were both writers, they gave every adult who attended the wedding copies of each of their latest books, signed by them. These were very inexpensive for the couple (who just requested a bunch of copies from their publisher) and actually useful for many of the guests, who were almost all avid readers.

+ At another wedding, there were place settings for every person they expected at the reception. At each one, there was a custom-made bookmark depicting the couple on one side. This bookmark was inserted inside of a handwritten card from either the bride or the groom thanking that person personally for attending the wedding.

+ My favorite one was a wedding where a wonderful soup was served at the reception. Then, on the tables, were small jars containing the ingredients for that soup along with a note describing how to make it. This wasn’t particularly inexpensive, but it was very thoughtful and it got used.

+ Another wedding I attended had homemade soap given away as a wedding favor. One of the friends of the couple simply made a bunch of homemade soap bars, wrapped them with a custom wrapper that commemorated the wedding, and left them out on the tables at the reception.

Each of these favors succeeded because of several different factors.

They were inexpensive or free. In some of the cases, the items were truly inexpensive. In other cases, a member of the wedding party or a close friend stepped in to help out with a homemade item.

They were something that the guests would actually use outside of the ceremony. In each case, the memorable favors were items that would actually get used. No more knick knacks, no more commemorative salt shakers.

They were often personalized. Most of these items had some personalization to them. They were either made by someone actually involved with the wedding – or sometimes even by the wedding couple – or they were intimately connected to the couple. Many favors have no such connection.

I’ll run the numbers on two examples.

At one wedding I recently attended, the wedding favors consisted of small sacks of chocolate coins. There were perhaps 100 of these bags sitting around with 20 coins in each one. They weren’t particularly memorable or particularly tied to the couple. I was able to find chocolate coins for $0.20 each. At that rate, the bags themselves cost them $400 – I sincerely hope they found a less expensive rate.

On the other hand, at the wedding where there were personalized cards and bookmarks, I called a local printer who said that he could print a set of 100 bookmarks and 100 cards for about $60 without much trouble. I’m sure that if you shopped around, you could find an even cheaper price.

Stick with personal, simple, and useful if you’re going to make a wedding favor. It will cost you less and it’ll mean more to the guests.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to believe that learning to appreciate delayed gratification is one of the best things a person can learn in terms of their psyche and their finances. Here are a few stories illustrating what I mean.

Watching your garden grow This past year, I really got into our garden. I went out pretty much every day to check on it, often pulling a few weeds or doing something else related to it.

In years past, I somewhat viewed this as a chore. This year, though, I began to really notice how the plants were slowly growing each day I went out there. They were a bit bigger. This one had started to blossom. I could finally see some small snap beans. Look, at last there are the beginnings of some squash.

Those little visits became a pleasure themselves as I began to appreciate where my food came from and also anticipate the vegetables that were coming.

Approaching a big goal One of our biggest goals is paying off our house. Sarah and I have been working towards it for the past four years, making extra mortgage payments when it’s been reasonable and keeping careful track of our progress.

Since we’ve been so careful to track this, it’s been a lot of fun watching how our little actions have translated into a snowball effect against our debt. The balance goes down. Our normal monthly payment pays a bigger part of the principal than before. An extra payment knocks our balance down a little more.

Our little moves directly translate into a small part of something big, and it’s a lot of fun to watch the progress as we go along.

Waiting for an item A few months ago, using a gift certificate I received for my birthday, I preordered a board game, Kingdom Builder. It’s a game created by the same person who created Dominion, one of my favorite games I’ve ever played, so I decided to give his new creation a chance.

Anyway, once I preordered that item, around the middle of August or so, I found myself anticipating the item quite a bit. I subscribed to a few forums related to the game. I participated in some discussions about it. I read the rules for the game, as well as some early reviews.

Even more interesting, all this focus on a game that I knew I would be getting in the mail eventually kept me from spending money on other items. I might consider buying something, but then I’d tell myself, “Well, I have this other thing coming in the mail soon, so why buy even more stuff?”

The anticipation became part of the fun. It also became something of a guard against buying other things.

Delayed gratification is the common thread here. When you have something immediately, you get a big burst of excitement and joy, but that quickly fades. If you get used to that burst of gratification, it becomes something of an addiction. You must have a perk now.

