Saving Till It Hurts - A Cautionary Tale
A while back I worked out how much I was spending on Diet Coke at work and I was shocked - it was over $100/yr. The frugalitarean in me decided to save some cash by buying Diet Coke by the case at the local Costco. It seemed like such an elegant plan at the time ...
I figured I would save a cool $50 or so a year this way. I kept the Coke in the trunk of my car and would grab a can on my way into the office. This worked great till there were several days of freezing cold weather. All the cans froze solid and some of them burst. I picked the brown slush out of the trunk as best I could - it was a mess.
Maybe the moral to this story is to give up soda altogether and drink tapwater. Soda's not healthy and I would save even more ...
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At least it was Diet Coke. It would have been sticky as hell if it had been regular Coke!
Actually, I thought the moral of the story was that trying to save $50 a year was a pointless exercise. You have to trudge to costco once or twice per month, you lose space in your trunk, end up with warm and flat soda, and the hassle of remembering to go into your car trunk every morning.
Isn't your time and convenience worth more than a lousy $50? Behavior like that sounds like it borders on obsessive-compulsive.
You may be onto something here. I go to Costco anyway (and I like shopping there). There are probably at least 10 other things I get there that save me $50/yr each (like dishwashing powder, kitchen garbage bags, power bars, orange juice etc). So there is cumulative savings here -
For a small time guy like me saving 1-2 grand a year on routing stuff actually moves the needle -
-fg
