[Ford Man]

I'm a lot like many of the others. Try to buy things that will last, things I need and a few things I want. My wife is the type if something tears up or comes up missing, her response is I'll buy another one. Not me, if it's lost I want it found, if it's broke I want to fix it. I think I'm finally getting this mentality drilled into my son. For the past few years he's been spending everything he made on what I consider junk, but in the past few months he's started using his money more wisely and started trying to learn how to make repairs to things that are broke instead of going and buying a new one.

Some people call me "cheap", but I like to consider myself conservative. I have nicer better looking cars, but I still use my '88 Escort with 518,7-- miles on it for a daily driver and keep the better cars for longer trips instead of having to buy a new car every few years just so I'll have something nice and dependable when I travel on longer trips from home.

Most nights there's one light on in the house, it's a 1 watt LED that we use in the living room while on the computer or watching TV. It doesn't give a lot of light, but since our living room and kitchen are basically one room with only one wall about 8 foot long between them and the rooms are about 20 foot long it gives plenty of light for the living room and enough light if we need to go into the kitchen for a snack or drink. We don't have a flat screen TV either.

I also spend quite a bit on tools for auto/home repairs and usually buy good quality tools unless it's something I'll only use 1/2 dozen times during my lifetime. I've probably got $3-5K tied up in tools, but they've saved me many thousand dollars in building/repair costs. Just in auto repairs/maintenance in the last 1-2 years they've probably saved me $5K.

Most things that get built such as storage buildings or garages I do myself rather than pay someone else to do it for me with the exception of the garage I just had built last spring. I did have someone else build it, because we had just moved into our new home in fall of 2010 and I needed it built as soon as possible, because I needed a place to work on my cars and store lawn equipment and knew if I built it myself being disabled with a bad back it might take me several months to get it completed. Although I had someone else build the garage, I did the insulation and radiant barrier myself.

When we moved into the new house it didn't have any ceiling fans, I bought ceiling fans for 4 of the rooms and installed them myself instead of paying an electrician to do it for me. The house needed a new roof when we bought it so I bought radiant barrier and put it underneath the new metal roof to help with energy cost. The radiant barrier cost me about $350. and I'm guessing the payback in heat and a/c use reduction will be less than 1 1/2 years. So far this year we've already seen temperatures in the low 90's and with the radiant barrier on the roof the house stays comfortable until late in the afternoon then starts to get kind of warm, but when the sun goes down and at night we put a fan in the window to pull the hot air out of the house and bring cool air in at the rest of the windows and by the middle of the night most nights the house is cooler than if we were using a/c. We heat using a Monitor vented kerosene heater and with the radiant barrier installed we used less kerosene last winter in a 1400 sf home (heated about 1200 sf had an extra bedroom closed off) than we did at our 1000 sf home in NC even though the KY temperatures are colder than NC. We used about 85 gallons compared to an average of about 125 gallons in NC. Just the difference in gallons not even taking into consideration the extra sf the radiant barrier saved about $160 the first winter. The electric bill during the summer with a/c use is running about $35. a month less than it was in the smaller home in NC and the house is cooler. I also wrapped the water heater with radiant barrier to reflect the heat loss back to the tank.

My son just bought a home next door to ours in Jan. 2011 so now I'm helping him with making repairs to it that needed to be done so he doesn't have to hire a carpenter, plumber, and electrician.

In my best car I change the oil every 3K miles and about every 5K in the others, but I pour the oil that I drain from those back into the bottles and use it for topping off oil in the '88 Escort which now uses/leaks a quart about every 800-1K miles.

When we lived in NC my wife worked in a hospital linen department, they sent their linen out to a commercial laundry to have it washed/dried/folded and often got towels back that came other facilities and the hospital wouldn't use them, because they didn't match their towels so my wife would bring them home to use as dish drying towels/hand towels and when they get worn or to dirty/dingy to use in the house I take them for rags to use when working on the cars or lawn equipment. The hospital she works at now is doing some remodeling and replacing some of the patient room cabinets. A few weeks ago the contractor that's doing the remodeling brought me one of the old cabinets and said if he got more he'd bring them to me to put in my garage for storage. The cabinets are about 8' tall and 2' wide and 1' deep so they'll hold lots of stuff. All I have to do is cut plywood to put shelves in them. There was nothing wrong with the cabinet except cosmetic damage.

I currently have between 20-25 cases of motor oil stored in the garage I bought before the price of oil got so high. Some of it I bought on sale for 2qts/$1. and didn't pay more than $1./qt. for any of it. I probably have more oil in stock than I'll use in the rest of my lifetime.

When meats are on sale we buy very large quantities break it down into portions for a meal and freeze it that way we have enough to last until they run it on sale again. We still have some T bone steak in the freezer we bought and vacuum sealed a couple years ago during a sale. When canned goods are on sale we do the same thing buy in quantity put it in the cabinet and use on it until the next sale.

When my wife needs hot water for washing dishes she runs a pot of water through the coffee maker then adds cold water to it to bring the temperature down instead letting the water run waiting for the hot water to get to the faucet from the water heater.

If I hadn't used this type of thinking when I was younger I don't know what we would have done during the 5 years I had to fight for my disability after my back injury and couldn't work. When we moved from NC to KY in Oct. 2010 and bought our home in KY I was able to buy it with cash even though we hadn't sold our home in NC and haven't sold it yet. I'm trying to wait until the housing market improves before selling it hoping to get a better price out of it. All it's costing us in property taxes and insurance.