If you hold off on that gratification, the anticipation itself becomes fun. You have more time to plan out what exactly you’re going to do. You have more time to savor the options before you.

Most importantly, you have a chance to enjoy the journey. Instant gratification takes that option away from you. At the same time, instant gratification means that you’re going to be spending more, because the joy doesn’t last very long.

Learn to enjoy the anticipation. Your spirit and your wallet will thank you.

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Closing a credit card
2. Estate planning and shared accounts
3. Personal finance percentages
4. “Nerdy” hobby
5. FHA loan question
6. Umbrella insurance
7. Caucus season
8. Real estate investing question
9. How long should I stay?
10. Cancellation of Community

Some weeks, it feels like all I manage to get done is juggling several things in the air at once: a child’s project, a family Thanksgiving meal, a holiday visit with extended family, a contract, and all of the other ordinary things that go on in life.

It can be really, really exhausting, but there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.

Q1: Closing a credit card
I have around $5000 in credit card debt, and a little over $13000 in student loans. I own my own vehicle (although I mostly bike) and don’t have plans to buy a home anytime soon (my savings account is mere dollars over non-existent). I don’t think my credit is stellar, but I don’t think it’s horrendous either (although I have been denied a few times for another card). Although I’ve cut up every credit card and plan to move to a cash-only system as soon as I’m free of the credit cards, I’m not sure what closing those credit cards will do to my credit. I made a final payment on one yesterday (yay!!) but I’m not sure when I should close down the account. My question is: should I close it now? I’ve made the decisions to close these cards to avoid further temptation, and to avoid the yearly fees, but I’m not sure WHEN it’s the right time to close. Should I close it today, or should I wait a few months? I won’t be using it, which is the argument for today, but I didn’t know if keeping it open with a $0 balance would do anything positive for my credit score (which could be the argument for waiting a few months). I’ll be paying off the others ones in consecutive months, so I’ll probably want to do the same thing then, too. What do you think?
- Shauna

I wouldn’t close it. Instead, I’d leave the thing completely dormant and live with a cash-only lifestyle. Put the card in your closet and forget about it.

Why? It keeps your credit report current and keeps your credit score up. You’d be surprised how many things check your credit score when determining how to handle you, from your insurance company to your employer. A good credit rating will help you. A dormant rating might not.

You can choose to live a cash-only lifestyle whether you have the card open or not.

Q2: Estate planning and shared accounts
My ex has inherited a few hundred thousand dollars. I don’t know the exact amount, but I’m thinking it’s around $300 K. His health is not all that great and he is concerned about having it all taken away if he has to go into a health care facility. This happened to his dad. He has 2 children from a previous marriage and we have 3 together. He wants to put this money in an account in my name with him as personal agent so that if something happens then I can distribute the money to all his children and it won’t go to a health care facility. As personal agent he would still be able to withdraw but the account would not be in his name. I don’t have a problem with this and he knows he can trust me – I’ve had access to his bank account for many years. My question is – Is there a downside to this for me? Will this affect me negatively in any way, e.g. taxes, etc.?
- Laurie

If he puts that money into a checking account with just your name on it, it constitutes a gift and you’ll have to pay a gift tax on it. I’d avoid that route.

It sounds like the plan is to have a checking account with both of your names on it. This will actually work, but you’ll want to be sure you act in perfect accordance with the terms of his will when the time comes or you could be in legal hot water.

The best route would probably be to set up some sort of trust with this money and have you as an administrator of that trust. This is pretty easy to set up – a lawyer can handle this for you very quickly.

Q3: Personal finance percentages
I’ve read a lot of personal finance resources and they all recommend saving a certain percent of your income (10%, 20% whatever). That makes sense to me. My question is: what is included in those %? Is it just retirement savings? Does it include emergency savings? What about house/car repairs or money to replace a car? My husband and I budget smaller amounts into multiple categories that act as short/medium-term savings accounts, but I’m not sure if those count toward this “savings” benchmark, or if the savings benchmark is only for long-term savings (retirement, kid’s education, etc)? I’m curious how you interpret it.
- Jennie

Generally, it just includes all goal-oriented savings. If you’re putting aside money for a specified purpose, then it’s included in that percentage.

