Frugal Versus Cheap
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I was in the drug store the other day and there were two little kids whose mom must have given them $1 to get candy. They were standing by the boxes comparing. It appeared they were making a decision based on 2 properties of the candy: the taste, and the amount per box. It seemed the older brother was explaining that they should get the Twizzlers instead of the M&M’s because they looked them almost as well but you got more in the box for your dollar. This, to me, is the essence of frugality (and good for their parents too for instilling this in them so young!)
I finished my drug store trip and went to the dollar store. They had a cart full of 50% off items, and one of those items was a pregnancy test. A lady there was grabbing then by the bundle to buy. I would think that one place that I might want to splurge would be pregnancy tests… maybe a lot of stuff from the dollar store is fine, but I think that’s a pretty important thing to bank on a .50 discount no-name test. Maybe its just me (and no offense to those of you out there who think this is a good idea), but I thought this was the essence of cheap.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
In general, I concur.
There are those situations when one must go through a large number of pregnancy tests, though … like when trying to conceive actively or working through fertility issues, and it’s simply more cost effective a lot of the time to go with cheapie dollar store tests for baselines. Otherwise, every cycle would require another test, another $8-14 every 30 days and sometimes more than once a cycle increasing the outlay even more.
Great story about the kids in the candy aisle, and great job overall on this blog. You’re in my reader for sure.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:12 am
That’s a good point, I didn’t think of that, I guess I was just thinking of occasional test takers or those who want to make sure they aren’t pregnant. Plus, I guess it was the fact that they were on clearance that made it worse… .50 just seems way too low a price to provide reliability.
September 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Oh, I totally agree with you in general. For reliability’s sake, a non-clearanced non-dollar store option is probably best. I just know that when we were trying it was cost prohibitive to pay top dollar every time. I’d grab up dollar store tests (non-expired, of course) and if it had ever lit up positive I would have run out that moment for a more expensive confirmation. In other, non-abudant test taking situations, I completely agree with you.