October 31, 2018 • 41 mins
Nobody ever wants to be called cheap- it’s an insult and brings all sorts of negative connotations with it. However, being frugal is a badge of honor and something worth striving towards. There is a temptation to become cheap when you are looking to get your finances in order, but instead we would encourage frugality over being a cheapskate. In this episode we break down the differences between the two as well as share some stories from when we’ve attempted to be frugal but it ended with us being cheap! In our lives, we’ve found it’s pretty dang hard to label something as cheap vs. frugal because one person’s ‘cheap’ is another’s ‘frugal’. That’s why we discuss our 5 principles or guidelines that will help you determine: are you frugal or are you cheap?
And during this episode we enjoyed a Stiegl Grapefruit Radler which you can find and learn all about on Untappd. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and review us in Apple Podcasts, Castbox, or wherever you get your podcasts!
For specific links and additional information about this episode, head over to our site: HowToMoney.com . Best friends out!
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're asking the question, are you frugal or
are you cheat? Joel, I am extremely pissed because my
(00:29):
credit score dropped like a hundred points a couple of
weeks ago. Whoa dude, Like, what happened? Yeah? So, no joke,
A hundred points. I had an account. I still have
an account with a credit union because credit unions are awesome, right,
we love credit unions. You love credit unions. I love
credit unions. A lot of good reasons to like credit unions,
mostly because a lot of times they offer great rates
and their products are really affordable. They're not charging higher
(00:50):
fees like the big banks are. They also don't have slick,
easy to use websites like big banks do. That is true.
That is probably the biggest flaw of the credit union model.
And on that note, uh, you know, I've got a
payment with the credit union and I got confused because
this was a new payment for me, and I had
thought that I had slid the money over. I don't know,
I just got confused. And all I know is that
(01:13):
there was a five dollar payment that I owed the
credit union. I transferred the money from my online checking
account over but you hadn't actually completed the payment. But
it's still sitting there in my standard credit Union account
and I didn't make that final move to then move
it from there directly to the account because you can't.
You have to use that account as like a middleman.
You can't pay it from my online checking account. So
(01:37):
now you're like deadbeat when it comes to credit scores. Yes, yeah,
so that went about two months. I think it was
before I actually realized what was going on. Yeah, man,
here's the thing. You just made me executor of your will. Right,
we might be regretting it now. We just talked about
this last week because I'm really meticulous when it comes
to payments and details and all that kind of stuff.
(01:58):
But I freaking got sloppy and it slipped through the
cry acts and my freaking credit scord dropped on herd
points now because that a miss payment. So what did
you do that? So what tactics does uber podcast hopes
Matt used to to fight back against this credit cord?
So also, now I've got it listed next to my
standard payments that I've got on my calendar. I've got
my calendar reminders just to remind me to make the payments,
(02:21):
and that one wasn't on there again because it was
a new payment. So now it's part of my regular lineup.
It's it's something I checklist off, I go down every month.
But I mean, the reason I wanted to mention that
was because credit unions, like we said at the beginning,
they're greats. However, it might take a little bit of
doing your homework and making sure you know what's going on,
make sure you know how to make your payments. In
(02:41):
this case, dude, it was only five dollars that I
didn't transfer over properly. Five bucks. Yeah, that's a huge bumber.
I feel like there's I feel like there should be
things in place for when it is something that's super small,
especially for a credit union who's all about their members
and you know, essentially a credit union is a co op.
That's part of the reason the credit union is so great.
(03:02):
They're there to serve the members. The members are essentially
part owners in the credit union. It's a beautiful model
and so you know, it's not like a big bank
where they can just say sorry, you screwed up, you
didn't abide percent by the rules we put in place
and we're paying. Yeah, we're digging you majorly. But I
feel like with the credit Union it should be different.
And I'm not sure if you tried to bark up
(03:24):
the customer service tree there, but if if I were you, man,
I would Yeah, you're probably right. I should maybe accept
that they didn't charge me anything. Right, So the credit Union,
I didn't get hit with any fees. They just reported
it and it actually I don't think it affected my
ability to uh procure credit because just last week I
went ahead and applied for another sign up bonus card
because that's how I roll, and I got approved, so
(03:46):
like the master of those things. So I think maybe
it's it's gonna be okay and I'll still get my
my big old sign up bonus after hit my spending
quotas with a new card. Yeah, and you know your
credit score, it's beautiful thing how it can kind of
bounce back pretty quickly. Yeah, So if you have made
a bungle like that, like everyone's missed a payment at
one point or another, right, dude, I'm not perfect, all right, listen,
all right, not cool man, step your game up. You're
(04:06):
disappointing our listeners. Just kidding all right, So if you
if you have ever missed a payment or I want
to figure out how to improve your credit score. Matt
and I we did an episode on that episode number ten,
so feel free to check that one out, because, yeah,
credit scores are They're kind of like a game in
a lot of ways. And and sometimes you lose a
life and then you gotta jump back on and got
(04:27):
a power up dogs your game together, right, So, and
I feel like that episode for us, that's like the
game Genie right to get your credit score? Uh did
you use the game Genie back in the day. Heck, yeah, dude.
I always had mixed feelings using it because as soon
as you use it, you know that, all right, I'm
basically cheating, you know. It's it's just not the competition
or the difficulty, isn't it. It's just not there. Yeah,
(04:48):
something about its bothered me. It prevents like the replayability
of a game, because once you beat it, you're kind
of done with it. So yeah, it's it's kind of fun.
Like I feel like my friend had one, and I
go over to his house and would beat a game
the same here I didn by that crap. Yeah, George.
But then I go back home and I play my
games and just struggle big time. It's the thrill of
the chase man. Exactly, yeah, exactly, all right, Matt, Let's
(05:10):
tell folks what we're having on the show today. This
is the first we are having a Rattler, which is
technically not beer, right, well, it's part beer, beer and
part juice essentially, uh and so part of what makes
it so delicious and sweet. Agreed. So what we're having today,
and we'll tell you a full review of this beer
at the end of the show is Stiegel Rattler. Can't
(05:32):
wait to drink this and then let you guys know
how it tastes. And I'll say, real quick, the reason
we're drinking this is because my mother in law left
it in our fridge. Sorry, Kath be over the weekend
and I like to be frugal, and so we're gonna
drink this on this episode. What we're talking about, are
you frugal or are you cheap? She's gonna be so
bummed when she comes back looking for her refreshing beer
(05:55):
in the fridge not to be found. I think she
knows that anything left in our fridge is just fair game.
All right, So Matt onto the topic at hand. Are
you frugal or are you cheap? And there's a temptation
to become cheap when you're looking to get your finances
in order. I know that was the case for me
early on, especially you know, in my early twenties, just
being a cheap skate really and we would encourage people
(06:17):
to choose frugality over being a cheap skate. And so
let's kind of get into how those schools that thoughts differ,
what we think the differences are between a cheap person
and a frugal person, and then kind of how people
can tell the frugal line as opposed to that cheap
skate line. Also too, I don't think it's difficult for
people to want want to not be cheap. Right when
you're cheap, it's got a negative connotation, like people don't
(06:38):
want to be cheap. And I think that's one of
the things that hopefully we'll kind of get to on
this is that how do you be frugal without being
like the cheap guy? Crossing that line? Yeah, because who
wants to be cheap? Who wants to be considered the
cheap guy or the cheap girl whatever, nobody, And I
think that keeps people from being frugal and sort of
pursuing being frugal and trying to find ways to save
(06:58):
money because they think, well, I don't want to be
the cheap scale, like I don't want I don't want
to be that guy. And so I think there's a way. Yeah,
like we said, to be frugal and for that to
be sort of this admirable thing for to pursue while
at the same time keeping being cheap kind of out
arms length. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think
frugality has kind of actually become kind of cool. At
(07:19):
least it was maybe a few years ago. I feel
like it's cool now maybe it's cool. Yeah, there's like
a new wave of people being frugal. If it's not,
we're gonna make it cool again. All right, So, Matt,
before we get kind of too far into it, we're
already kind of using these terms, let's kind of give
a quick definition, and so let's start with cheap. Yeah,
So if you're cheap, all that you care about is
getting the cost down and nothing else matters. You're just
(07:40):
focused on the numbers. You're focused on keeping your expenses low,
and so from a decision making standpoint, being cheap is
just really crazy easy because again, all you're considering are
the numbers. It's just an easy button. You're comparing all
your costs and all you have to do is pick
the lowest one. Right. Yeah, but you can already see
how maybe that model might fall apart the faulty exactly
(08:00):
is right, Yeah, So yeah, tell us about frugal. So frugal, Yeah,
if you're frugal, it's more of a question of value
than just about the lowest price, and so it's a
little bit harder to make the decision of whether something
is a good purchase or not if you are frugal,
because you have to weigh more than just that price factor, right,
You're you're weighing the cost against the value that it
(08:22):
brings to you as an individual. It's a little more
of a balance. So just quick example, you might buy
something that a piece of clothing that you plan on
wearing for ten, fifteen, twenty years that you think is
a good value versus buying the cheapest possible item of
clothing that is going to last for a season. Right,
And so that's kind of just a quick understanding. Maybe
(08:44):
of cheap versus frugal, When you're balancing the cost versus
your value, is what you're valuing are just the different
all the different aspects of your life, whether that be
how much time you have or how much energy, not
physical energy, but also to just your mental energy and
the amount of things that you're able to kind of
keep in your mind, like the different deals you're able
to juggle, but even down to the relationships. We're gonna
(09:05):
talk about that a little bit later on. How do
cost in the amount that you spend, how does that
affect relationships, and even down to your beliefs and sort
of the ethical the more ethical questions. These are all
things that are sort of in the balance between money
and then all these other things that you value, and
you have to find out, you know, where is the
perfect balance for you. Yeah, and I think they're going
(09:26):
to be probably a lot of examples that will kind
of kind come out during this show, because that's one
of the easiest ways to reflect that dichotomy, that difference
between being frugal and being cheap. So, for instance, one
thing I wanted to bring up Matt is, you know,
I know there are a lot of people that boycott
the band, shopping at a place like Walmart because maybe
you know, pay they pay their workers a lower wage,
(09:46):
and shopping at a neighborhood store or someplace in your neighborood,
supporting local businesses, maybe paying a little bit more and
shopping somewhere that is that is close by. Um, buying
from your neighbors essentially is a meaningful experience. Yeah. So,
I don't necessarily want to make a judgment right here,
right now about whether you know, shopping locally versus shopping
(10:07):
at a big national chain is you know, frugal or cheap,
bad or good, But it is something that you should
think about as you're kind of creating your own definition
as well, and hopefully by the end of this episode
you will have a good definition to kind of hold
up decisions in your own life and decide whether it's
frugal or cheap for you. Yeah. Man, So, for an example,
(10:29):
we like to keep our heat set at sixty one
degrees Burskey, which is pretty chilly at night. That's why
I'll spend the night anymore, dude, And so I'm willing
to pay what it takes right to stay comfortable at night.