So, an emergency fund would count, retirement savings would count, a house/car repair fund would count… they’d all count.

The reason for doing this is to make sure you’re not regularly spending more than, say, 80% of your income and that the other 20% is going for your future.

Q4: “Nerdy” hobbies
I think it’s awesome that you’re so out and open about having such nerdy hobbies.
- Reggie

My biggest hobbies are reading and playing board and card games. I’m guessing that these are the things you find nerdy?

I really don’t actually care whether other people think my hobbies are “nerdy” or they think they’re “cool.” I generally think anything that someone is passionate about is pretty cool as long as it’s non-destructive.

Besides, you can make virtually any hobby sound rather idiotic. Think about it: ten million people spend their Sundays watching men in tight pants hug and push each other because they can’t agree on where an inflated piece of pig’s skin should be sitting on a field of grass. My wife loves spending hours spreading rotten vegetable scraps all over the ground in one corner of our yard.

It’s all cool. What other people think doesn’t matter one bit as long as you’re enjoying it and it’s not hurting anyone else.

Q5: FHA loan question
I am a first time home buyer and I have saved enough for a 20 percent down payment for a 300k house. Do you see any benefits in me looking into a FHA loan? I hate have to pay extra for PMI and I rather not to pay it. Are there any advantages to a person to look at a FHA loan if he can pay 20%?
- Roger

There’s no real reason for you to have a FHA loan.

The FHA program exists to help people in special situations buy a home. People without down payments fall into that group, as do people who want fixer-uppers.

I don’t think you fall into any of the categories on that link, and since you have a full down payment, I think you’d just be getting an ordinary mortgage from your preferred bank or credit union.

Q6: Umbrella insurance
I am wondering if I need umbrella insurance. I’ve talked to friends and co-workers about it. I can’t find anyone who has it. But I want more perspective. Here are some facts if they help with the assessment: I’m 45. My income just scratches 6 figures. My mortgage is the only debt I have, but I still owe over $300k on it. I have solid home insurance, car insurance, and health insurance through work. I don’t have life insurance, as I’m single and don’t have kids or dependents. My retirement savings: about $110K (yes, I know, I’m aggressively saving more!). Emergency savings: about $5k.
- Lenore

Umbrella insurance is mostly a good idea for people with a significant amount of assets that they might want to protect against things that are beyond the protection of their other insurance policies.

For example, if you had a net worth of $2 million and got into a car accident that was completely due to your negligence and only had a small amount of car insurance, the umbrella policy would step in and supplement the car insurance policy, protecting your net worth.

Unless you have a significant amount of assets to protect beyond the value of your home, umbrella insurance isn’t going to be worth it.

Given your situation, I would consider it much more important to have life insurance than to have umbrella insurance.

Q7: Caucus season
It seems like a person can’t go a day without hearing about the latest polls and politics coming out of Iowa as we run up to the primary and caucus season early next year. As a politically tuned-in person, what’s it like living there?
- Jeff

I get a lot of “robo-calls,” which are basically pre-recorded messages from politicians wanting me to vote on January 3 in the caucus, preferably from their candidate. We get so many of them that Sarah and I joke about them. Similarly, we get a lot of flyers in the mail from various candidates.

There is a lot of access to the presidential candidates if you’re willing to make an effort. There’s usually an opportunity to go meet at least one of the candidates every day somewhere within 100 miles of where I live. There have been a lot of events within five or ten miles of where I live, too.

Honestly, though, it all just becomes noise at a certain point. They’re all using more or less the same tactics that they used four years ago… and eight years ago… and twelve years ago.

Q8: Real estate investing question
My husband and I recently made our last house payment and are officially debt free. We are jumping right back into the fray by buying a duplex . We have done our research and feel comfortable with our decision . The property is in a nice area with a good rental history. My first question is can you recommend any particular reading material on this particular type of investing? We hope to buy another one in a few years with the goal to retire with three units. At that point our children may buy them from us or manage them.

