Tal Boldo
http://twitter.com/#!/TalBoldo
I'm going to the Gulf Coast for two weeks even if gas is $10 a gallon!
I don't work my butt off for NOTHING! And part of life is enjoying it!
Posted on 05/19/2011 8:24:38 AM PDT by wbill
Jeez, I hope that I didn't get fished in by a troll. Good sarcasn is just close enough to the truth to be believable.
“Instead of our usual $5,000 vacation allowance, we plan to spend $400, thus saving $4,600. “
Must be nice to have memories of $5,000 summer vacations...
The savings are tremendous!
Funny thread ping.
There is no one in the world, apart from my wife and kids, that I want to see 10 times this summer. I may not even see my sister and parents 10 times in an entire year. I have good, longtime friends that I see twice a year, if that.
Tal Boldo
http://twitter.com/#!/TalBoldo
I'm going to the Gulf Coast for two weeks even if gas is $10 a gallon!
I don't work my butt off for NOTHING! And part of life is enjoying it!
“Nothing says “the great outdoors” and “roughing it,” like listening to audio books around the campfire. “
I’d love to take these folks camping on some of the uninhabited OBX islands in July. Dead still air, oppressive heat/humidity, biting flies and no-seeums during the day, crapping in the dunes, and clouds of mosquitoes at night would be a outstanding summer fun for them.
If my family had 10 “get togethers” a summer, the funeral expenses alone would be outrageous by July. Not to mention the legal bills.
“We also hire landscapers to edge the lawn, mulch the yard, and plant perennials. This year we plan to do the work ourselves and to borrow tools from our neighbors.”
Knock, knock
Q. Hi can I borrow your wheel barrow, shovel, rakes,
trimmer and pruners?
A. Aren’t you that idiot from across the street who paints his house every year? Why don’t you spend some of the money you’re saving and buy your own &*^%ing tools! No one likes a freeloader pal, by the way I smell something burning. I Think your wife let the hamburgers catch on fire, again~!
Yup. And they probably won't use one dime of that saved $12,000 to prepare themselves for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Agreed. The house painting, the "pitch a tent, camp for a week, fish, hike, play guitar, and listen to audio books by the campfire", and the "10 of our family get-togethers" (that's at least 1 per week!) were dead give-aways.
This article was written in a college apartment by some hard-smoking, hard-laughing juniors. Good for them.
---------------------
Actually, even I missed this the first time, so I will pardon my fellow Freepers.
Here is how it should read:
"How do you explain to your kid that he can't have a summer vacation because of inflation we are all scared shi!less of the upcoming financial disaster caused by the Moron-in-Chief?"
There, fixed.
Interesting that these people are finally cutting back.
We slashed the budget every year for the past three years. Every time we did so, taxes, utilities, unforeseen medical expenses and plain old price increases took us back to zero, as though we had never cut out a thing.
The sad part is that our income is dependent on the discretionary income of others. When the comfortable cut back, and our appointment log shows they have, we lose income.
However, we have slashed debt enough to afford a new John Deere lawn tractor with a mower deck. The savings from paying off the car and cutting sat TV are paying for it and there is even an extra $100/mo to apply to the diminishing credit card debt. Two cards are down to pay-as-we-go and one of them lives in drawer. Our Netflix is on it, to avoid the no-use fee.
If you wait to find a whole strip loin sale, the cost of a 1” steak goes down to $5.25. It is way cheaper to stock up on manager special chuck and grind your own ground beef, rather than paying over $3/lb for 70/30 mystery burger.
We added 3.5 pounds of Nido dried whole milk to the stash yesterday. 10 gallons, 5-year shelf life and when I finally open it, I’ll make up smaller packets, vacuum pack them and freeze them.
If the upper middle class university elite are cutting back, the endgame is surely near.
Maybe this article was written purposely to incite more class warfare.
Now that's funny --- I don't care who you are ---
It's a darn good thing that court was in recess when I read this ...
My family understood and admired my frugality, saying that the barbecue lambs were just as good as the barbecued steaks on the hoof in these dismal times. They understand that we all have to make sacrifices.
Thankfully my bodega has an ample stock of fine wines to help dull the certain disappointment over the poverty barbecue.
They paint their house every year?! Paint must be getting a bit thick by now.
Oh dear. Have you considered the social implications of such a rash move? This is sure to set tongues wagging about your unfortunate reversal of fortune. Do you really want to endure the false concern from your cousin's pretentious wife?
we searched the Internet for a local venue that would make a good vacation site. We chose Mount Baker, located 30 minutes from our home. We plan to pitch a tent, camp for a week, fish, hike, blah blah blah...
Yeah, that should be an educational experience. All I mean by that is that there are some people who grow up camping, and some people who just think it sounds "green". Remember, there are zero conveniences while tent camping, and a few days in a tent in the rain with the rest of the family, surviving off pretzels and Evian water can put a strain on the strongest relationships. On the other hand, the experience would probably make good reality show.
T-shirt. This year, we will each get a small summer-clothing budget, which will force us to shop at outlets or secondhand stores. This step will help us save $1,400.
I dunno, it's sounds like you're talking about around three people. Unless you're doing all your summer clothes shopping at exclusive boutique shops in South Beach, that's a pretty good chunk of money for clothes, especially if the kid wears jeans and t-shirts like most kids. Maybe you could try wearing the stuff you bought last year, unless you already sent it to GoodWill (in which case maybe you should buy it back).
Because of dropping home values, this year we will not go ahead with the deck remodel we were planning. Instead, we will patch the old wood with wood putty and prime and will paint it once more to protect against water damage. In this way, we will save $3,500.
Yeah, using last year's deck another year might be a wise move. Cutting expenses when you're running your family into the poorhouse with extravagant conspicuous consumption is a sound idea, and cutting something you've planned to spend is always less painful than cutting something you actually spend money on every month, like the service plans for your I-phones. That would be going too far...
It’s making me laugh and then I have to cough.
"Cutting family get-togethers from 10 a summer down to 2, cut our planned funeral expenses by $18.457.02! Not to mention the cost of ammuntion!"
...from "How to save 20 G's a summer, by A. Freeper.".....
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