I like to be warmer than sixty one degrees. But
that means for us keeping our beds warm or our
rooms warm, not necessarily the entire house. And so the
(10:50):
default sort of thought processes, oh, I'm cold, let me
turn up the temperature on the whole house. But to me,
that's just wasteful. I will say. Emily tells the story
of growing up my wife, and she says they used
to chant and her dad don't be cheap use the
heat because you wait way too long in the season
to turn it on. And and I'm sure living with me,
(11:11):
she has echoes of childhood in that. But I think
that is a good that's a that's definitely a common
thing that people battle about, the battle of the premise
that right, like folks are walking by and turning and
pushing it back. That's like the kind of thing you
do in college where it's just this passive aggressive, like
the nudge it over does the time of it and
I'm gonna they're gonna nudge it back. And and one
person's frugal is another person's cheap. Yeah, I think probably
(11:32):
most folks would hear this and think, how the crap
do they survive in their house? I mean, and I
work from home, you know, we bundle up, and to me,
that's just a way for us to be frugal. An
example for me that people will probably think it is
super weird is that I reuse my plastic ziploc bags
and so, I know, you know, some people have said, well,
you should use plastic wear instead and wash it, but
(11:53):
I just really like the convenience of plastic bags with
a little zippy Yeah, but I just reuse them for wicks.
So I'll put apples in the same zip block bag
every day for weeks and then I'll finally move on
to another one. Same thing with like the almonds I
take for lunch every day. Um, And I don't see
any problem with that. I like using the bags and
it just makes me feel good about less waste and
also wasting less money. Yeah. Man, that's a little bit weird,
(12:15):
but it's good. And so being frugal takes some thought
and obviously these are things that we've thought about, but
sometimes we fail. And there's ways that we think we
can save money. We think we can be frugal, but
in the process of trying to be frugal and save money,
we end up being cheap. We cross the line, which
is not the goal at all. And uh, you have
an example to share with us, Oh, I sure do.
(12:36):
All right, this is one I will never live down
and still actually is currently in existence. Uh so that
we are reminded as a family of my poor decision.
And it was at a house that we lived in,
um that is currently a rental house. I was putting
in ceiling fans where there were there was just a
light in the ceiling, and I put in ceiling fans, uh,
(12:58):
to help cool things down to the sum or right.
We live in a in a hot town, and so
I put in I got found a really good deal
on some ceiling fans, brand new from home depot. But
it turns out they were really really small. They had
like the super super short blades, like a twelve bench
blade likes something like that. It's like utterly ridiculous. It's
(13:18):
like the little propeller had on a on a dude,
a little kid. Yeah yeah, so, um it just looks
silly up there and it just doesn't really turn much
air in the bedrooms. Wait do you still have them? Yeah,
they're still there. Oh I didn't know that. I thought
you ended up taking them back, you know, so my
tenant doesn't really probably appreciate those fans. But so that
was a frugal fail. And I realized that you actually
installed this. I remember seeing like you pulled them out
(13:38):
of the box. I remember seen them sitting in your
the dining room. Uh, this is several years ago. I
did not realize you actually installed those. They're still around
and and so really that that's a frugal fail on
my part. That's me crossing over from frugal to cheap
because I chose something just for that initial price and
I didn't think about the value or lack thereof, that
it would provide for the long term, right, and and
(13:59):
so that those are just crumby ceiling fans that don't
do the job that I wanted them to do over
the long term. And it's I mean, my wife brings
it up often, like once or twice a year. She'll
bring it up. Remember those healing fans you bought? And
yes I do. And I'm telling everyone now thanks for sharing, man.
I love that story. It feels like confession. Well my
confession time. So we love bikes and Joel, you remember
(14:22):
I used to have that cargo bike with a box
up front. That's right. Yeah, yeah, So it's the it's
like the Dutch style cargo bike, and so it's a
cargo bike, and what that means it's just got a
cargo area in the front of the bike for in
our case, our daughter would sit up there and I
could put groceries and all sorts of stuff. That was awesome. Well,
in my case, I went for the cheapest possible version
of that bike that you could buy. And by that
(14:43):
I mean there are some guys in Texas that we're
making these out of scrap bike parts and they would
basically just hack together these like Frankenstein cargo bikes, and
the welding on them were terrible and they weren't at
all engineered to be safe. And Dude, from the very beginning,
I had problems with that thing, like I would break
(15:03):
and it would shim me like like it would do
the speed wobble sort of thing. And from day one
I immediately regretted the decision. And the reason I did
was because I was only looking at cost. I just
wanted that style of bike because I essentially kind of
was infatuated with it to fill in love with it,
and the really nice ones are the normal ones, I
should say, we're thousands of dollars, like two or three grand,
(15:24):
and I didn't have that much money, and I thought, oh, Man,
for bucks, I get something that looks a lot like it,
except it wasn't even really that fun to ride. It
wasn't even that safe, you know, with the whole sort
of shimming going on. And ultimately I ended up selling
that selling that bike for several hundred less. It's a
guy who was very happy to buy it because he
was a welder and he knew how to fix it.
(15:45):
But in my case, Man, there was a huge fail,
huge fail. I ended up paying like the freight shipping
to to ship that thing all away from Texas. I
feel like, man, that there's a lot of cheap fails
that I could late claim to here on this podcast episode. That,
especially early on in in my you know, wanting to
be financially secure, wanting to cut my costs and do
(16:05):
better with my money, there were just so many poor
decisions I made, uh, And they were along this line, right.
I hadn't learned the boundary of frugal verse cheap, and
I came down on the side of cheap far too often,
and ultimately, man coming down on that cheap side actually
cost you more in the long run so much of
the time, but we're too shortsighted to realize it. Just
(16:27):
like with your bike, Just like with my ceiling fan,
right it's gonna cost you more in the long run.
I got to replace those fans at some point, and
you had to sell your bike for a loss because
it was just a carming product. And so I think
that's a big part of the decision making that we
have to factor in, is is this decision that I'm
making just uh to get the lowest price right now
(16:47):
is actually going to come back to bite me in
the end. Yeah, man, that is an awesome example. But
after the break, we'll cover some guiding principles that can
guide you along when you're making some purchases to determine
whether you're being cheap or if you're being for goal.
(17:09):
All right, man, we're back from the break now. We're
gonna talk about some different principles that we feel can
guide you. Like we said, when it comes to determining
whether you're being cheap or whether or not you're being frugal,
you're gonna kick it off, yeah man. Principle number one,
cheap people are thinking about short term benefits while frugal
folks are playing the long game. It turns out that
being cheap can actually cost you more in the long
(17:30):
run because you have to buy more things more frequently.
And so, just like we were talking about Matt right,
the short sided bike purchase, it costs you more in
the long run because you have to ditch it. You
lost money on that, you bought another bike For me.
An example I can think of clearly is the way
I used to buy jeans versus the way I currently
buy jeans. I would buy the cheapest H and M
(17:51):
or old Navy jeans I could possibly get. They were
twelve dollars, fourteen dollars on sale, whatever they were, but
they just didn't fit right. They seem to quickly start
to fit irregularly, And now the jeans I buy are
more like fifty bucks. But they last four years and years,
and I love wearing them and I wear them every
(18:11):
single day of my life. So that to me is
a frugal purchase. You know, I know the genes that
I like. Now I wait for them to go on
sale and I buy those particular genes. I'm surprised you
don't have to buy your jeans that like the big
and tall store, Like, what's your leg length? Is it really? Yeah?
That's not that long. I know, that's weird. I was
expecting to be like thirty six or thirty eight or something.
(18:31):
I am freakingly tall, and that's true. But now I
can get away with thirty four length, which is which
is nice you'd like to wear where those high waters.
Another application, dude, of that makes me think of our
old to our old car before we got the van,
was we had a v dub that was turbo had
a turbo charger. It makes it sound like it was
like pempt out or something like that. Wholl exhibit calm down.
(18:54):
But with that mentho is that we had to get
special oil. And by especially it just I mean we
had to have like a synthetic oil. And so if
we didn't maintain that vehicle and spend the money every
old change to make sure that we had synthetic oil,
that was gonna end up costing us big time in
the long run because it would create this like oil sludge.
And so that's the an example of going cheap right
(19:15):
in the in the short term, only looking at the
cost in the near term would have cost us huge
down the road. Yeah, So if you're trying to decide
whether you're being frugal or cheap, think about principle number one.
And if you're only considering the short term costs as
opposed to the potential long term benefits, then you're probably
being cheap, that's right, man. Principal number two. Cheap people
(19:35):
are often trying to avoid spending money altogether on anything, right,
or they load up and they buy just too much
crap with you know, that sort of it's on sale,
the Black Friday mindset, whereas frugal folks are willing to
spend on the things that they care about. And so
what I mean by that then, is that if you're
not being mindful of the things that you're spending money
on your purchases, and you're just trying to spend as
(19:55):
little as possible all the time, chances are you're being
cheap and you likely aren't even really enjoying life. If
you're frugal, you tend to spend money on the things
that actually bring you joy. Yeah, I feel like cheap
is possession accruel. Right, how much of cheap things can
I amass? And it almost kind of can turn into
a hoarding type mentality, right, Like how many TVs can
(20:17):
I have? If I get them all on sale? I
can have a lot, But really, how many how many
TVs do you really need? Man? Exactly like five of
them in your house and you just want one more?