What do you think about this type of investment? I am 48 my husband is 50. We are very active and are “ fixer uppers”. We have remodeled our entire house, so we are able to do a lot of our own minor maintenance. We no longer feel comfortable investing in the stock market and I have cut back on investing in my 401k and am only contributing to the employer match. My husband is doing the same. I want to decrease contributions to our Roth’s as well and divert it to paying off the mortgage principle of the investment property. Do you think this is a wise move? We recently moved the majority of our Roth investments into more conservative funds at the recommendation of our fee –based financial advisor. The return on these investments will be modest, but we will be giving up the tax advantages of the Roth’s. If the tax laws change and we can’t deduct or mortgage interest it would probably more advantageous to pay down the principle of the mortgage ASAP. Am I missing something or do you think we are on the right track?
- Susan

Are you willing to handle many of the issues that come with being a landlord, such as fixing problems and handling tenant issues? I think that’s the real question here.

Some people revel in this. I’ve had friends in the past who deeply enjoyed being landlords. I’ve had other friends who owned property just to end up hiring someone to manage it. I’ve known others who didn’t do their homework and wound up with tenants that stripped every piece of copper from the house in the middle of the night and disappeared, resulting in a long dispute with their insurance company that remained unresolved for years and wound up in court.

If you’re up for this, then I think you’re on the right track. You can get a good return on your money here if you’re willing to handle the issues and the work.

Q9: How long should I stay?
A little about me: I graduated law school in June of 2009 with around $120,000 worth of student loan debt. This was right around the time the world was falling apart and my law firm informed me they didn’t have much work for new associates. I’m pretty much the luckiest person in the world because my law firm didn’t fire me – they “deferred” me for a year. In essence, they gave me about a third of my salary and enough to cover my minimum student loan payments for a year. I threw some of my deferral money at my loans, but most of it was spent traveling the world. I started working as a corporate attorney in October of 2010 and lived very frugally. I got a roommate, got rid of my car, brought my lunch to work, etc and threw every extra penny at my student loans. In October of 2011, I paid off my last student loan and am now completely debt free. (When I’m feeling down, I often remind myself of that little fact and it perks me up most days).

So now I’m 29, single with no children and making around $9,000 a month net with expenses of around $1500. I have my requisite emergency fund and $100k in my 401k (I’ve always been frugal and worked before law school, contributing the max each year). I’m a little afraid to do the math to see how long I should stay at this very lucrative, but soul-sucking job. One year? Two years? 10 years? If I continue to live the way I do, I could build up a very nice bank account and I feel like this would open a lot of doors for me. So, my question – how do you decide how much money is enough? This job makes it very difficult to date. It takes up my whole life. I don’t hate it – I appreciate the knowledge about corporate governance and think it makes me a better citizen and better voter and I like the people, but I don’t think I’m doing anything worthwhile for the world. But, obviously, the money is good and I wonder if now isn’t the time to do it when I have no other obligations.
- Evan

How much money is “enough” depends entirely on what your plan is for after you leave this job.

For example, if you intend to essentially do nothing at all, then you had better have enough to live off of for the rest of your life.

What do you want to do after you leave? You need to sit down and do some soul-searching with that question in mind. When you have a goal in mind and a plan to reach that goal, then knowing how much you need becomes a matter of filling in the blanks.

Q10: Cancellation of Community
I just read that Community was cancelled. Didn’t know if you’d heard. I know it was the only sitcom you watch, so I’m guessing you’d want to know.
- Alan

Obviously, I’m disappointed, as it’s one of the very few shows on television that I enjoyed.

However, the reality is that it just wasn’t getting the ratings. Television runs on ratings. If people aren’t watching, they’re not going to put shows on the air. NBC is a business, and if having Community on the air isn’t making them money, then pulling it is probably the right move.

I think the big problem it had is that the audience for it is people who own and use DVRs. Everyone I know who watches Community regularly would record it and watch it at a later time, fast forwarding through the commercials. It’s hard for a “free” network to make enough money to pay for the episodes that way.

Got any questions? Email them to me or leave them in the comments and I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive hundreds of questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Amy writes in: Is having a garden cheaper than say the farmers market? By the time you count materials, watering, etc. I just don’t know!

The answer depends heavily on how you approach gardening. If gardening for you requires piles of brand new tools, a big tiller, plants that have all been started at a greenhouse for you, and other such expenses, gardening is going to really add up. On the other hand, if you try to use minimal tools and use them until they wear out and keep your own seeds, gardening can be really inexpensive.

