The Cheapskate Club Membership Thread

dogstar said:
Welcome to the Cheapskate Club. To join, just reply to this thread (only once, please). The number of your post is your member number.

What is a cheapskate? Maybe you won't spend over a certain limit. Maybe you wait for things to go on sale. Maybe you buy used or trade. It's up to you.

Whether it's by choice or circumstance, welcome to the club!

My story is that I grew up in an immigrant family with little disposable income. Things are different now, but old habits die hard. I realize how hard it is to make money, and I stick to products with high value, i.e., performance to price ratio. I'm so cheap, I can't even put my member number into a signature.

Dogstar
Cheapskate Club #1
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I want in, Thanks...
 
DocJD said:
Still hard for me to spend much above $100 on a knife , because that was a whole lot of money back when gas was $.20/gal and I got paid about $1 /hr .
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Cheapest gas was 12.9 cents a gallon and put into my New 1970 Impala custom in Cincinnati, Ohio...first job in Sales was .50 an hour in 1964-HA!
The following year paid cash for a 1960, 5 year old, Corvette, wish I still had it, Now their going for a quarter of a Million dollars!!!
 
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Danny Linguini said:
Nothing says you gotta be born a cheapskate. ;)
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Agreed. This is complicated.
Yesterday, I watched a guy pony up $1M. for a GTO.
To me, the simple phrase is, bang for your buck. If you just want it..fine. Just don’t get cleaned in the process.
edit. IMO, if you want (or need it) have the money, and can‘t bring yourself to part with the Benjamins you’re an official cheapskate. The flip side, is being a smart consumer.
 
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I ve always prized high value for my money when buying a knife. I ve now reached an age where I realize that I can take care of my knife needs with a blade costing less than 100 dollars. Often much less.
 
GmpaJim said:
Agreed. This is complicated.
Yesterday, I watched a guy pony up $1M. for a GTO.
To me, the simple phrase is, bang for your buck. If you just want it..fine. Just don’t get cleaned in the process.
edit. IMO, if you want (or need it) have the money, and can‘t bring yourself to part with the Benjamins you’re an official cheapskate. The flip side, is being a smart consumer.
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Ferrari or Pontiac?
 
GmpaJim said:
Agreed. This is complicated.
Yesterday, I watched a guy pony up $1M. for a GTO.
To me, the simple phrase is, bang for your buck. If you just want it..fine. Just don’t get cleaned in the process.
edit. IMO, if you want (or need it) have the money, and can‘t bring yourself to part with the Benjamins you’re an official cheapskate. The flip side, is being a smart consumer.
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If that's the case, then how much of "cheapskateism" is just past trauma? That little voice in your head that says "wait, what if you need that money for something else? What if something better comes along? What if you lose it/break it/let it get stolen? What then?".

If so, then it's coming from the same place as what I believe is one of the reasons for carrying a knife in the first place: a "Dumbo feather" against the appalling chaos of reality.
 
I have missed some very very nice collectible Bucks by being cheep..I used to hate Ebay because someone would bid a buck or two over me and get a knife I really wanted for the collection. It really hurt. But I take a some joy knowing every single 112 in my collection I got at a great price! I keep telling myself that and any fool with a fat checkbook could have a great collection. But the ones that got away still haunt me..Two great truths are "If it fits in a 5 gallon bucket it's bait." And as I was deciding to use or not to use a very fancy BCCI gold etch 111 my wife KathyJo told me "Who are you saving it for?"...
 
Shorttime said:
If that's the case, then how much of "cheapskateism" is just past trauma? That little voice in your head that says "wait, what if you need that money for something else? What if something better comes along? What if you lose it/break it/let it get stolen? What then?".

If so, then it's coming from the same place as what I believe is one of the reasons for carrying a knife in the first place: a "Dumbo feather" against the appalling chaos of reality.
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”If you have the money” referred to disposable income.
“A Dumbo feather against the appalling chaos of reality”. It sounds like a good reason to carry a knife, but, would you mind breaking that down?
 
I don't like carrying anything too expensive on my person. I have a reasonably good Mac notebook as my home computer and won't hesitate to replace it with another.

However, I carry an IPhone 6 and I will use it until I can't. It fits my needs and I'm not afraid to carry it my back pocket while doing even somewhat dirty work.

I had an IPhone 3 before that. I used it until it was no longer supported and I loved it. When I retired it, it had caulk on it and was definitely the worse for wear. Worked great as a phone and for e-mail until the the end and it was a tank. You could have driven nails with it, I think.