Yeah that's a weird thing. Yeah, no way, man, And
so I've got one TV. It's actually funny. I was
talking I did buy my TV on Black Friday like
nine years ago or ten years ago with my buddies.
(20:38):
But we're just texting about it just the other day
about how our TVs were still lasting and it's still
the only TV that we have in our house. And
even that, man, sometimes I think about getting rid of
it all together because just a time sucks sometimes. But yeah,
I think people should think a little bit more like that,
not how many more TVs can I get when they're
on sale? But how can I spend money on the
things that bring me joy as opposed to just with
(20:59):
that Black Friday mindset? Oh it's off, I get a deal. Yeah,
But the best deal is not spending money on things
that you don't actually need. Right. So I would recommend,
especially in advance of the Black Friday shopping season to
take stock of the things that you're really are on
your shopping list and think about finding deals on those
particular items, not just buying whatever pops up and whatever
(21:22):
seems like a good deal in the black Friday ads, right,
because that's cheap just trying to buy as many possible
things as you can. Yeah, Cheap people are all about
being able to say how much they got their item off.
It's like, man, I got this thing for seventy off.
I'm just like cool, why do you need that thing? Yeah? Yeah,
exactly do you actually need that? And so that's what
you want to keep in mind. Yeah, if you are
(21:42):
either trying to avoid spending all together or loading up
and buying as much stuff as you need at the
cheapest price possible, you're probably being cheap all right. Man.
That brings us to principle number three. Cheap peeps don't
take their own time and energy into account when they
see a deal or if they know that they can
d I Y the project. Frugal folks tend to have
a better understanding of what their time is worth, and
(22:03):
that helps them make a better decision as to whether
or not they should try and save a few bucks
by fixing something on their own. Yeah, that's right, man.
Often there's a complete de valuing of your time. You know,
when you think cheap, they end up driving across town
just to save a few bucks. You know, like they're
the ones trekking across the city to get a few
cents off per gallon when they're not even thinking about
how much time that they're wasting or even how much
(22:24):
money they're spending to get there. Yeah, how much gas
are wasting in order to get the cheaper gas. Yeah,
but really, just like how much of your life hours
are you wasting? Like you can't get that tign back
where you're just sitting in the car just to save
a few bucks. And also, dude, I don't know about
if you've thought about this, but I feel like the
time that it takes to think about getting a deal
sometimes um can be overwhelming. And and when you get
(22:46):
into that mindset. I know it was for me because
I feel like I'm a reformed cheap skate to a
certain extent. Right, I feel like now I understand the difference,
and I placed a lot more value on frugality as
opposed to being cheap. And but that was me, that
was totally me and I would drive across town to
buy something at a store because I had a cup
on and it was on sale, and I would double
down on the savings for something I didn't necessarily need.
(23:08):
And for me, it was a lack of understanding about
how valuable my time was. And so I feel like
this is actually a really important point that hits home
that the thing that was the kicker for me was understanding.
You know what, Joel, your time is valuable, and when
you take your time out to go save a buck
or two by driving across town to do something crazy
like that, then that's where you're missing the boat. And
(23:30):
that's where being cheap just felt like it was a
detriment to kind of my ultimate plans of, you know,
financial independence. It felt like it was the opposite. It
was kind of a suck as opposed to something that
was benefiting my life. I mean, I think there might
be two reasons for that. Because I'm with you, I
was way more willing to chase after the deals early on,
and I think that's just because when you're younger, you
feel like you just have more time. Well, I mean,
I think you do have more time because I have.
(23:51):
I got three kids now, and so I've got a
way less time, and your time is like literally worthless.
I think that's that's very that's very true. So certainly
as you get older, get more responsibility, and yeah, your
time is worth more. We're kind of aging up a
little bit, and yeah, time is worth more to us.
You also mentioned like fixing things yourself, and for me,
you're talking about how this is kind of hitting home
(24:12):
for you. For me, this totally hits home. And this
is an easy trap for me to fall into. For
all those like me who are interested in the d
I y stuff. If you're more mechanically minded, you kind
of like figuring out how things work, Like I like
fixing things, Like I recently fixed one of our sound machines,
Like you know that we've got the dome like mechanical
sound machine that spends one of them. One of ours
(24:33):
was squealing and it had been in like the drawer forever,
and I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. And
there's just one screw holding the whole thing together. So
I thought, let me just pull this open because I
was curious. You know, It's it's just I'm naturally disposed
to kind of figure things out like that, and it
happens to sort of coincide with saving money. That didn't
take long. Maybe it's like thirty minutes, but I might
spend an hour or two taking something apart to see
(24:53):
what's wrong with it, because I'm a curious and I
like to figure things out. But be I'm like, oh
I can also I can save a buck. Well I
do this, and so it I justify it. But I'm
ripping myself off because my time is worth way more
and my wife would rather me do something else with
my time, like the dishes madly. Yeah, So ultimately, cheat
people don't take their own time into account. Frugal people do.
(25:17):
That's principal number three, the fourth principle we're gonna cover.
Frugal folks are interested in well researched purchases, and so
when you're frugal, you're willing to pay more for a
particular product because of if there's like track record or
the fact that you know you're buying from a reputable merchant.
They might have a great return policy or an awesome warranty.
In those instances, I think it's okay to pay more.
(25:39):
Just make sure that you're paying for a great product
and that you're not paying for great marketing. Yeah, Matt,
Like you could probably say I'm buying those yeasies because
they got that great warranty, But that's probably not the case.
It's probably because you're being a little consumeristic. Do they
have a sweet warranty? I don't know. So. Actually on shoes,
it does make me think of like red Wings, Like,
you know, you've seen the red Wings around, Like they're
(26:00):
dope boots for for men. Yeah, uh, they're awesome. They
are crazy expensive. I think they cost around two or
fifty bucks. And I have a pair of boots that
are very similar, exact, same style, six inch and there
by a company called thorough Good And this company's dude
has been around just as long as red Wing. But
guess what they're advertising slash marketing game sucks, But these
(26:23):
boots are just as good. Yeah. And then the other
option that you could have done buying a boot right
is you could have gone with the cheapest Walmart boot
possible that wears through super quick. But a frugal person
does their research and they don't necessarily just by the
most expensive boot. Right, That's not always the answer. But
in your case, you found a well research option that
was cheaper but still fit the bill. And I think
(26:44):
you know a couple more examples that we could give
kind of in this area are buying something from reputable
retailer like a Costco. So Costco has got one of
the best warranties in the business. You used to apply
even to electronics items for the longest time, but you know,
in the last few years that were just just it's impossible,
right to to keep that up. But if you're buying
almost anything in the store, food, clothing, kitchen items, whatever
(27:07):
it is, the great thing is that the return policy
it never ends. And so that's awesome. I recommend anyone
by especially stuff like luggage. Right. Yeah, I was gonna say,
because I didn't you have a piece of luggage where
something happened to it, and you're like, dude, I got
this at Costco. I'm able to get a new one,
don't worry exactly. Yeah, So I totally had a suitcase
damaged by an airline and Costco took it back no
(27:28):
problem at all. That's awesome, And so buying something from Costco,
I'm also willing to spend just a little bit more.
I feel like their quality is really good and their
return policy is really good. So if I spend a
little bit more, it's not the cheapest suitcase on the block, right,
But I do have that back pocket, you know, warranty
that covers me if something were to happen, So that
means a lot, right, I'm not buying the cheapest possible thing,
(27:49):
and that's okay. It makes me think of Aldi. That's
one of the reasons that we love Aldi. I mean,
it's they're crazy inexpensive. I'm gonna try not to use
the word cheap since we're talking about frugal, but there
are yeah, crazy and expensive and they've gotten an awesome
warranty and we've definitely used it before. It's a double
back warranty, so basically, if something goes bad, specifically like
with food, you can take it back and they will
(28:11):
give you your money back and they'll give you a
new one of what you just returned, which is awesome
money back and a replacement item. I can't beat it.
Got to love that about all. The One other thing
I feel like that fits into this category is a
car purchase, Like you could get the cheapest car you
can buy a day wu right, And that's a cheap
set of wheels, but ultimately that car might wear within
(28:32):
on you really quick or just break down completely. Right.
So buying something like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda
Chords something like that where consistently when you look at
the Consumer Reports rankings, the JD Power ratings, the those
cars do so well over time. And maybe you spent
a couple grand more to get into a used Corolla
(28:52):
or Record, ultimately you'll be in that car longer with
fewer things to go wrong. I mean, that's a frugal
purchase as opposed to just make the quick, cheap decision.
And adding on to that too, you want to make
sure you get whatever car you're gonna get, get it inspected.
And that's a sort of extra expense that you may
not want to pay upfront. Kise you're attempted to be cheap.
You don't want to spend any more money than you
have to. But that's a corner that you don't want
(29:14):
to cut. You do not want to skip a car inspection,
and that could save you thousands and thousands of dollars
down the road. Yeah, Matt, And speaking of inspections, I
was really shortsighted. One time when buying a new home,
instead of getting an actual home inspection, I had a
contractor friend come and look at the house and kind
of write down some things that he thought needed repaired,
And when came to the negotiating table, because I didn't
(29:34):
have an actual inspection report completely made out, the things
that I asked for were shut down. Inspections are really
expensive when it comes to a house, and I felt
like at that point I bought a few houses, I
knew what I was doing and I didn't actually need
a full fledged inspection if I had a contractor going
through the house. But when it came down to it,
that four would have probably saved me five thousand more
(29:55):
dollars off the price of the house on the negotiating
table exactly. How didn't even think about that? Yeah, And
so this last house that I purchased, inspection got me
ten dollars negotiated off the price. And so it's not
necessarily just about finding the flaws in the house, but
it's having something to go back to the negotiation table with.
And if I was cheap right like I was that
first time, save that Feurigner bucks. But it costs me
(30:17):
in the long run, and so I would recommend it.