I’ll use our own gardening situation. Most of our garden implements were either gifts or were bought at yard sales, adding up to perhaps $10. Most of our plants are grown from seed in potting soil in our house in the late winter, then moved outside once the frost danger is out of the way. We mostly use a hoe for our garden to turn over the soil and mix in our compost, which is our fertilizer source and is made out of table scraps. We use hay out of a field near us for much of our mulch.

This type of gardening doesn’t add up to a whole lot of expense. We just don’t put a whole lot of money into our garden each year.

Now, let’s say we decided next spring that we wanted a garden. We go down to our local home improvement super store, buy a bunch of plants, buy a bunch of gardening tools, buy a small tiller, and stagger out with a pretty big charge on our credit card. We buy Miracle-Gro as our fertilizer and since we bought starts from the local store, we don’t bother saving seeds because the plants are hybridized.

The expense for the vegetables in this scenario is going to be quite high. Even if you spread the cost of all of those implements across several years of gardening, you’re still going to have quite an expense.

I’ll use tomatoes as an example. A single tomato plant will yield 10 to 15 pounds of tomatoes if properly cared for. How much does it cost to get there?

Most sources where I live sell tomato starts in the spring for about $5 each – or even a bit more. My parents can get them for $2-$3 from a person they’ve been buying plants from for years. Alternately, you can buy a packet of non-hybridized tomato seeds for $2-$3 or so, along with a reusable tray ($5-$10), a grow light ($30-$40), and a source of soil, and you can grow them in your own home, reusing the seeds year after year.

You’ll need some gardening implements to plant them – at the very least, a shovel and a hoe. You’ll also need a source of food (compost, which can be free; manure, which can also be free; or a commercial fertilizer, which is easier but can be expensive, on the order of a dollar per plant per year), a fence to protect the plants (we built ours for about $20 per year of use, or maybe $0.25 per plant per year), water (maybe $0.05 per plant), and some insect protection (you can make passable insecticides for pennies, but store-bought ones that work better can also cost you, let’s say, $1 per plant per year).

You’re easily reaching a cost of $10 per tomato plant. Assuming, of course, that your plant doesn’t get attacked by insects or animals and doesn’t die of blight or another illness, you’ll get ten or fifteen pounds of tomatoes out of the plant. That’s actually a pretty solid savings on your tomatoes.

However, to get to that point, you have invested quite a lot of time. You’ve started the plants from seed or bought starts at the store. You’ve cultivated the ground and planted them. You’ve weeded around them. You’ve mulched them. You’ve watered them and fed them. You’ve given them insect protection and disease protection.

Unless you enjoy that time invested, the time invested isn’t going to pay off for you. Yes, you’ll save money with a garden, but the hourly rate you’ll be saving on those plants and vegetables will quickly head toward $1 per hour or so.

If you enjoy gardening – and I do, in reasonable doses – it’s all well worth it and you can certainly save some dollars from gardening. If you don’t enjoy it too much, find something else productive to do with those hours and enjoy the fine produce available at your local farmers market.

I love the feel of a simple haircut. I love the sensation of the hair leaving my head. I love running my fingers through my newly-shortened hair. I love the sense of wind blowing through the shortened hair, causing a sensation on my scalp that I haven’t felt in a while.

It’s really the simple things that make life worthwhile.

Should I Get a Prenup? Yes! I think there’s actually a pretty compelling argument for a prenupital agreement as a form of “marital insurance.” It’s similar to the logic of why you would buy car insurance – you don’t intend to wreck your car or have a storm knock a tree onto it, but why not have protection against it in case it happens? (@ thousandaire)

Your Do Over Guide: What Would You Do Differently? I’ve actually had a draft of a post going over this very topic. What would I do differently if I could stick myself into my 18 year old body again. If I could turn the clock back to 1996, what would I do differently? This great post has made my wheels start turning again. (@ watson inc.)

