June 30th, 2006 - Made to Break
Commentary on new book Made to Break at Grist leads me to another book to read! I’m still working on Garbage Land however.
Even with such books in front of my face, I’m having difficultly lately being frugal. Just this week, for example, our college bookstore had a 90% off sale. I bought a shirt for my sister (that was okay–she adores getting mail and it was only $4 including postage), 3 shorts for Eric (not completely necessary although very useful, so a toss up), and a completely unnessecary pair of lounge pants for me. I do have only one pair for winter (I used them for PJs), but I’ve survived for two years with just one pair. I could survive longer. Argh. Sure, they, too, were less than $2. But still. I did NOT need them. And although cute, they aren’t the colors I’m trying to buy all my clothes in. What was I thinking!
I think part of it is that we have the $20000+ home repairs (lead based paint) looming over us. In comparison, everything else is cheap. Yet at the same time, I tell myself that we need to spend less in order to start paying off the HELOC we’re going to need. It’s kind of overwhelming to think about this amount of money…..We got our first bid last night, for window replacement. Nearly $15000 to replace the 15 windows. Another $4000 to redo the front porch windows and doorway. We’re thinking maybe we WILL do some of the work ourselves.