Just like getting your car inspected. It's worth it because
it can prevent you from buying a lemon. And in
the same way, you know, getting a home inspection can
prevent you from buying a lemon of a house, but
it can also, you know, help you save more money
in the long run on the purchase price, because you
have something to go back to the seller with and
you can negotiate with it to save yourself even more money.
(30:38):
Nice man. After the break, we're gonna talk about being
frugal and cheap and relationships and this can mean the
difference between your friends calling you cheap or calling you frugal.
All right, Matt, we're back from the break. Bring the
(31:00):
topic are you frugal or are you cheap? And we've
already kind of covered a few important principles that are
great for kind of running through as you're thinking through
a specific purchase, as you're thinking through kind of the
trajectory of how you live, whether you are frugal or
whether you're being cheap. And here's a fifth principle for
you frugal folks. Balance saving a buck with all aspects
(31:21):
of life, especially when it comes to relationships. Frugal people
are considerate of the people around them, and cheap people, well,
they can often hurt and damage relationships by imposing their
cheapness on other people. So a good rule of thumb
to denote whether you're being frugal or cheap is if
your decision is having negative consequences on the people around you.
(31:44):
Yeah man. The most sort of a blatant example of
that is not tipping somebody, uh servers, like a big
portion of their income is from tips. And if you
were to not do that by taking advantage of this
unspoken thing that you know you should be doing, well,
you're being cheap, right, yes, So a frugal persons respond is,
if you can't afford going out to dinner and leaving,
a good tip for your server is to just go
(32:06):
out to eat less. Right, And a cheap person still
wants to take advantage, they want to use the coupon
and uh not tip their server. Well, that that's being cheap, right,
that's negatively impacting someone else. And so the frugal person
just says, you know what, I can't afford it, I'm
going out to eat less. Yeah man, it's not even
necessary right to go out to have fun with friends
to to develop relationships. It's not required that you go out.
(32:29):
I don't I wish I could remember where I heard this,
but it was about a group of friends that would
get together and they would all bring ingredients and they
would have a potato like party, Like somebody would bring potatoes,
someone would bring that sounds festive done, it sounds fun.
Someone else bringing like the bacon and some cheese, and
they would all kind of pitch in. It was just
a way for folks to save a lot of money
(32:50):
but still have that social interaction. Yeah. I think there's
tons of ways to do that, right. And then there's
also ways to go out with your friends and not
spend as much as everyone else, right, And you don't
have to go out all the time. There's awesome ways
to stay in and have a potato party, right like
match just mentioned, but also maybe just have one beer
instead of three. Let's say you're dating right now, right,
(33:10):
there's ways to go out and take someone else out
without being cheap, because it's not about the money that
you spend. It's about building that relationship, and your significant
other doesn't care how much you spent on dinner. They
care about the thought and the intentionality that you put
into it and the time that you're spending together. Dude.
I love that quality time together is is so important.
And so if you're frugal and you're worried about being
(33:33):
perceived as cheap, what you want to do is make
sure that you communicate with your friends, with whoever it
is that you are in relationship with, talk about money,
talk about why you're not going to be spending money
in a given social situation, or maybe why you may
not even be attending. And in those cases, even if
you have friends that disagree and have different values, hopefully
(33:54):
they have a renewed respect for what it is that
you're doing because you've been thoughtful about what you're doing,
and even more importantly, you're communicating that with them, you're
sharing with them, and that's something that you're able to
then talk about together, dude. And that's so much of
what we like to do here on the podcast, right.
Like we talk about money, we talk about the things
that oftentimes don't get talked about, and it needs to
(34:17):
be normalized and part of our sort of daily discussion. Yeah,
and I know that for Emily and I like at home,
open lines of communication have made a big change in
me being just kind of a cheap skate and and
making a lot of headway towards being a frugal person instead,
and that sort of those open lines of communication have
have made it easier for us to get on the
(34:37):
same page. Uh and and we don't always agree, but
then we come to terms on you know, a reasonable
decision for us to make. So just like kind of,
for instance, made an example of how many date nights
we would have and what kind of places we would
be going on our date nights, and cheat me was like,
let's go every week, but go get like the cheapest
Mexican food we possibly can. And sometimes, you know, Emily
(34:59):
wanted to go nice places, and so we've kind of
made this decision right where we go on fewer date nights,
and you know, sometimes we'll go to a really cheap
place that's really tasty, and then sometimes we'll go someplace
a little bit nicer, because like a long, slow dinner
at a beautiful restaurant is meaningful to her and it
is quality over quantity, right, And you can go out
(35:19):
to eat five nights a week at a fast food
place right and spend the same amount of money as
you can on that one day night at that like
nice restaurant in town, but it doesn't have nearly the
same effect and the same meaning. Right. So for our relationship,
communicating about why and how we're going to spend the
money has led to open eyes and coming into it
(35:40):
on the same page so that we can choose to
be frugal together as opposed to meet cheaping out um
and and so that's made a really big difference for us. Yeah, man,
in in your example, there might be some folks who
might want that cheap Mexican every week because for them,
that is what they value, and that is what they've
communicated with people in their lives, and that's what they've
(36:01):
figured out is most important to them. That's why it's
so hard to say that, oh, this is a frugal
purchase or oh this is a cheap purchase, because again
with every person, with each individual, it's different. As long
as you've given it the thought and you know why
it is that you're spending the money that you're spending, uh,
and and that you're doing that with intentionality, then you
are moving in the right direction. All right, Matt, back
(36:23):
to the beer we stole from your mother in law.
We have some bigger beers, and this is like the
opposite of a big beer. First of all, it comes
in a tiny bottle. It feels like a mini bottle
of champagne. It's kind of adorable. It's kind of cute. Dude.
I will say, it's got an awesome label. I love
the label on it. It really does. So let's tell
people were drinking. We're drinking Stiegel Rattler, and it's a
(36:44):
great fruit beer slash juice. Right. A rattler is, interestingly enough,
essentially half beer and half juice. It's a German concoction. Yeah,
the europe it's fancy. Yeah. I think the Brits call
it a shandy while while the Germans call it a rattler. Um.
But and this is my favorite, I gotta be honest.
The Stiegel grape fruit Rattler isn't so good, dude, by
(37:05):
far my favorite version of a rattler. I'm not really
into these beers for the most part, but this one
in particular. If you can get your hands on some Stiegel.
And the great thing is too, we're drinking something that
probably everybody can find at their local package. Definitely you
can find this beer and it either comes in these
cute little green bottles or a four pack of cans.
But man, it's got this really nice, juicy grape fruity.
(37:26):
It feels like you're drinking straight grape fruit juice that's
just got this little bit of beer in it, and
it's really really nice. It's half away. I mean, like
you said, it's it's like halfway between juice and beer.
And so the history of this beer or juice beer,
whatever you wanna call it is it originated in Europe
and it was made for cyclists. And so you've got
these groups of folks I've envisioned writing their you know,
(37:46):
fancy road bikes through the Alps, and they are thirsty
and they come upon a pub, but they know they've
got to heap writing, and so they were watering down
their beer with with lemonade and creating rattlers. And so
it's a way for them to you know, get refreshed,
get get rehydrated, but at the same time not get
wasted so that they couldn't keep riding their bikes. Yeah,
(38:07):
and so this beer in particular is like three point
two percent alcohol, So Matt and I feel nothing at
all right now but a fantastic beer, really, and I
love that history behind it. I love that you know,
you and I love bikes, and we love biking. We
love beer, man, So Rattlers should be our patron st beer, right,
totally should be. They totally should be. So we will
let Stiegel Rattler be our patron st beer because of that.
(38:30):
Because and and seriously, it's the best Rattler I've ever had.
I love every time I get to have one of
these beers. Super low a BV so full flavor and
just kind of something different off the beaten path from
the normal kind of beers we drink, not our typical
I p A, that's for sure. So thanks to Kath,
Matt's mother in law for donating this beer to the
show or at the or as our girls caller motto.
(38:52):
All right, Joel, final thoughts. And this is how you
can tell if you are being cheap or if you're
being frugal. And the first way is that cheap people
are always thinking about this short term benefits, the short
term costs and expense, while frugal folks are playing the
long game. A lot of times if you're too cheap,
that can actually cost you more in the long run
because they're gonna have to buy more often. Also, cheap
(39:14):
people are often trying to avoid spending money altogether, or
they're loading up and buying way too much crap with
that Black Friday mindset. Frugal folks are willing to spend
money only on the things that they care about. Cheap
people don't take their own time and energy into account
when they see a deal or if they know that
they can d I Y the project right, and so
(39:36):
they devalue their time, whereas frugal folks have a better
understanding of what their time is worth and can decide
whether or not they want to, you know, fix that
broken appliance like I oftentimes get sucked into doing. Another
sign that you might be frugal as opposed to cheap
is that you research your purchase as well. You might
pay more for a particular product because of the track
record and the fact that you're buying from a reputable
(39:57):
merchant with a great return policy. Cheap people, they're not
even thinking about that stuff. That's right. And finally, frugal
folks balance saving money with all aspects of life, especially
when it comes to relationships. While frugal people are considerate
of those around them, cheap people can hurt people in
damage relationships by imposing their cheapness on those around them.
(40:17):
So Matt, ultimately, let's strive to be frugal and not cheap.
And I think it's really helpful to have these kind
of five principles as a mirror as you're thinking about purchases,
as you're thinking about how you live life. And I
know for me it's been a great transformation to go
from being cheap to being someone who I think has
become decently frugal. Yeah. Man, that's right. It takes time,
(40:38):
it's a process. It's not easy to be frugal. Being
cheap is easy. All you do is you look for
the cheapest price and you go with that. Being frugal
takes thought, intentionality, and it takes a little more work. Yeah,
it's better for I think your heart's, better for your relationships,
better for the stuff in your closet. Right, So all
those reasons it's better to be frugal than cheap. Thanks
for listening. Our home on the web is how to
(40:59):
Money dot Com and we will have show notes up
for this episode. Yeah, and hopefully you found this episode helpful.
