I am starting a new job and got a couple of wool suits. Of course it was a significant investment as a fresh grad but at the same time I very dumbly thought that dry cleaning would be expensive so I can just delicately machine wash them. Long story short, I had to buy new blazers. The pants were okay. So I was wondering, since we likely make frugal decisions everyday, what rookie frugal mistakes did you make that ended up expensive so that hopefully nobody does it as well.
What’s a frugal thing you did that had expensive consequences?
byu/Zealousideal-Oil4242 inFrugal
Posted by Zealousideal-Oil4242
18 Comments
Any car repair. Just do it on time and don’t go cheap on parts.
Hired the more affordable atty (+$1000) because it was a straightforward case. He was terrible. I don’t know if the other atty would’ve been better, per se, but I selected out of frugality. Almost a year later… still issues.
I once had a truck with a jerry can of gas in the back inside the steel box in case of emergencies. One winter I found the lid on the jerry can had torn off at some point, so I decided to pour it in the tank and throw away the can. There was slush at the bottom of the can and I tossed that on the road.
Later that day I paid over 100 bucks to a mechanic to vacuum the water out of the gas tank.
I bought an used monitor at a very good price, it was the time when HD video start coming out 20 years, the time when Planet Earth came out.
Found my laptop was struggling to handle divx…man, I ended up upgrading my laptop so I could watch HD videos. That was expensive.
bought something cheap.. you tend to pay more.
so buy something of good material / made if you intend to use it for a looooong time.. or what matters.
if it don’t matter so much sure, buy the cheap one and expect it to break and it when it does didn’t cost you to fix.
i.e cars: don’t go cheap..
I never bought any suits, which I now realize was a bit of a mistake as job interviews would have gone better with them.
My every restoration project…I end up with a lot of (expensive) tools, gadgets and paint.
Someone said that you save gasoline if you turn the engine to neutral when waiting in lines and so forth. I did so only to be rewarded with an expensive repair that I blame on the practice, which I no longer do.
I turned the propane heater flame completely off in the spring to save propane only to pay $200 to have someone light it the next fall. It turns out those things have lines that must be blown out and inspected when no propane has passed through them for several months.
Buying cheap shoes for jobs where I would spend hours on my feet. Went through a couple of cheap pairs bought too many different insoles and feet still hurt. Spent $125 in a new pair of sketchers non slip and my feet and back have thanked me ever since.
Booked a hostel in a very expensive city. Showed up and they said they’d overbooked and since i’d arrived late, they had no bed for me. No apologies. Since it was last minute, the only hotel I could find was over $400 for the night, which was 4x what I’d planned to pay the entire week at the hostel.
I hired a CPA that the family used for years. A lot of people think a CPA is going to save you lots of money with tax deductions only they would know. About every year he ended up screwing up my taxes, even though you would think they would have protections since they are the ones doing the taxes he failed to backup his work, I paid him over 300 dollars per year to file my taxes but I have actually gotten more back for just using the standard deduction and paying FreeTaxUSA 15 dollars for state taxes than he ever got me. Maybe if you are a business and you find a actual good CPA it would be worth it. For your typical person who is just copying and pasting forms it is not worth it though.
take care of your health
take care of the car
take care of your teeth
Buying a vintage Theory brand cashmere sweater at a thrift shop. It was a great find, or so I thought! Unfortunately, it harbored moth eggs and caused a moth outbreak in my sweater drawer and all of my sweaters were destroyed.
Not going to the dentist for +10 years. Half that time was for frugal reasons, the other half was from social anxiety.
Same as you.
Getting a free puppy instead of one from a good breeder..vet bills for health problems
Cheap shoes. Plantar fasciitis is no joke.
Did you just throw them in the delicate cycle? I’ve been researching suiting flannel and stumbled across a [video](https://youtu.be/7UEO_gXGghs) yesterday of a guy washing his suits in the washer. To prevent them from warping and pilling he turned them inside out, folded it and rolled them tight before putting it in a washing bag.