Kicking Myself Out of the Frugal Hack’s Club
I begin my entry today with a confession... I was not frugal this week. I had made the decision to cut our satellite television package and I had many grand ideas for how wonderful it would be without television. I posed all of the wonderful scenarios we would have this summer- playing board games, talking instead of watching, enjoying the fresh air outdoors. It was quite grand!
Then reality sunk in and my husband pleaded with me to turn it back on. We missed our favorite shows and our date nights were lacking that sparkle that only a good television show could complete. Netflix wasn't cutting it- we just aren't that into movies. It wasn't the children that he begged for the cable back for. No, it was us.
There was certainly not a lot of arm twisting involved. Just a couple of comments and I logged onto the satellite television's website and changed our plan back. I can't even blame my husband really- I just really missed my television.
Then I read Ivy's entry, at Home Ec 101, on how we save so we can splurge on other things and felt a tiny bit better about my indulgence.
Yes, it might be sad that our date nights consist of watching an old 48 Hours Mystery and a board game, but with two small children this is a frugal date night for us. We don't drone out on television all day, but we love to watch a couple of shows in the evening after the kids go to bed. I curl up on my sofa, he curls up on his sofa and we chat while we watch our show. Doesn't it sound romantic? Probably not, but we love it.
I am not apologizing for my behavior, even if this is an indulgence we just don't need, I am just keeping it very real here. I love my television and I decided to not deprive us anymore.
I understand if you need to kick me out of the Frugal Hack's club. I can already see the clubhouse sign made with random bits from your recyclables that says, "Keep out, Traitor."
That is perfectly understandable... me and my television exit the club hand-in-hand.
What is your big splurge in your family budget? Remember I am a traitor so I won't kick you out of the club!
28 Responses to “Kicking Myself Out of the Frugal Hack’s Club”
June 24th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I’m sorry, you must leave. Cable is a bad, bad thing.
No seriously, like I wrote on my post- we don’t go to the movies. We don’t own DVDs. Cable is our source of entertainment. Sad, but true.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
I don’t think you should be kicked out at all! We scrimp on a lot of things, but we have always kept our satellite TV. We love watching the Food Network & sports together. For $50 a month, we watch everything we want, when we want. $50 otherwise would only cover one night’s worth of supper out, and a sitter!
June 24th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
The whole reason we are frugal is so we CAN afford those little indulgences that we enjoy. While my splurge isn’t TV, I can understand your decision. And I think it is very romantic to take time with your spouse to sit on the couch and reconnect while watching a favorite show. Quit feeling guilty. You made the right choice for your family, and you have to admit that those shows are even more precious now that you know what it is like without them. ENJOY!!!
June 24th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
We give ourselves a bit of money each month, like an allowance, that we can spend on anything frivolous that we want.
We don’t have caller ID, cell phones, or cable . . . but we do pay for a nice internet connection. Everyone has different priorities!
June 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I love, love, love, you being so REAL!!!
LOVE YOU…LOVE YOUR BLOG!
June 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
We cut off the cable almost a year ago and recently got the DTV boxes. We get almost 20 channels for free. I love it because our lives don’t revolve around the TV anymore but there’s still good quality shows for the whole family when we do sit down and watch.
June 24th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Food…and maybe cable modem is considered a splurge???
June 24th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Great post. We say we don’t watch tv in our house but that’s not actually true. What we mean is that we don’t have cable and we don’t watch tv shows. We do watch lots of movies from the library and last night I resurrected our Netflix account from the dead. It’s all relative. Oh, and we have been buying early Simpsons seasons on DVD for each other on holidays. We love to hang out and laugh our heads off together. Being frugal makes these sorts of splurges so much sweeter!
June 24th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself
Being frugal doesn’t mean being stingy or tight with your money. That comes from a heart with the wrong priorities.
Being frugal is about carefully monitoring and managing your expenses so that your quality of life is maximized while your financial outflow is minimized. So enjoy your satellite TV. I’ll bet you got the best price going
June 24th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
We skip a second car, cell phones, cable, and clothes shopping so that I can eat out ($80/month)
my favorite hobby, have internet, and we did recently add caller id to our phone so I could avoid certain calls.
June 24th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
My cable TV is my entertainment budget. My husband works nights and I don’t go out so I’m like you, I like to watch the oldies or home improvement and cooking shows. I figure I save more this way since one trip to the movies for the family is over $30!! Enjoy your time with your husband GUILT FREE!! As another commenter said, we all have different priorites.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:29 am
[...] 25, 2008 by Owlhaven Today I was reading a post by a careful spender who felt like a frugal traitor after she and her husband decided to once again subscribe to [...]
June 25th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Your thoughts are very much in line with my own. I blogged about it here:
http://owlhaven.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/works-for-me-selective-frugality/
Mary, mom to many
June 25th, 2008 at 7:24 am
My “splurge” (though I’ve started to consider it a necessity) is that I have someone come scrub my house every other week. I teach full time, have a 4-year-old, and am expecting our second baby. It’s just not reality for me to be able to keep our house as clean as I feel it needs to be without paying for some help. For $100/month, I feel like I’m taking care of my family without sacrificing what I know God has called me to do – teach!
