<p>I think we have most of you beat! We drive a 1975 Volvo…</p>
<p>^ You do beat us - our volvo is a 1990</p>
<p>Our neighbors expected all 3 of their sons to pay for their own college or post HS ed & for some reason, none of them got any ed past HS. Both the H & W are college-educated & were HS teachers. In fact, the H was a HS counselor.<br>
One of the kids has a medical disability & will need increasing amounts of assistance the rest of his life. He’s the one who has taken the most education–art classes, which he loves & is good at. One of the other kids is a “rigger” for a TV series and was living “hand-to-mouth” with his W & 3 kids, so the mom gave him her share of a family inheritance that allowed him to buy a house & through his thrifty ways he’s nearly paid it off in about 6 years. The other S lives at home & helps them with the disabled artist S. He tried the military & had a very bad experience.</p>
<p>I have come in this thread a couple times and could not really define ourself. </p>
<p>On one hand, I would like to think we are extreme good savers - living way below our means. That includes old domestic cars purchased used and an old house. OTOH, our credit card bills have been on the raise lately. Especially after DD decided to forgo her expensive dream school, we have made some purchases that we could live w/o. </p>
<p>Hey, you only live once and I guess buying a diet coke from machine once in a while is not too wasteful.</p>
<p>One thing that has been a big financial boost for us has been living in a suburb with good public schools, rather than living closer in and paying for private schools. Most of my law partners pay private school tuition for each kid for 13 years - before even starting to pay for college. When they wonder how we can afford to take the great vacations that they can’t afford, I don’t think they think about this.</p>
<p>We’ve always had to live below our means to pay for private tuitions for our kids from elementary school through college. Now that both have graduated, we are considering a total remodel to our house that we’ve lived in for 32 years. We are also traveling more, but DH won’t be retiring early.</p>
<p>Our frugal lifestyle has rubbed off on our son, who is saving 40% after tax, not including his 401k. He is able to pull it off because he is still renting and has no debt.</p>
<p>Our D, on the other hand is high maintenance, fiscally clueless and careless.</p>
<p>Yeah, I tell our middle child - a high maintenance daughter - that she needs a VERY good education so she can get a VERY good job because she is very expensive.</p>
<p>Our D has gone back to grad school so she can earn more to support her expensive lifestyle. She would have loans to repay first. </p>
<p>We’ve told our kids we won’t be paying for grad schools.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Told our D that, in addition to the above, she should also marry someone with a very good education and a very good job. I can see her being that expensive…</p>
<p>I like to shop at the factory outlets and sales, also. I was practically raised to never buy anything at full retail (a throw back to all those old relatives who worked in the NYC garment center I guess.)</p>
<p>I also like to buy things that are of good quality, will last for a long time, and are classic so they don’t go out of style. Our 1998 volvo is in that category.</p>
<p>I used to tell my D to marry a hedge fund manager. I think I need a new idea…</p>
<p>I’m a big shopper at thrift stores for my own clothes. I just hate spending department store prices for the latest fashions that I can’t decide if I like or not anyway. So a year later the same stuff will show up at thrift/consignment stores and at a better price. :)</p>
<p>OTOH, we are seriously considering redoing the kitchen. It’s 26 years old and has issues but I may feel guilty b/c after all, it still <em>works.</em></p>
<p>My kids are thrifty too, and I’m glad of that.</p>
<p>We’re so thrifty that on our combined incomes of less than $100K we managed to send all three kids through college with no loans, pay off our house valued at $400K in the 18 yrs we lived in it and my husband retired a year ago at age 62 confident that we have enough saved to live okay. </p>
<p>You don’t even need to drive the kids crazy to do it. We have taken some nice vacations over the years. Granted it wasn’t every year. Sometimes our vacations were just visiting relatives in different places. But we have taken the kids overseas a couple of times. I buy whatever the grocery store has on sale using coupons, but we do et meat :)</p>
<p>We drive our cars at least 8 years, and never bought one for the kids. We do pay their insurance while they are students. They all worked for their spending money. Some of them are as thrifty as we are. The one who isn’t, works really, really hard to afford to buy the nice things he likes and pay for it not on credit.</p>
<p>It’s worked well for us.</p>
<p>Very thrifty here even though our incomes have gone up.
Everyone in our neighborhood seems to be tearing out their kitchens and baths and spending BIG bucks to replace them with luxury models. You know, pro-appliances, with and high-end refrigerators and dishwashers covered by cabinets so you can’t even see them. Huge bathrooms. Well, we just replaced the vanities and lighting in our bathrooms, put in new floors and put in pretty shower curtains. Looks good to me. And we just finished an “update” of our kitchen. New counters, refinished wood floors, and we had our cabinets professionally painted. Some new appliances. Looks pretty darn good and at a quarter of the cash our friends are shelling out (actually, I think they’re all using equity in their homes).
And we’re paying off the house this year after almost 20 years here. Awesome feeling. No car payments…no debt at ALL. Now, we’ll really pick up our savings.</p>
<p>Since we moved in our new-construction neighbhorhood 7 years ago, almost every neighbor has put in extensive,hardscape (patios, walkways), finished their basements, put in granite countertops and many are on their 2nd or even 3rd interior paint job. Plus, fancy landscaping galore (w/weekly lawn service maintenance).</p>
<p>We’ve (by necessity) resisted and husband is painting the house himself, one room at a time (meticulously) and is going to use some corian he obtained (for free) to redo our island counter-top. Son is our landscape service and he’s also under-bid some lawn companies to do our neighbors’ lawns.</p>
<p>The only problem–some structural house defects need to be fixed to prevent further damage—it might not be cost-effective to wait on these.</p>
<p>I talked with my husband this weekend about how much per month we are saving for Son’s college (he pays the bills). I was glad to hear that is is almost double what I thought it was - I knew how much is in his 529, I just didn’t know the monthly amount. It is comforting to know that the amount we’ve been saving for him per year is roughly equivalent to the cost of room and board. Good to know that we’ll be able to pay that out of pocket with no changes to our lifestyle.</p>