If you found it randomly, be sure to check us
out on Apple Podcast, where you can subscribe and you
can get all the new episodes as they are released
until next time. Buddy, best Friends Out, Friends Out. You're
(41:30):
such a beautiful butterfly now used to be this ugly caterpillar,
this ugly cheap caterpillar, now that you're this beautiful butterfly,
Welcome to How the Money. I'm Joel and I am Matt,
and today we're asking the question, are you frugal or
are you cheat? Joel, I am extremely pissed because my
(00:29):
credit score dropped like a hundred points a couple of
weeks ago. Whoa dude, Like, what happened? Yeah? So, no joke,
A hundred points. I had an account. I still have
an account with a credit union because credit unions are awesome, right,
we love credit unions. You love credit unions. I love
credit unions. A lot of good reasons to like credit unions,
mostly because a lot of times they offer great rates
and their products are really affordable. They're not charging higher
(00:50):
fees like the big banks are. They also don't have slick,
easy to use websites like big banks do. That is true.
That is probably the biggest flaw of the credit union model.
And on that note, uh, you know, I've got a
payment with the credit union and I got confused because
this was a new payment for me, and I had
thought that I had slid the money over. I don't know,
I just got confused. And all I know is that
(01:13):
there was a five dollar payment that I owed the
credit union. I transferred the money from my online checking
account over but you hadn't actually completed the payment. But
it's still sitting there in my standard credit Union account
and I didn't make that final move to then move
it from there directly to the account because you can't.
You have to use that account as like a middleman.
You can't pay it from my online checking account. So
(01:37):
now you're like deadbeat when it comes to credit scores. Yes, yeah,
so that went about two months. I think it was
before I actually realized what was going on. Yeah, man,
here's the thing. You just made me executor of your will. Right,
we might be regretting it now. We just talked about
this last week because I'm really meticulous when it comes
to payments and details and all that kind of stuff.
(01:58):
But I freaking got sloppy and it slipped through the
cry acts and my freaking credit scord dropped on herd
points now because that a miss payment. So what did
you do that? So what tactics does uber podcast hopes
Matt used to to fight back against this credit cord?
So also, now I've got it listed next to my
standard payments that I've got on my calendar. I've got
my calendar reminders just to remind me to make the payments,
(02:21):
and that one wasn't on there again because it was
a new payment. So now it's part of my regular lineup.
It's it's something I checklist off, I go down every month.
But I mean, the reason I wanted to mention that
was because credit unions, like we said at the beginning,
they're greats. However, it might take a little bit of
doing your homework and making sure you know what's going on,
make sure you know how to make your payments. In
(02:41):
this case, dude, it was only five dollars that I
didn't transfer over properly. Five bucks. Yeah, that's a huge bumber.
I feel like there's I feel like there should be
things in place for when it is something that's super small,
especially for a credit union who's all about their members
and you know, essentially a credit union is a co op.
That's part of the reason the credit union is so great.
(03:02):
They're there to serve the members. The members are essentially
part owners in the credit union. It's a beautiful model
and so you know, it's not like a big bank
where they can just say sorry, you screwed up, you
didn't abide percent by the rules we put in place
and we're paying. Yeah, we're digging you majorly. But I
feel like with the credit Union it should be different.
And I'm not sure if you tried to bark up
(03:24):
the customer service tree there, but if if I were you, man,
I would Yeah, you're probably right. I should maybe accept
that they didn't charge me anything. Right, So the credit Union,
I didn't get hit with any fees. They just reported
it and it actually I don't think it affected my
ability to uh procure credit because just last week I
went ahead and applied for another sign up bonus card
because that's how I roll, and I got approved, so
(03:46):
like the master of those things. So I think maybe
it's it's gonna be okay and I'll still get my
my big old sign up bonus after hit my spending
quotas with a new card. Yeah, and you know your
credit score, it's beautiful thing how it can kind of
bounce back pretty quickly. Yeah, So if you have made
a bungle like that, like everyone's missed a payment at
one point or another, right, dude, I'm not perfect, all right, listen,
all right, not cool man, step your game up. You're
(04:06):
disappointing our listeners. Just kidding all right, So if you
if you have ever missed a payment or I want
to figure out how to improve your credit score. Matt
and I we did an episode on that episode number ten,
so feel free to check that one out, because, yeah,
credit scores are They're kind of like a game in
a lot of ways. And and sometimes you lose a
life and then you gotta jump back on and got
(04:27):
a power up dogs your game together, right, So, and
I feel like that episode for us, that's like the
game Genie right to get your credit score? Uh did
you use the game Genie back in the day. Heck, yeah, dude.
I always had mixed feelings using it because as soon
as you use it, you know that, all right, I'm
basically cheating, you know. It's it's just not the competition
or the difficulty, isn't it. It's just not there. Yeah,
(04:48):
something about its bothered me. It prevents like the replayability
of a game, because once you beat it, you're kind
of done with it. So yeah, it's it's kind of fun.
Like I feel like my friend had one, and I
go over to his house and would beat a game
the same here I didn by that crap. Yeah, George.
But then I go back home and I play my
games and just struggle big time. It's the thrill of
the chase man. Exactly, yeah, exactly, all right, Matt, Let's
(05:10):
tell folks what we're having on the show today. This
is the first we are having a Rattler, which is
technically not beer, right, well, it's part beer, beer and
part juice essentially, uh and so part of what makes
it so delicious and sweet. Agreed. So what we're having today,
and we'll tell you a full review of this beer
at the end of the show is Stiegel Rattler. Can't
(05:32):
wait to drink this and then let you guys know
how it tastes. And I'll say, real quick, the reason
we're drinking this is because my mother in law left
it in our fridge. Sorry, Kath be over the weekend
and I like to be frugal, and so we're gonna
drink this on this episode. What we're talking about, are
you frugal or are you cheap? She's gonna be so
bummed when she comes back looking for her refreshing beer
(05:55):
in the fridge not to be found. I think she
knows that anything left in our fridge is just fair game.
All right, So Matt onto the topic at hand. Are
you frugal or are you cheap? And there's a temptation
to become cheap when you're looking to get your finances
in order. I know that was the case for me
early on, especially you know, in my early twenties, just
being a cheap skate really and we would encourage people
(06:17):
to choose frugality over being a cheap skate. And so
let's kind of get into how those schools that thoughts differ,
what we think the differences are between a cheap person
and a frugal person, and then kind of how people
can tell the frugal line as opposed to that cheap
skate line. Also too, I don't think it's difficult for
people to want want to not be cheap. Right when
you're cheap, it's got a negative connotation, like people don't
(06:38):
want to be cheap. And I think that's one of
the things that hopefully we'll kind of get to on
this is that how do you be frugal without being
like the cheap guy? Crossing that line? Yeah, because who
wants to be cheap? Who wants to be considered the
cheap guy or the cheap girl whatever, nobody, And I
think that keeps people from being frugal and sort of
pursuing being frugal and trying to find ways to save
(06:58):
money because they think, well, I don't want to be
the cheap scale, like I don't want I don't want
to be that guy. And so I think there's a way. Yeah,
like we said, to be frugal and for that to
be sort of this admirable thing for to pursue while
at the same time keeping being cheap kind of out
arms length. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think
frugality has kind of actually become kind of cool. At
(07:19):
least it was maybe a few years ago. I feel
like it's cool now maybe it's cool. Yeah, there's like
a new wave of people being frugal. If it's not,
we're gonna make it cool again. All right, So, Matt,
before we get kind of too far into it, we're
already kind of using these terms, let's kind of give
a quick definition, and so let's start with cheap. Yeah,
So if you're cheap, all that you care about is
getting the cost down and nothing else matters. You're just
(07:40):
focused on the numbers. You're focused on keeping your expenses low,
and so from a decision making standpoint, being cheap is
just really crazy easy because again, all you're considering are
the numbers. It's just an easy button. You're comparing all
your costs and all you have to do is pick
the lowest one. Right. Yeah, but you can already see
how maybe that model might fall apart the faulty exactly
(08:00):
is right, Yeah, So yeah, tell us about frugal. So frugal, Yeah,
if you're frugal, it's more of a question of value
than just about the lowest price, and so it's a
little bit harder to make the decision of whether something
is a good purchase or not if you are frugal,
because you have to weigh more than just that price factor, right,
You're you're weighing the cost against the value that it
(08:22):
brings to you as an individual. It's a little more
of a balance. So just quick example, you might buy
something that a piece of clothing that you plan on
wearing for ten, fifteen, twenty years that you think is
a good value versus buying the cheapest possible item of
clothing that is going to last for a season. Right,
And so that's kind of just a quick understanding. Maybe
(08:44):
of cheap versus frugal, When you're balancing the cost versus
your value, is what you're valuing are just the different
all the different aspects of your life, whether that be
how much time you have or how much energy, not
physical energy, but also to just your mental energy and
the amount of things that you're able to kind of
keep in your mind, like the different deals you're able
to juggle, but even down to the relationships. We're gonna
(09:05):
talk about that a little bit later on. How do
cost in the amount that you spend, how does that
affect relationships, and even down to your beliefs and sort
of the ethical the more ethical questions. These are all
things that are sort of in the balance between money
and then all these other things that you value, and
you have to find out, you know, where is the
perfect balance for you. Yeah, and I think they're going
(09:26):
to be probably a lot of examples that will kind
of kind come out during this show, because that's one
of the easiest ways to reflect that dichotomy, that difference
between being frugal and being cheap. So, for instance, one
thing I wanted to bring up Matt is, you know,
I know there are a lot of people that boycott
the band, shopping at a place like Walmart because maybe
you know, pay they pay their workers a lower wage,
(09:46):
and shopping at a neighborhood store or someplace in your neighborood,
supporting local businesses, maybe paying a little bit more and
shopping somewhere that is that is close by. Um, buying
from your neighbors essentially is a meaningful experience. Yeah. So,
I don't necessarily want to make a judgment right here,
right now about whether you know, shopping locally versus shopping
(10:07):
at a big national chain is you know, frugal or cheap,
bad or good, But it is something that you should
think about as you're kind of creating your own definition
as well, and hopefully by the end of this episode
you will have a good definition to kind of hold
up decisions in your own life and decide whether it's
frugal or cheap for you. Yeah. Man, So, for an example,
(10:29):
we like to keep our heat set at sixty one
degrees Burskey, which is pretty chilly at night. That's why
I'll spend the night anymore, dude, And so I'm willing
to pay what it takes right to stay comfortable at night.