June 25th, 2008 at 7:50 am
I know what you mean about the romantic TV watching thing. One of my favorite things to do is rent a Redbox movie, and fall asleep cuddling with my husband while he watches it. If there is a drool stain on his shirt at the end of the night I consider it successful.
My husband splurges on music equipment. Most of his stuff is from Craig’s list fixed up or friends dumping things on him that he later fixes. The few that are allowed to see the complete picture of equipment in his studio are amazed – “How can you afford all of this?” Well, it is amazing how easy it is when we have our cars paid off and live frugally in other areas.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:35 am
We don’t eat out, so that we can afford organic food and extra dairy and grass-based meat (we’re big Weston A. Price fans!).
We don’t have cable or TV, but I’d be lying if I said it’s only because we’re so frugal. We simply have never had TV, although we do occasionally — rarely these days — watch DVDs.
June 25th, 2008 at 10:13 am
DVDs. Mostly seasons of television shows that we like (Doctor Who, Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Stargate-SG1, Bewitched, The Bob Newhart Show, I Dream of Jeannie, The Simpsons, Futurama, etc), classic movies (think Danny Kay, Bing Crosby, Rogers & Hammerstein), and even some new movies as well (mostly family movies, things with happy endings). Instead of paying for television that we don’t approve of in the form of a satellite subscription, we just buy the things that we know we like. It can get expensive, but I try to wait until sets are $20 or less. And it’s worth it to be commercial free and to hand pick what our family watches.
June 25th, 2008 at 11:08 am
I don’t blame you at all, my boyfriend would be lost without our satellite tv, and I would miss foodnetwork!! Our compromise was we would keep the satellite but not spend the extra $$ on movie channels or sports packages.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Frugality for frugality’s sake is miserliness. We are all frugal so we can enjoy luxuries. SAome are frugal so they can save up for a wedding or overseas holiday. Some are frugal so they can bless others with their wealth. Some are frugal so they can enjoy the blessings of multiple children and/or a stay at home mum. If you don’t have enough money to go by, that’s not “being frugal” either. That’s “just scraping by”.
If your frugality enables you to enjoy paid-for tv without being a financial burden on your family (putting you further in debt) then GREAT! If paid-for TV does it for you GREAT! Personally, my/our luxuries are giving money away, being a SAHM who homeschools and good food.
June 25th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
dont be so hard on yourself. Being frugal is cool, but also living!
My biggest splurge in our family budget is FOOD. good quality food. I have a delivery home service which is great and unexpensive (the expensive things are actually the veggies and fruit, not the service). I dont like to be frugal on fresh high quality food.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I cannot judge you when I do the same thing. My dish is something I don’t think I could do without, much less hubby. I think Hubby would give up an arm before the dish. We did that before when he lost his job. This is a snag of our wealth situation, so all I can say is I am giving it up.
Yes there are wonderful channels we all enjoy, but when you work shift as my hubby does, the dish is the only thing that delights him at 3 AM.
June 25th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
For my husband and me, it’s good whole bean coffee… we are both coffee snobs.
Oh, and we would find it difficult to live without high speed internet.
June 25th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Being frugal is choosing what to spend your money on. It’s being wise with your money.
Besides Cable means you don’t have netflix, many people watch movies instead of tv. My DH would freak if I cut cable mostly because of background noise.
I have to admit my non-frugal behavior…I have HD-DVR and high speed internet. The shame. Oh well.
June 25th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Do you know what’s really sad, is when you feel too guilty to enjoy a basic human pleasure.
I remember when I finally splurged after years of being frugal and how FANTASTIC it felt.
I’m almost ashamed of saying what it was because it was so minimal.
DEEP BREATH!
A can of COCO COLA at a local Milkbar (full priced) instead of drinking water from tap!
There I’ve said it – that’s pretty woeful however I’ll remember how uplifted and delicious that COKE was to my dying day!
June 25th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
Oh how I love me some sushi! We can cut out fast food. Done. Cut out cable. (We live in a big city so we still get quite a few channels without it.) No problem. I can skip the mall without blinking. But, to give up sushi would really hurt. It’s close to $50 or more each time we go and we go about once a month. Still worth it.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
We kicked the cable habit a couple years ago and only missed it when our hometown team went to the World Series and we couldn’t watch it…. My big budget splurge is dining out.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Don’t beat yourself up over it! Being frugal means carefully choosing how your spend your money, rather than just throwing it around. It allows you to spend on what truly matters to you.
We went 8 years without cable, then decided to sign up for it again last year. I’m glad we did. I’ve been enjoying all kinds of shows I’ve missed out on without Sci-fi Channel or BBC America. I guess you could say that’s a splurge for us. We rarely go to the movies, so I guess it’s a bit of a trade-off. In fact, I realized that we hardly ever rent videos anymore now that we have cable again.
June 26th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I’ve completely abandoned my budget the last several days while my Mom has been in the hospital. I’ve had other, more important things to think about than money and have probably already blown twice my normal weekly food budget this week. Sometimes ya just gotta unclench, and sometimes it’s just fine to splurge, even (gasp!) on a regular basis. You enjoy your TV–it’s a whole lot better than sitting around in a hospital!
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