A Sucker Punch of Personal Finance to America Has the economic downturn made America more conscious of personal finances? I think the answer is yes, but I think that there will be a rollback pretty quickly when the economy improves. (@ lazy man and money)

After You’ve Done Your Best… If you’ve built everything in your life around avoiding failure, you’ve probably succeeded at that, but you’ve likely also avoided big successes, too. (@ seth godin)

What to Do with a Wedding Dress? My wife’s dress is still hanging in the closet. I think there’s an emotional tie there that’s pretty deep, not so much as a symbol of the wedding, but as a symbol of the marriage. (@ unclutterer)

Monica writes in:

Some personal finance books seem to treat a person’s home as an investment. Others don’t treat it that way at all. I’m confused as to whether I should look at my home as an investment or simply as a living requirement. How do you handle this when you look at things like your net worth or decisions about where to invest your money?

From my perspective, it depends on a number of factors that cross the line between investing and living.

Are you likely to move in the future? If you have external motivations to move, like living near loved ones or chasing a career, then you should look at your house more as an investment and less as a residence. Instead of focusing precisely on where you want to live for a very long time, instead focus on the potential for increased property value.

Is it easy for you to move? The easier it is for you to pick up and move, the more you should view your house as an investment.

What kinds of factors determine this? Are you living near family? Is the house worth substantially more than the rest of your assets? Do you live lightly or do you have a lot of stuff that would have to be moved (which would greatly add to the cost of a move)?

Does your house have significant resale value? If your home is in an area that’s of high value – a nice neighborhood, a well-kept property, access to services and employers – your home will be much more likely to attract buyers than a home that’s in a poor neighborhood, not well maintained, or with poor access to services.

For example, if I were buying a house in an area where I didn’t intend to live for a long period of time, I’d buy a home that was located near places of commerce and near employers. On the other hand, if I were buying a house to live in for a very long time, I would buy a rural home with lots of trees and without easy access to services. In other words, if I’m going to live here for a very long time, I’m going to buy a home according to what I want to live in rather than a home that’s a good investment.

If you view your home primarily as an investment, you’ll do things like follow the prices of homes in your area and look at home improvements from the perspective of improving the home’s value (and avoid improvements that don’t have a good return on investment from the perspective of the selling price).

If you view your home primarily as a place to live for much of the rest of your life, you’ll not worry so much about the local real estate market and you’ll make improvements to improve your livability without worrying what buyers might think of the changes.

Right now, for example, I view our current home as an investment. I’m pretty sure that in ten years, we won’t be living here.

What does that mean in terms of how we view our home? We aren’t making any home improvements that aren’t clearly going to improve the value of the home. For example, I would completely re-arrange the basement (including removing a non-load bearing wall) if we were going to live here for a long time, but I’m pretty sure that such changes might actually reduce the value of the home to other sellers.

Our next home, though, will be a home that we will live in for a long time. That won’t be viewed as an investment.

Instead, we plan to build the home according to the exact specifications that we want, regardless of what the market might want. This might result in some quirky choices, such as a very large family room in the basement with some deep shelves for board games, as well as a dumbwaiter. These might improve the value of the home and they might not, but it frankly does not matter to us. We just want the home we’ve always wanted.

In the end, whether you consider your home to be an investment has more to do with you than it does with anything else. On some level, it is always an investment because of the amount of money you’ve sunk into it, but whether you treat it like an investment is really all about you, your needs, and your situation.

One theme you’ll see pop up time and time again in personal finance and personal growth writing is the idea of a “rich life.” Usually, if that idea is expanded on at all, the “rich life” idea tends to involve a few ideas of what the writer thinks everyone should have in their life, like time with their family or a full social calendar.

The idea of what makes a “rich life” seems to be more of a reflection of the writer than anything else.

For example, my idea of a rich life would involve a lot of activities with my family. It would involve some volunteer groups. It would involve a big vegetable garden. It would involve reading some books when I’m alone and playing some board games when I’m with friends. It would involve a bit of travel. It would involve going to concerts, speeches, and cultural events.

Some of this will probably sound appealing to you. Other pieces won’t. The pieces that sound interesting and the pieces that do not will differ from person to person.

There’s one important thing that I want to point out, though. Every element of what I consider a rich life has to do with how I spend my time, not with the things I own.

A rich life for me involves kicking back in a comfortable spot reading something enjoyable and thought-provoking, not owning a bunch of books.