I like to be warmer than sixty one degrees. But
that means for us keeping our beds warm or our
rooms warm, not necessarily the entire house. And so the
(10:50):
default sort of thought processes, oh, I'm cold, let me
turn up the temperature on the whole house. But to me,
that's just wasteful. I will say. Emily tells the story
of growing up my wife, and she says they used
to chant and her dad don't be cheap use the
heat because you wait way too long in the season
to turn it on. And and I'm sure living with me,
(11:11):
she has echoes of childhood in that. But I think
that is a good that's a that's definitely a common
thing that people battle about, the battle of the premise
that right, like folks are walking by and turning and
pushing it back. That's like the kind of thing you
do in college where it's just this passive aggressive, like
the nudge it over does the time of it and
I'm gonna they're gonna nudge it back. And and one
person's frugal is another person's cheap. Yeah, I think probably
(11:32):
most folks would hear this and think, how the crap
do they survive in their house? I mean, and I
work from home, you know, we bundle up, and to me,
that's just a way for us to be frugal. An
example for me that people will probably think it is
super weird is that I reuse my plastic ziploc bags
and so, I know, you know, some people have said, well,
you should use plastic wear instead and wash it, but
(11:53):
I just really like the convenience of plastic bags with
a little zippy Yeah, but I just reuse them for wicks.
So I'll put apples in the same zip block bag
every day for weeks and then I'll finally move on
to another one. Same thing with like the almonds I
take for lunch every day. Um, And I don't see
any problem with that. I like using the bags and
it just makes me feel good about less waste and
also wasting less money. Yeah. Man, that's a little bit weird,
(12:15):
but it's good. And so being frugal takes some thought
and obviously these are things that we've thought about, but
sometimes we fail. And there's ways that we think we
can save money. We think we can be frugal, but
in the process of trying to be frugal and save money,
we end up being cheap. We cross the line, which
is not the goal at all. And uh, you have
an example to share with us, Oh, I sure do.
(12:36):
All right, this is one I will never live down
and still actually is currently in existence. Uh so that
we are reminded as a family of my poor decision.
And it was at a house that we lived in,
um that is currently a rental house. I was putting
in ceiling fans where there were there was just a
light in the ceiling, and I put in ceiling fans, uh,
(12:58):
to help cool things down to the sum or right.
We live in a in a hot town, and so
I put in I got found a really good deal
on some ceiling fans, brand new from home depot. But
it turns out they were really really small. They had
like the super super short blades, like a twelve bench
blade likes something like that. It's like utterly ridiculous. It's
(13:18):
like the little propeller had on a on a dude,
a little kid. Yeah yeah, so, um it just looks
silly up there and it just doesn't really turn much
air in the bedrooms. Wait do you still have them? Yeah,
they're still there. Oh I didn't know that. I thought
you ended up taking them back, you know, so my
tenant doesn't really probably appreciate those fans. But so that
was a frugal fail. And I realized that you actually
installed this. I remember seeing like you pulled them out
(13:38):
of the box. I remember seen them sitting in your
the dining room. Uh, this is several years ago. I
did not realize you actually installed those. They're still around
and and so really that that's a frugal fail on
my part. That's me crossing over from frugal to cheap
because I chose something just for that initial price and
I didn't think about the value or lack thereof, that
it would provide for the long term, right, and and
(13:59):
so that those are just crumby ceiling fans that don't
do the job that I wanted them to do over
the long term. And it's I mean, my wife brings
it up often, like once or twice a year. She'll
bring it up. Remember those healing fans you bought? And
yes I do. And I'm telling everyone now thanks for sharing, man.
I love that story. It feels like confession. Well my
confession time. So we love bikes and Joel, you remember
(14:22):
I used to have that cargo bike with a box
up front. That's right. Yeah, yeah, So it's the it's
like the Dutch style cargo bike, and so it's a
cargo bike, and what that means it's just got a
cargo area in the front of the bike for in
our case, our daughter would sit up there and I
could put groceries and all sorts of stuff. That was awesome. Well,
in my case, I went for the cheapest possible version
of that bike that you could buy. And by that
(14:43):
I mean there are some guys in Texas that we're
making these out of scrap bike parts and they would
basically just hack together these like Frankenstein cargo bikes, and
the welding on them were terrible and they weren't at
all engineered to be safe. And Dude, from the very beginning,
I had problems with that thing, like I would break
(15:03):
and it would shim me like like it would do
the speed wobble sort of thing. And from day one
I immediately regretted the decision. And the reason I did
was because I was only looking at cost. I just
wanted that style of bike because I essentially kind of
was infatuated with it to fill in love with it,
and the really nice ones are the normal ones, I
should say, we're thousands of dollars, like two or three grand,
(15:24):
and I didn't have that much money, and I thought, oh, Man,
for bucks, I get something that looks a lot like it,
except it wasn't even really that fun to ride. It
wasn't even that safe, you know, with the whole sort
of shimming going on. And ultimately I ended up selling
that selling that bike for several hundred less. It's a
guy who was very happy to buy it because he
was a welder and he knew how to fix it.
(15:45):
But in my case, Man, there was a huge fail,
huge fail. I ended up paying like the freight shipping
to to ship that thing all away from Texas. I
feel like, man, that there's a lot of cheap fails
that I could late claim to here on this podcast episode. That,
especially early on in in my you know, wanting to
be financially secure, wanting to cut my costs and do
(16:05):
better with my money, there were just so many poor
decisions I made, uh, And they were along this line, right.
I hadn't learned the boundary of frugal verse cheap, and
I came down on the side of cheap far too often,
and ultimately, man coming down on that cheap side actually
cost you more in the long run so much of
the time, but we're too shortsighted to realize it. Just
(16:27):
like with your bike, Just like with my ceiling fan,
right it's gonna cost you more in the long run.
I got to replace those fans at some point, and
you had to sell your bike for a loss because
it was just a carming product. And so I think
that's a big part of the decision making that we
have to factor in, is is this decision that I'm
making just uh to get the lowest price right now
(16:47):
is actually going to come back to bite me in
the end. Yeah, man, that is an awesome example. But
after the break, we'll cover some guiding principles that can
guide you along when you're making some purchases to determine
whether you're being cheap or if you're being for goal.
(17:09):
All right, man, we're back from the break now. We're
gonna talk about some different principles that we feel can
guide you. Like we said, when it comes to determining
whether you're being cheap or whether or not you're being frugal,
you're gonna kick it off, yeah man. Principle number one,
cheap people are thinking about short term benefits while frugal
folks are playing the long game. It turns out that
being cheap can actually cost you more in the long
(17:30):
run because you have to buy more things more frequently.
And so, just like we were talking about Matt right,
the short sided bike purchase, it costs you more in
the long run because you have to ditch it. You
lost money on that, you bought another bike For me.
An example I can think of clearly is the way
I used to buy jeans versus the way I currently
buy jeans. I would buy the cheapest H and M
(17:51):
or old Navy jeans I could possibly get. They were
twelve dollars, fourteen dollars on sale, whatever they were, but
they just didn't fit right. They seem to quickly start
to fit irregularly, And now the jeans I buy are
more like fifty bucks. But they last four years and years,
and I love wearing them and I wear them every
(18:11):
single day of my life. So that to me is
a frugal purchase. You know, I know the genes that
I like. Now I wait for them to go on
sale and I buy those particular genes. I'm surprised you
don't have to buy your jeans that like the big
and tall store, Like, what's your leg length? Is it really? Yeah?
That's not that long. I know, that's weird. I was
expecting to be like thirty six or thirty eight or something.
(18:31):
I am freakingly tall, and that's true. But now I
can get away with thirty four length, which is which
is nice you'd like to wear where those high waters.
Another application, dude, of that makes me think of our
old to our old car before we got the van,
was we had a v dub that was turbo had
a turbo charger. It makes it sound like it was
like pempt out or something like that. Wholl exhibit calm down.
(18:54):
But with that mentho is that we had to get
special oil. And by especially it just I mean we
had to have like a synthetic oil. And so if
we didn't maintain that vehicle and spend the money every
old change to make sure that we had synthetic oil,
that was gonna end up costing us big time in
the long run because it would create this like oil sludge.
And so that's the an example of going cheap right
(19:15):
in the in the short term, only looking at the
cost in the near term would have cost us huge
down the road. Yeah, So if you're trying to decide
whether you're being frugal or cheap, think about principle number one.
And if you're only considering the short term costs as
opposed to the potential long term benefits, then you're probably
being cheap, that's right, man. Principal number two. Cheap people
(19:35):
are often trying to avoid spending money altogether on anything, right,
or they load up and they buy just too much
crap with you know, that sort of it's on sale,
the Black Friday mindset, whereas frugal folks are willing to
spend on the things that they care about. And so
what I mean by that then, is that if you're
not being mindful of the things that you're spending money
on your purchases, and you're just trying to spend as
(19:55):
little as possible all the time, chances are you're being
cheap and you likely aren't even really enjoying life. If
you're frugal, you tend to spend money on the things
that actually bring you joy. Yeah, I feel like cheap
is possession accruel. Right, how much of cheap things can
I amass? And it almost kind of can turn into
a hoarding type mentality, right, Like how many TVs can
(20:17):
I have? If I get them all on sale? I
can have a lot, But really, how many how many
TVs do you really need? Man? Exactly like five of
them in your house and you just want one more?
Yeah that's a weird thing. Yeah, no way, man, And
so I've got one TV. It's actually funny. I was
talking I did buy my TV on Black Friday like
nine years ago or ten years ago with my buddies.
