On Being Cheap

Since I only make so much money to get by, and since I've got the little one on the way in addition to the three fur/feather babies to support, I'm a bit stingy with my money.

We're going back to the great debate of smart phone vs. regular phone here today. Over the weekend, I received a post card in the mail with three recommendations of smart phones for me. The tag line was: "People with your phone often update to one of these three phones and love them." Two out of three of them were offered for free, the other one was $50.00. The only reason I was even entertaining the idea of checking out the "smart phone deals" was for the GPS. I thought, I'll be green by no longer printing maps for work, I'll have turn by turn directions on my phone and I can track my mileage!

I went in to the store and dealt with a variably spacey young lady, though she was polite. They didn't have the $50.00 phone advertised on the postcard, but they did have a phone for $150.00 with a $50.00 rebate. Hot damn! What a deal! I asked how much my monthly bill would go up with a new smart phone plan, about $40.00 extra dollars, bringing my monthly bill up to somewhere around $90.00.

Bullshit! I couldn't justify it. I slinked out the door empty handed overwrought with the thought of paying $90.00 a month for a phone!

The other side of cheapness came through when thinking about purchasing a new sofa for the living room. There are several factors to take into consideration when shopping for furniture. We have to test the fabric to see how "snag worthy" it is. Little cat claws would tear up certain fabrics. Leather is out of the question due to dog and cat claws and a parrot that loves to eat furniture. Our options were sort of limited. Especially since we were looking specifically for a sectional. Something cozy, that wasn't too big to fit in our little living room.

We went to the standards, Art Van, and Gardner White. Neither place had anything we really fell in love with and they seemed drastically over priced. Or maybe we were just cheap assholes. Yesterday, we passed by Big Lots of all places who advertised a "20% Today Only!" sale. We thought... what the hell, why not check it out? We found something we both liked almost immediately and decided the cat wouldn't snag it, it wouldn't get scratched by little feet, and most of all, it's comfortable. Most importantly, it was about $1,400.00 less than anything else we were looking at. Yes, we bought a sectional at Big Lots, it's a name brand, and it looks good, I'm not ashamed. I'm just excited to spread out on that thing later tonight.