"You will lose and expensive knife the first day you carry it. You can throw a cheap knife out of your car window and it will be on your dresser when you get home."

That being said, a little knife knowledge allows you to get a reasonable steel while still going low.

Also, a nice slipjoint as a "Sunday go to meeting knife" is nice.
 
GmpaJim said:
”If you have the money” referred to disposable income.
“A Dumbo feather against the appalling chaos of reality”. It sounds like a good reason to carry a knife, but, would you mind breaking that down?
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For those who may be too young to remember, a certain large entertainment company released a series of movies in previous decades, which nearly all featured the death or loss of a parental figure as the catalyst of the story. After this heart-crushing loss, the main character had to navigate the world, usually with the help of some friends.

Dumbo was an elephant, with a set of very large ears. So large in fact, that they allowed him to break physics, acting as a sort of "wing suit". He didn't truly fly, IIRC, but he could glide for long distances.

The trouble was, he didn't believe it. So one of his companions gave him a completely mundane feather, and told him that it was magical. As long as he had the feather, he could "fly". Storytelling tropes work flawlessly in these movies, so of course he eventually loses the feather mid-flight, and has to learn to have confidence in his own abilities. Which is not usually a process you can go through in the course of a 75 foot drop, but this is a movie, after all.

The "appalling chaos of reality", or rather how appalling and chaotic it really is, depends on other things. Some believe that we have a special place in the Universe, and that Powers we are too small to comprehend take an active part in our lives. We are never truly alone, and the fact that some things seem random is only because our minds can't understand how all the pieces interconnect.

On the other end of the spectrum, are people who believe that we are here because the laws of our Universe allow complex organic structures. We can't be sure (some people actively deny) that there is any force that organized the Universe, beyond what the known laws will allow. For those who doubt or deny the presence of some sentient/sapient Creator, it can be easy to believe that the Universe can eat your lunch at any time, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sure, a knife can't protect you from an existential crisis, or having your home wrecked by a hurricane, but it can make getting into a bag of cookies a little easier. Sometimes, that's enough.

That's about as concise as I can be, without opening the door for a potentially perilous (and wayyy off-topic) debate!

Which I absolutely do not want to do!



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We all like nice knives, some get pricey, and I know everyone has a different point of what that price is, but a good inexpensive knife with decent steel will do most daily tasks we face just fine. I have a Buck, MAM, Opinel, SA or a Spyderco Byrd knife usually and they do just fine. I don’t worry too much if they get used, just watch what I am cutting, but I also will slap down good cash for a good knife too, but use those mentioned above mostly for EDC. So I’m not a actual member but an honorary one I guess. ;)
 
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Shorttime said:
For those who may be too young to remember, a certain large entertainment company released a series of movies in previous decades, which nearly all featured the death or loss of a parental figure as the catalyst of the story. After this heart-crushing loss, the main character had to navigate the world, usually with the help of some friends.

Dumbo was an elephant, with a set of very large ears. So large in fact, that they allowed him to break physics, acting as a sort of "wing suit". He didn't truly fly, IIRC, but he could glide for long distances.

The trouble was, he didn't believe it. So one of his companions gave him a completely mundane feather, and told him that it was magical. As long as he had the feather, he could "fly". Storytelling tropes work flawlessly in these movies, so of course he eventually loses the feather mid-flight, and has to learn to have confidence in his own abilities. Which is not usually a process you can go through in the course of a 75 foot drop, but this is a movie, after all.

The "appalling chaos of reality", or rather how appalling and chaotic it really is, depends on other things. Some believe that we have a special place in the Universe, and that Powers we are too small to comprehend take an active part in our lives. We are never truly alone, and the fact that some things seem random is only because our minds can't understand how all the pieces interconnect.

On the other end of the spectrum, are people who believe that we are here because the laws of our Universe allow complex organic structures. We can't be sure (some people actively deny) that there is any force that organized the Universe, beyond what the known laws will allow. For those who doubt or deny the presence of some sentient/sapient Creator, it can be easy to believe that the Universe can eat your lunch at any time, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sure, a knife can't protect you from an existential crisis, or having your home wrecked by a hurricane, but it can make getting into a bag of cookies a little easier. Sometimes, that's enough.

That's about as concise as I can be, without opening the door for a potentially perilous (and wayyy off-topic) debate!

Which I absolutely do not want to do!



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In essence, we are limited by our mind and its capacities. I taught college economics for over 20 years, and witnessed this over and over, trying to be patient with students. Too often they were too young to appreciate "things," yet were at the stage of life where the mind is most plastic and pliable.
 
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