(20:38):
But we're just texting about it just the other day
about how our TVs were still lasting and it's still
the only TV that we have in our house. And
even that, man, sometimes I think about getting rid of
it all together because just a time sucks sometimes. But yeah,
I think people should think a little bit more like that,
not how many more TVs can I get when they're
on sale? But how can I spend money on the
things that bring me joy as opposed to just with
(20:59):
that Black Friday mindset? Oh it's off, I get a deal. Yeah,
But the best deal is not spending money on things
that you don't actually need. Right. So I would recommend,
especially in advance of the Black Friday shopping season to
take stock of the things that you're really are on
your shopping list and think about finding deals on those
particular items, not just buying whatever pops up and whatever
(21:22):
seems like a good deal in the black Friday ads, right,
because that's cheap just trying to buy as many possible
things as you can. Yeah, Cheap people are all about
being able to say how much they got their item off.
It's like, man, I got this thing for seventy off.
I'm just like cool, why do you need that thing? Yeah? Yeah,
exactly do you actually need that? And so that's what
you want to keep in mind. Yeah, if you are
(21:42):
either trying to avoid spending all together or loading up
and buying as much stuff as you need at the
cheapest price possible, you're probably being cheap all right. Man.
That brings us to principle number three. Cheap peeps don't
take their own time and energy into account when they
see a deal or if they know that they can
d I Y the project. Frugal folks tend to have
a better understanding of what their time is worth, and
(22:03):
that helps them make a better decision as to whether
or not they should try and save a few bucks
by fixing something on their own. Yeah, that's right, man.
Often there's a complete de valuing of your time. You know,
when you think cheap, they end up driving across town
just to save a few bucks. You know, like they're
the ones trekking across the city to get a few
cents off per gallon when they're not even thinking about
how much time that they're wasting or even how much
(22:24):
money they're spending to get there. Yeah, how much gas
are wasting in order to get the cheaper gas. Yeah,
but really, just like how much of your life hours
are you wasting? Like you can't get that tign back
where you're just sitting in the car just to save
a few bucks. And also, dude, I don't know about
if you've thought about this, but I feel like the
time that it takes to think about getting a deal
sometimes um can be overwhelming. And and when you get
(22:46):
into that mindset. I know it was for me because
I feel like I'm a reformed cheap skate to a
certain extent. Right, I feel like now I understand the difference,
and I placed a lot more value on frugality as
opposed to being cheap. And but that was me, that
was totally me and I would drive across town to
buy something at a store because I had a cup
on and it was on sale, and I would double
down on the savings for something I didn't necessarily need.
(23:08):
And for me, it was a lack of understanding about
how valuable my time was. And so I feel like
this is actually a really important point that hits home
that the thing that was the kicker for me was understanding.
You know what, Joel, your time is valuable, and when
you take your time out to go save a buck
or two by driving across town to do something crazy
like that, then that's where you're missing the boat. And
(23:30):
that's where being cheap just felt like it was a
detriment to kind of my ultimate plans of, you know,
financial independence. It felt like it was the opposite. It
was kind of a suck as opposed to something that
was benefiting my life. I mean, I think there might
be two reasons for that. Because I'm with you, I
was way more willing to chase after the deals early on,
and I think that's just because when you're younger, you
feel like you just have more time. Well, I mean,
I think you do have more time because I have.
(23:51):
I got three kids now, and so I've got a
way less time, and your time is like literally worthless.
I think that's that's very that's very true. So certainly
as you get older, get more responsibility, and yeah, your
time is worth more. We're kind of aging up a
little bit, and yeah, time is worth more to us.
You also mentioned like fixing things yourself, and for me,
you're talking about how this is kind of hitting home
(24:12):
for you. For me, this totally hits home. And this
is an easy trap for me to fall into. For
all those like me who are interested in the d
I y stuff. If you're more mechanically minded, you kind
of like figuring out how things work, Like I like
fixing things, Like I recently fixed one of our sound machines,
Like you know that we've got the dome like mechanical
sound machine that spends one of them. One of ours
(24:33):
was squealing and it had been in like the drawer forever,
and I couldn't bring myself to throw it away. And
there's just one screw holding the whole thing together. So
I thought, let me just pull this open because I
was curious. You know, It's it's just I'm naturally disposed
to kind of figure things out like that, and it
happens to sort of coincide with saving money. That didn't
take long. Maybe it's like thirty minutes, but I might
spend an hour or two taking something apart to see
(24:53):
what's wrong with it, because I'm a curious and I
like to figure things out. But be I'm like, oh
I can also I can save a buck. Well I
do this, and so it I justify it. But I'm
ripping myself off because my time is worth way more
and my wife would rather me do something else with
my time, like the dishes madly. Yeah, So ultimately, cheat
people don't take their own time into account. Frugal people do.
(25:17):
That's principal number three, the fourth principle we're gonna cover.
Frugal folks are interested in well researched purchases, and so
when you're frugal, you're willing to pay more for a
particular product because of if there's like track record or
the fact that you know you're buying from a reputable merchant.
They might have a great return policy or an awesome warranty.
In those instances, I think it's okay to pay more.
(25:39):
Just make sure that you're paying for a great product
and that you're not paying for great marketing. Yeah, Matt,
Like you could probably say I'm buying those yeasies because
they got that great warranty, But that's probably not the case.
It's probably because you're being a little consumeristic. Do they
have a sweet warranty? I don't know. So. Actually on shoes,
it does make me think of like red Wings, Like,
you know, you've seen the red Wings around, Like they're
(26:00):
dope boots for for men. Yeah, uh, they're awesome. They
are crazy expensive. I think they cost around two or
fifty bucks. And I have a pair of boots that
are very similar, exact, same style, six inch and there
by a company called thorough Good And this company's dude
has been around just as long as red Wing. But
guess what they're advertising slash marketing game sucks, But these
(26:23):
boots are just as good. Yeah. And then the other
option that you could have done buying a boot right
is you could have gone with the cheapest Walmart boot
possible that wears through super quick. But a frugal person
does their research and they don't necessarily just by the
most expensive boot. Right, That's not always the answer. But
in your case, you found a well research option that
was cheaper but still fit the bill. And I think
(26:44):
you know a couple more examples that we could give
kind of in this area are buying something from reputable
retailer like a Costco. So Costco has got one of
the best warranties in the business. You used to apply
even to electronics items for the longest time, but you know,
in the last few years that were just just it's impossible,
right to to keep that up. But if you're buying
almost anything in the store, food, clothing, kitchen items, whatever
(27:07):
it is, the great thing is that the return policy
it never ends. And so that's awesome. I recommend anyone
by especially stuff like luggage. Right. Yeah, I was gonna say,
because I didn't you have a piece of luggage where
something happened to it, and you're like, dude, I got
this at Costco. I'm able to get a new one,
don't worry exactly. Yeah, So I totally had a suitcase
damaged by an airline and Costco took it back no
(27:28):
problem at all. That's awesome, And so buying something from Costco,
I'm also willing to spend just a little bit more.
I feel like their quality is really good and their
return policy is really good. So if I spend a
little bit more, it's not the cheapest suitcase on the block, right,
But I do have that back pocket, you know, warranty
that covers me if something were to happen, So that
means a lot, right, I'm not buying the cheapest possible thing,
(27:49):
and that's okay. It makes me think of Aldi. That's
one of the reasons that we love Aldi. I mean,
it's they're crazy inexpensive. I'm gonna try not to use
the word cheap since we're talking about frugal, but there
are yeah, crazy and expensive and they've gotten an awesome
warranty and we've definitely used it before. It's a double
back warranty, so basically, if something goes bad, specifically like
with food, you can take it back and they will
(28:11):
give you your money back and they'll give you a
new one of what you just returned, which is awesome
money back and a replacement item. I can't beat it.
Got to love that about all. The One other thing
I feel like that fits into this category is a
car purchase, Like you could get the cheapest car you
can buy a day wu right, And that's a cheap
set of wheels, but ultimately that car might wear within
(28:32):
on you really quick or just break down completely. Right.
So buying something like a Toyota Corolla or a Honda
Chords something like that where consistently when you look at
the Consumer Reports rankings, the JD Power ratings, the those
cars do so well over time. And maybe you spent
a couple grand more to get into a used Corolla
(28:52):
or Record, ultimately you'll be in that car longer with
fewer things to go wrong. I mean, that's a frugal
purchase as opposed to just make the quick, cheap decision.
And adding on to that too, you want to make
sure you get whatever car you're gonna get, get it inspected.
And that's a sort of extra expense that you may
not want to pay upfront. Kise you're attempted to be cheap.
You don't want to spend any more money than you
have to. But that's a corner that you don't want
(29:14):
to cut. You do not want to skip a car inspection,
and that could save you thousands and thousands of dollars
down the road. Yeah, Matt, And speaking of inspections, I
was really shortsighted. One time when buying a new home,
instead of getting an actual home inspection, I had a
contractor friend come and look at the house and kind
of write down some things that he thought needed repaired,
And when came to the negotiating table, because I didn't
(29:34):
have an actual inspection report completely made out, the things
that I asked for were shut down. Inspections are really
expensive when it comes to a house, and I felt
like at that point I bought a few houses, I
knew what I was doing and I didn't actually need
a full fledged inspection if I had a contractor going
through the house. But when it came down to it,
that four would have probably saved me five thousand more
(29:55):
dollars off the price of the house on the negotiating
table exactly. How didn't even think about that? Yeah, And
so this last house that I purchased, inspection got me
ten dollars negotiated off the price. And so it's not
necessarily just about finding the flaws in the house, but
it's having something to go back to the negotiation table with.
And if I was cheap right like I was that
first time, save that Feurigner bucks. But it costs me
(30:17):
in the long run, and so I would recommend it.
Just like getting your car inspected. It's worth it because
it can prevent you from buying a lemon. And in
the same way, you know, getting a home inspection can
prevent you from buying a lemon of a house, but
it can also, you know, help you save more money
in the long run on the purchase price, because you
have something to go back to the seller with and
you can negotiate with it to save yourself even more money.
