The Cost of Convenience
The other night we celebrated my son’s eighth birthday. I had planned on making pizzas but on that day I decided it would just be easier to purchase some from Sams. I was surprised to learn that pizzas from Sams cost $9 a piece. They are big pizzas, but that is a lot of money, especially if you are buying several pizzas. We called around to see if we could find a better deal, but Sams was the cheapest.Â
I ended up spending $45 plus tax on pizza that night. If I would have gone with my original plan, of making the pizzas from scratch, I would have spent under $10 on the same amount of pizza. Convenience cost me $35.Â
I think there are many areas on our lives that we trade cost for convenience. Many times we pick up food to go, buy prepackaged prepared foods, pay someone to fix something we might be able to do ourselves.Â
Many years ago I purchased bedroom furniture at a yard sale. I paid $100 for 2 dressers and a night stand. They needed some refinishing so my dad and I stripped, sanded and stained the furniture. These pieces have served us well for the past 14 years. Would it have been easier to go to a furniture store and buy a bedroom set, of course, but it also would have cost me 10 times more than what I paid for the furniture sandpaper and stain.Â
We live in a culture that is consumed with instant gratification. We want things now, delivered and set up in less than 24 hours. We view ourselves as above putting in a little hard work, time or effort into things in our lives. We are busy with work, school, church, extra curricular actitivities. Many of these things are good, but at what cost?Â
If you are doing well financially then this post may not be for you. But if you are struggling, what things in your life can you eliminate in order that you might have more time to invest in your home? One of the easiest ways to save money is to start working at home. I don’t mean working from home, but working at home. Schedule time in your week to menu plan, clip coupons, and bake foods from scratch. Take one Saturday a month and shop yard sales for clothes, toys and gifts. Look around your house for items you can repurpose instead of buying new items.Â
One night of pizza will not financially ruin our family, but a habit like this could begin to chip away at the financial gains we have made over the past year.Â
Our culture is embracing busyness in order to sell convenience. Stop and consider the cost. You might end up saving more than money.Â
For more frugal tips stop by Frugal Friday.
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Filed under: Food, Frugal Flops, Frugal living, Homemaking
You are so right! One of my favorite books of all time is The Complete Tightwad Gazette. The author teaches you how to figure out your hourly “earnings” - in other words, to convert what you save by living frugally into a per-hour figure so that you can see the value of your efforts.
I was at the commissary today and paid careful attention to the prices at the register, just as you advise. Sure enough, a $2.00 item rang up as $3.00. I did have to wait five minutes or so to fix this problem…savings for five minutes was $1.00, which converts to an hourly rate of $12. Was it worth my time? You bet.
My husband learned how to repair dryers years ago, using a cool book from the library about repairing your dryer for $50 or less. He’s fixed several dryers since then, usually for under $20, and typically in an hour or two. Even if you add my get-book-from-library time, you’re still talking about a per-hour rate of at least $15 (compared to a repairman) or more - I know a lot of people who would just toss the broken dryer and get a new one.
Great post!
I agree 100% and consider it part of my job description as a SAHM to find ways to save my family money. I do need to know how on earth you would have been able to make 5 large homemade pizzas for under $10!!! Meat, sauce, veggies, cheese… that adds up pretty quickly. Were you just considering the ingredients that you didn’t already have on hand? Thanks for sharing!
That last paragraph is so well stated and so true. I got goosebumps reading that! This is just such a great post, one that needs to be repeated often!
Amen sister! A point that bears repeating, even for those of us that work at home on a consistent basis.
That is so true! DH still likes to go out for pizza, but dd and I prefer my homemade pizza. It is more filling too, because I use whole wheat flour. I rarely use “convenience” food because it is not convenient for our budget!
Too funny! My Tightwad post is on the same topic! We love making homemade pizza. When we discovered that we could actually make it for even less than Sams we began keeping supplies on hand. One thing that has helped us to not “buy” pizza is to keep pizza portions in the freezer. We bag enough cheese and toppings in seperate bags for two large pizzas.
( sauce comes in # !0 cans, Cheese in 5# bags, we buy bulk sausage and bulk pepperoni, ) We try to keep fresh toppings on hand too. ( onion, bell pepper, ect)This pervents impulse buying. You can also make dough up and actually freeze dough balls. We prefer fresh dough though. Great Post!!!
Toni, you are so right about the convenience. We live in a society that wants what they want, right now. I have learned over the years that I would rather wait, research a product, find the best value for my money, and have something I will be happy with for years to come than a product that breaks quickly or I will shortly become dissatisfied with.
I totally agree my SSiC !!! With all you said. I rather work at home and not from home. We make choices and need to really think them through.
I am with Amy how do you make pizzas for 10 dollars ??? We are very frugal but I don’t know how you do it. Maybe it is the difference where up here in Canada they don’t subsidise milk products here so that makes cheese VERY expensive. But with all a do I do save a lot of money making it at home. I also make it with whole wheat flour and that fills everyone up easier with out having to make as many pizzas. [0=
Blessings and ((hugs)) my SSiC
In Him<
-Mary
When both my husband and I were working and we had 2 kids in daycare, we ate out every night. We justified the need for convenience. Boy do we think differently now. I think that this post is for everyone. Even people who are doing well financially, don’t need to waste their money.
This is so true.
Many people are willing to pay for convenience these days. When we were a double income family it was no big deal.
Now, every penny has to be accounted for!
I think your next post should be sharing your pizza recipe :). I sure do better about not eating at McD’s when I stock up on “easy” lunch menu items like sandwich meat, precooked pasta and precooked/frozen meat. We are trying to be more purposeful about making enough to have leftovers. That is saving us a ton of money as my husband takes leftovers to work now most often; and we also use leftovers for lunch once or twice a week! Great post
Amy
Wonderful post!
A little late now, but Dominos has a deal where you buy one pizza and each pizza after that is $4. Pizza Hut is similar, with buy one and get each addt’l at $5 each. No limit.
I was tempted to go into town (3M) & buy pizza or subway. I am running low on groceries. But I didn’t want to waste the gas b/c we have a subr. Or the $$ on prepared food. It is to easy.
We use the clothes line & cold water.
Make a lot of things from scratch.
Planted a garden.
Raising our own chickens for the freezer.
Just to name a few.
Amen! Well said!
This is the second post I’ve read about menu planning. I’ve really been slacking lately and need to get back in the habit. Thanks for the reminder.
[...] few weeks back I wrote a post about the cost of convenience. I have been thinking about the idea for a while and realized that there are many different ways to [...]