Your biggest money saver?

[pegkerr]

What one-time purchase has saved you the most money over the years? For me, it's my Krups El Primo espresso maker. Instead of wasting $3.50 for a cafe Mocha at a coffee shop, I can whip one up in the morning for a fraction of the cost. I have saved hundreds of dollars, perhaps thousands, with that one $50 purchase.

And you?

Cross posted to poor_skills.

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

It's much bigger than the kind of one-time purchase you're talking about, but buying Toad Hall paid back financially for all of the 20 years I owned it, and it put $160K in my pocket when I sold it.

The house was both cheaper and more secure than paying rent, more so with every year that passed.

On the smaller side, the pictures I've taken with my digital camera in the last two years would have cost over $3500 in film and developing if I'd taken them with the camera I had. That's 10 times the cost of the digital camera. But I wouldn't have taken the pictures, 'cause I simply don't have that kind of money to spend on photography. And the benefits from the joy experienced from having taken those pictures is worth even more to me.

[naomikritzer]

I'd also have to say my house. We bought in 1996 in a Minneapolis neighborhood that seemed undervalued to us -- it was near the river, had nice parks, and (critically) didn't get much airport noise. We were a little bit concerned about the defunct and boarded-up video rental place three blocks away, but the other businesses on the corner seemed stable and we hoped things would improve. The former video rental place is now the Riverview Cafe and Wine Bar, and three years after buying our house, we were paying less on our mortgage than we would have been paying in rent (rent on an apartment, not a comparable house).

For me, an espresso maker would not be a good purchase: my every-day beverage is ordinary coffee (I use a four-cup maker I bought for $5 at a rummage sale in college). I do buy fancy drinks at coffee shops, but when I do that I'm not buying coffee, I'm renting space to sit for a couple of hours. It just so happens that my rent also gets me a fancy beverage.

[flynd.livejournal.com]

And the benefits from the joy experienced from having taken those pictures is worth even more to me.

Yes. Money is important, and saving money is important, but knowing when to spend money -- knowing when it will improve your life (and what else is money for?) -- is, to me, the most important thing of all. (Frugality is not wasting yourself on what doesn't matter).

I feel the exact same way about my digital camera. As a die-hard amateaur photographer who raised herself in darkrooms, there's just something I don't like about digital prints -- but the ease, and security, and next-to-nothing cost of taking digital photographs has made my life so much more enjoyable.

It's a different kind of freedom, and so much worth the initial investment.