Blow that dough!

[frugal-one]

On another forum there was a thread called "Blow that dough".... where people who no longer had to scrimp and save could spend on whatever they wanted. Iris Lilly gives us a sample occasionally. My problem (if you could call it that) is that I can buy whatever I want but hate shopping and really have few wants. Recently bought a new car and am planning a few vacations. Perhaps I should hire someone to shop for clothes for me. I hate looking and could use some??? My moniker fits me, i guess. I have trouble spending lavishly.

[bae]

My problem is that I do not like fuss and bother.

Nearly every "thing" I would buy with nearly-infinite resources would require a certain amount of my time, attention, and bother to maintain, store, and use. (And often to license, pay taxes on, yada yada yada).

As a result, as I've been getting older, I've been tapering down buying physical items, even though I could afford basically anything I want. If I was in a position to desire to hire staff to deal with such things, it might be different, but even having employees seems like a terrible bother.

I do spend on travel, but generally not to trendy places, because trendy places are a bother.

I freely buy stupidly-expensive optical gear for photography/astronomy, but most of that is very little bother. I have decided not to get into large telescopes and mounts, because those are an *extreme* bother, and a rather extreme cost, so for that I now just rent time at observatories around the world and remotely operate the instrument and gather data for processing here, which is not much bother at all, though it is $$$. (And all of the Hubble and James Webb data is free, and there's plenty of cool stuff to find in there.)

[sweetana3]

We constantly discuss this very issue. I always wanted "enough" for a good nursing home with a personal chef. Now we have probably 3X the amount needed and no desire to spend it. We are going to Korea next year but we have done most of our overseas travel in the 80s-90s.

Sometimes as BAE said the aftercare time and attention is just not worth it and I detest the act of shopping.

[iris lilies]

I blew dough on professional landscaping. The results were mediocre.

I will blow dough on hiring a company to put up and take down exterior Christmas lights this year.

I wish I could blow some dough on hiring someone to finish major projects around here but

1) you can’t really hire anyone to build the stone wall DH is building

2) DH won’t allow me to hire anyone to put up woodwork and paint the remaining rooms here and install the staircase. Besides, it is dastardly hard to hire finish carpenters, ya have to get on a waiting list. By the time we would get someone here DH will b done.

[pinkytoe]

The keeping it simple is a big part of not blowing dough for me. And being genetically frugal in my case. I have a very low tolerance for frustration. Shopping for things can be such a chore - scanning the internet, reading reviews, ordering, returns, etc. And very often it ends up that you have to buy a thing for your thing.

[Tradd]

My blow the dough is to simply have the money to buy all the books I want. And since I buy ebooks, they don’t take up physical room.

[rosarugosa]

We have spent a lot of money on badly needed home improvements this year, but also spent a lot on the more discretionary categories of art and plants. Apparently there is no limit to what I could spend on plants if the funds were available.

[Tybee]

We have spent a lot of money on badly needed home improvements this year, but also spent a lot on the more discretionary categories of art and plants. Apparently there is no limit to what I could spend on plants if the funds were available.

Rosa, I worked with a woman who got a very big divorce settlement. She bought $7000 worth of annuals one year. She was truly an icon!

[iris lilies]

This thread title is funny! Makes me laugh.

oh and Tybee, I probably blew $500 on annuals this year, all for pots. That is a HUGE amount for me since I seldom splurge on annuals. And by gum, next year I'm goonna spend even more.

$7000 on annuals—she is my hero!

[iris lilies]

The keeping it simple is a big part of not blowing dough for me. And being genetically frugal in my case. I have a very low tolerance for frustration. Shopping for things can be such a chore - scanning the internet, reading reviews, ordering, returns, etc. And very often it ends up that you have to buy a thing for your thing.

Car shopping is agony for me. That is why I called up our friend who sells Lincoln/Ford cars and said
this, verbatim: “ Ed, I want a Bronco Sport in that weird blue color, and I don't want a lot of junk on it.” He got us that car (not a tall order by any means.)

That is how I “ shopped.” This was after the local Ford dealer suggested I go online and choose the “ packages” I want. Ugh, that would be torture. I chose a Bronco Sport after seeing them around here because it looked like my old car, it was a square SUV.

Also, electronics. Shopping for them. Agony.