(30:38):
Nice man. After the break, we're gonna talk about being
frugal and cheap and relationships and this can mean the
difference between your friends calling you cheap or calling you frugal.
All right, Matt, we're back from the break. Bring the
(31:00):
topic are you frugal or are you cheap? And we've
already kind of covered a few important principles that are
great for kind of running through as you're thinking through
a specific purchase, as you're thinking through kind of the
trajectory of how you live, whether you are frugal or
whether you're being cheap. And here's a fifth principle for
you frugal folks. Balance saving a buck with all aspects
(31:21):
of life, especially when it comes to relationships. Frugal people
are considerate of the people around them, and cheap people, well,
they can often hurt and damage relationships by imposing their
cheapness on other people. So a good rule of thumb
to denote whether you're being frugal or cheap is if
your decision is having negative consequences on the people around you.
(31:44):
Yeah man. The most sort of a blatant example of
that is not tipping somebody, uh servers, like a big
portion of their income is from tips. And if you
were to not do that by taking advantage of this
unspoken thing that you know you should be doing, well,
you're being cheap, right, yes, So a frugal persons respond is,
if you can't afford going out to dinner and leaving,
a good tip for your server is to just go
(32:06):
out to eat less. Right, And a cheap person still
wants to take advantage, they want to use the coupon
and uh not tip their server. Well, that that's being cheap, right,
that's negatively impacting someone else. And so the frugal person
just says, you know what, I can't afford it, I'm
going out to eat less. Yeah man, it's not even
necessary right to go out to have fun with friends
to to develop relationships. It's not required that you go out.
(32:29):
I don't I wish I could remember where I heard this,
but it was about a group of friends that would
get together and they would all bring ingredients and they
would have a potato like party, Like somebody would bring potatoes,
someone would bring that sounds festive done, it sounds fun.
Someone else bringing like the bacon and some cheese, and
they would all kind of pitch in. It was just
a way for folks to save a lot of money
(32:50):
but still have that social interaction. Yeah. I think there's
tons of ways to do that, right. And then there's
also ways to go out with your friends and not
spend as much as everyone else, right, And you don't
have to go out all the time. There's awesome ways
to stay in and have a potato party, right like
match just mentioned, but also maybe just have one beer
instead of three. Let's say you're dating right now, right,
(33:10):
there's ways to go out and take someone else out
without being cheap, because it's not about the money that
you spend. It's about building that relationship, and your significant
other doesn't care how much you spent on dinner. They
care about the thought and the intentionality that you put
into it and the time that you're spending together. Dude.
I love that quality time together is is so important.
And so if you're frugal and you're worried about being
(33:33):
perceived as cheap, what you want to do is make
sure that you communicate with your friends, with whoever it
is that you are in relationship with, talk about money,
talk about why you're not going to be spending money
in a given social situation, or maybe why you may
not even be attending. And in those cases, even if
you have friends that disagree and have different values, hopefully
(33:54):
they have a renewed respect for what it is that
you're doing because you've been thoughtful about what you're doing,
and even more importantly, you're communicating that with them, you're
sharing with them, and that's something that you're able to
then talk about together, dude. And that's so much of
what we like to do here on the podcast, right.
Like we talk about money, we talk about the things
that oftentimes don't get talked about, and it needs to
(34:17):
be normalized and part of our sort of daily discussion. Yeah,
and I know that for Emily and I like at home,
open lines of communication have made a big change in
me being just kind of a cheap skate and and
making a lot of headway towards being a frugal person instead,
and that sort of those open lines of communication have
have made it easier for us to get on the
(34:37):
same page. Uh and and we don't always agree, but
then we come to terms on you know, a reasonable
decision for us to make. So just like kind of,
for instance, made an example of how many date nights
we would have and what kind of places we would
be going on our date nights, and cheat me was like,
let's go every week, but go get like the cheapest
Mexican food we possibly can. And sometimes, you know, Emily
(34:59):
wanted to go nice places, and so we've kind of
made this decision right where we go on fewer date nights,
and you know, sometimes we'll go to a really cheap
place that's really tasty, and then sometimes we'll go someplace
a little bit nicer, because like a long, slow dinner
at a beautiful restaurant is meaningful to her and it
is quality over quantity, right, And you can go out
(35:19):
to eat five nights a week at a fast food
place right and spend the same amount of money as
you can on that one day night at that like
nice restaurant in town, but it doesn't have nearly the
same effect and the same meaning. Right. So for our relationship,
communicating about why and how we're going to spend the
money has led to open eyes and coming into it
(35:40):
on the same page so that we can choose to
be frugal together as opposed to meet cheaping out um
and and so that's made a really big difference for us. Yeah, man,
in in your example, there might be some folks who
might want that cheap Mexican every week because for them,
that is what they value, and that is what they've
communicated with people in their lives, and that's what they've
(36:01):
figured out is most important to them. That's why it's
so hard to say that, oh, this is a frugal
purchase or oh this is a cheap purchase, because again
with every person, with each individual, it's different. As long
as you've given it the thought and you know why
it is that you're spending the money that you're spending, uh,
and and that you're doing that with intentionality, then you
are moving in the right direction. All right, Matt, back
(36:23):
to the beer we stole from your mother in law.
We have some bigger beers, and this is like the
opposite of a big beer. First of all, it comes
in a tiny bottle. It feels like a mini bottle
of champagne. It's kind of adorable. It's kind of cute. Dude.
I will say, it's got an awesome label. I love
the label on it. It really does. So let's tell
people were drinking. We're drinking Stiegel Rattler, and it's a
(36:44):
great fruit beer slash juice. Right. A rattler is, interestingly enough,
essentially half beer and half juice. It's a German concoction. Yeah,
the europe it's fancy. Yeah. I think the Brits call
it a shandy while while the Germans call it a rattler. Um.
But and this is my favorite, I gotta be honest.
The Stiegel grape fruit Rattler isn't so good, dude, by
(37:05):
far my favorite version of a rattler. I'm not really
into these beers for the most part, but this one
in particular. If you can get your hands on some Stiegel.
And the great thing is too, we're drinking something that
probably everybody can find at their local package. Definitely you
can find this beer and it either comes in these
cute little green bottles or a four pack of cans.
But man, it's got this really nice, juicy grape fruity.
(37:26):
It feels like you're drinking straight grape fruit juice that's
just got this little bit of beer in it, and
it's really really nice. It's half away. I mean, like
you said, it's it's like halfway between juice and beer.
And so the history of this beer or juice beer,
whatever you wanna call it is it originated in Europe
and it was made for cyclists. And so you've got
these groups of folks I've envisioned writing their you know,
(37:46):
fancy road bikes through the Alps, and they are thirsty
and they come upon a pub, but they know they've
got to heap writing, and so they were watering down
their beer with with lemonade and creating rattlers. And so
it's a way for them to you know, get refreshed,
get get rehydrated, but at the same time not get
wasted so that they couldn't keep riding their bikes. Yeah,
(38:07):
and so this beer in particular is like three point
two percent alcohol, So Matt and I feel nothing at
all right now but a fantastic beer, really, and I
love that history behind it. I love that you know,
you and I love bikes, and we love biking. We
love beer, man, So Rattlers should be our patron st beer, right,
totally should be. They totally should be. So we will
let Stiegel Rattler be our patron st beer because of that.
(38:30):
Because and and seriously, it's the best Rattler I've ever had.
I love every time I get to have one of
these beers. Super low a BV so full flavor and
just kind of something different off the beaten path from
the normal kind of beers we drink, not our typical
I p A, that's for sure. So thanks to Kath,
Matt's mother in law for donating this beer to the
show or at the or as our girls caller motto.
(38:52):
All right, Joel, final thoughts. And this is how you
can tell if you are being cheap or if you're
being frugal. And the first way is that cheap people
are always thinking about this short term benefits, the short
term costs and expense, while frugal folks are playing the
long game. A lot of times if you're too cheap,
that can actually cost you more in the long run
because they're gonna have to buy more often. Also, cheap
(39:14):
people are often trying to avoid spending money altogether, or
they're loading up and buying way too much crap with
that Black Friday mindset. Frugal folks are willing to spend
money only on the things that they care about. Cheap
people don't take their own time and energy into account
when they see a deal or if they know that
they can d I Y the project right, and so
(39:36):
they devalue their time, whereas frugal folks have a better
understanding of what their time is worth and can decide
whether or not they want to, you know, fix that
broken appliance like I oftentimes get sucked into doing. Another
sign that you might be frugal as opposed to cheap
is that you research your purchase as well. You might
pay more for a particular product because of the track
record and the fact that you're buying from a reputable
(39:57):
merchant with a great return policy. Cheap people, they're not
even thinking about that stuff. That's right. And finally, frugal
folks balance saving money with all aspects of life, especially
when it comes to relationships. While frugal people are considerate
of those around them, cheap people can hurt people in
damage relationships by imposing their cheapness on those around them.
(40:17):
So Matt, ultimately, let's strive to be frugal and not cheap.
And I think it's really helpful to have these kind
of five principles as a mirror as you're thinking about purchases,
as you're thinking about how you live life. And I
know for me it's been a great transformation to go
from being cheap to being someone who I think has
become decently frugal. Yeah. Man, that's right. It takes time,
(40:38):
it's a process. It's not easy to be frugal. Being
cheap is easy. All you do is you look for
the cheapest price and you go with that. Being frugal
takes thought, intentionality, and it takes a little more work. Yeah,
it's better for I think your heart's, better for your relationships,
better for the stuff in your closet. Right, So all
those reasons it's better to be frugal than cheap. Thanks
for listening. Our home on the web is how to
(40:59):
Money dot Com and we will have show notes up
for this episode. Yeah, and hopefully you found this episode helpful.
If you found it randomly, be sure to check us
out on Apple Podcast, where you can subscribe and you
can get all the new episodes as they are released
until next time. Buddy, best Friends Out, Friends Out. You're
(41:30):
such a beautiful butterfly now used to be this ugly caterpillar,
this ugly cheap caterpillar, now that you're this beautiful butterfly,
Hosts And Creators
Joel Larsgaard
Matthew Altmix
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.