A rich life for me involves spending a day at the park with my family, not having a garage full of things that we might play with someday.

A rich life for me involves spending time in the garden, not having a huge assortment of gardening supplies.

A rich life for me is time that I can spend on these activities, not time spent working so that I can have the money for tons of items related to these activities.

It’s about the time, not the stuff.

One of the things i’ve really enjoyed about becoming a more frugal person is that, over time, the focus of my life has moved from the stuff I have to how I spend my time. I don’t care what car I have, just that I get from point A to point B reliably. I don’t care what shoes I have, as long as my feet don’t hurt. I don’t care how many books I own, as long as I have one to read. The experience comes first.

So, to put it simply, I believe a rich life is one that’s filled with experiences that you value. It doesn’t really even matter what those experiences are. Some people may love cooking, while others find it dull. Some people may deeply enjoy reading a book, while others might pass on it. Some may enjoy spending hours in their garage tinkering, while others find it dull.

Whatever it is that makes you happy while you’re doing it, do it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should spend money buying stuff for that activity beyond the minimum needed to do it.

In fact, the opposite is true – the richness of experience comes from having as little as possible in your life that keeps you from the experience. Having thirty tools to take on a job that only needs one actually keeps you from enjoying that activity because you’ve got to work to earn money for the items and you’ve got to spend time maintaining and caring for those items.

A rich life is about spending time on whatever is valuable to you. Living frugally, minimizing your clutter, and being mindful of your money only serves to maximize the time you get to spend on whatever it is that excites you. Frugality and personal finance aren’t boring. They’re simply tools to the kind of life rich with experiences that you want to have.

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar’s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I’m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Stephen writes in: with Christmas coming around, what about LED Christmas lights verses regular (incandescent I assume) lights. This is our first Christmas in our new house, so we’ll probably buy some lights soon.

Today, Christmas lights are generally sold in one of two general types: “mini” lights and LED lights. The exact energy use of these different light types varies quite a bit, so I went down to my local Home Depot and looked at a lot of different strands.

My numbers indicated that the average wattage of LED lights is about 0.1 watts per bulb, while the average wattage of “mini” lights is about 0.4 watts per bulb. We’ll assume that for calculation purposes.

So, let’s say you’re going to hang 500 lights from your home, you’re going to have these lights on for 30 evenings during the holiday season, you intend to run them for six hours per evening, and you hope to use the strands for five years. I think these are all reasonable assumptions.

With the LED bulbs, you’ll be using about 0.3 kWh per day to run the bulbs, given the six hour assumption above. That adds up to about 9 kWh per holiday season, or 45 kWh over five years. At an average cost of 0.11 per kWh from your electric company (this is a rough nationwide average), the cost of running the LED bulbs over that five year span is $4.95.

With the “mini” bulbs, you’ll be using about 1.2 kWh per day to run the bulbs, given the six hour assumption above. That adds up to about 36 kWh per holiday season, or 180 kWh over five years. At an average cost of 0.11 per kWh, the cost of running the “mini” bulbs over that five year span is $19.80.

In other words, you’d save about $14.85 over the five year lifetime of those 500 bulbs by using LEDs instead of “mini” bulb strands.

The real question is whether or not you can make up that $14.85 when buying the bulbs. Can you make up $14.85 when buying 500 mini bulbs versus buying 500 LED bulbs?

After examining the prices at a lot of different places, I would say you could save that much or perhaps even a bit more… but only if you’re buying right now at full prices. In November and early December, Christmas lights tend to sell at a very high price.

However, there are tremendous sales on Christmas lights right after Christmas. It’s not uncommon to see 100 bulb strands for $1 during such sales. My wife and I have several strands of LED bulbs in our garage that we bought at such a post-Christmas sale.

So, what should you do? If you’re absolutely convinced that you must buy bulbs for this year, the lowest total cost will probably come from buying “mini” bulbs provided you can find them for $3 per 100 bulb strand less than the LED bulbs. If you can’t, the LED bulbs are going to be the better deal.

If you can possibly wait, though, do so. Buy a big pile of LED bulbs shortly after Christmas during the big bulb sales because you should be able to find strands of those at a very inexpensive price (and probably very close to the price of the “mini” bulbs).