Sometimes being thrifty backfires

If you live on the High Plains and you’re like me, you might be tighter than tree bark.

That is a funny saying we have in these parts to refer to someone who is thrifty or a cheapskate.

I think my wife really hates this trait in me but what she doesn’t realize is that my cheapskate ways enable her to spend money like it's going out of style. If I weren’t saving it so fast she wouldn’t have any to spend.

She really hates it when I get ready to make a large, important purchase. I’ve worn her out shopping for televisions, computers, cell phones, cameras and cars. I do go a bit crazy on those things where the choices are wide and the chances of ending up with a lemon that I’ll have to live with exist.

To my credit, the only really big lemons I can recall are the Chevy Citation (which she had to drive) and a smart phone. Both were spur-of-the-moment emotional buys made because I thought I was getting a better deal than the purchase I originally intended to make.

I can nurse cars along without spending too much and as long as I have a good spare, I will drive a bald tire until it gives out on me somewhere along the road. Sometimes new stuff is good but most of the time new stuff is just new. No sense in buying a new car when you can save thousands driving a used rig, right?

I think the thing that drives my wife the craziest is going grocery shopping with me. I’m in the aisle calculating weight, calories, fat, protein and sugar as related to the price. She’s looking for the new cereal variety she saw on TV last week and has no problem whatsoever paying three times the price of regular cereal.

Ever since my days selling advertising to grocers I’ve watched grocery store ads every week. I learned selling ads that sometimes grocery stores and discount stores did actually sell some stuff cheaper than they could buy it for. It was called a loss leader and designed with the hopes I would come into the store to get that bargain and I would lose my mind and bring my wife along and lose track of her on the cereal aisle.

With plenty of freezer space, I have no problem buying stuff I don’t actually need immediately and I don’t have a problem with buying a lot of an item if I don’t think it will spoil. Sometimes that backfires on me when I find bargains on things we don’t like well enough to eat. Examples are a big bag of turkey corndogs or really big sausages with maple flavor.

I’ve had a few phases where I clipped coupons but I was never a fanatic coupon-clipper like you’ve seen on those television shows. I backed off on the coupons when store clerks began rolling their eyes at me after the fifth or sixth one they had to decipher.

While my miserly ways may loom large at home, I’m pretty sure in my professional life I haven’t been as much of a tightwad, though certain employees over the years might argue. If it affected safety or productivity I could be convinced to spend money. However, I’m not going to waste it mind-you.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]