I blogged recently about my trip to visit WV to visit family and friends. The trip itself is pleasant and memorable and usually enjoyable but there is one part of the trip that is hard to overlook: My mom and her frugality.
Now calling my mom frugal is a complement because in actuality she is not. She is not frugal or thrifty at all...she is cheap.
Frugal people make the most of what they have. I respect frugal. Using coupons to get higher quality items for the same price as the lower quality ones, watching for sales, reusing things that are safe to reuse, etc are all things I can understand but my mom takes frugality to a whole new level. She is cheap.
You have purchased cold cuts from the deli and had it presented to you in a a lightweight zipper sealed bag. My mom saves these to reuse. More than once. She also saves the wire ties that come on bread bags or come with some brands of garbage bags. When she moved out of the old house to the one she lives in how, she had BOXES of them. She even reuses paper plates if the are "not too dirty". Ewww.
Many years ago when my wife and I were dating we noticed while visiting my mom and dad that mom had some wooden utensils on the stove. There were several wooden spoons and spatulas and one pitiful looking wooden fork. Two of the three tines were broken off and it looked like it was flipping us off. My wife and I knew exactly what what one of their Christmas gifts were going to be. So that Christmas, my wife and I got mom a new set of nice wooden utensils. When we came to visit we noticed mom still had her nasty old set on the stove. I asked her what happened to the set we got her and she told me that they were too nice to use every day so she put them up. Mom has done this with many gifts we have purchased for her. Towels, cookware, dishes...she even does that with the gourmet coffee we get her. She only drinks it once a week. She used to mix it with her cheap stuff until I told her she was wasting it.
My mom shops at Goodwill, Big Lots, and Gabriel Brothers (if Big Lots carries irregulars, then Gabe's carries abnormals) and thinks Target is where rich people shop. She refuses to go to the doctor or dentist and only goes to the eye doctor because my sister works for one. She is a price only shopper and will buy the cheapest thing in the store when she needs to get something.
Now here is the ironic part. My mom is a QVC (home shopping channel) addict. She buys all kinds of stuff from them each and every week. She has a QVC credit card (why, I have no idea) and is always bragging about the latest gizmo she got from them. Candles, lights, cheap jewelry, knives, and cleaning supplies (which is ironic since her house is rather dirty most of the time). I find it amazing that someone as cheap as my mom will spend so much money on junk and none on health care. Go figure.
I have a motto: By the best you can afford and you will not be disappointed. That normally means that if something has a price range of $50 to $100, I usually spend $75 on it. Most of our electronics have been mid level unless we had no need for anything that nice. My mom usually buys on price alone. This year she really through me a loop and bought herself a HONDA lawn mower. Lawn equipment is the one area I always buy lower priced because I am very hard on it. It rarely lasts five years for me. Hearing that my mother spent over $300 for a lawn mower was a shock.
My mom has a small dog, a Shitzhu that is cute as a button. Mom has not owned a dog in a long, long time so my wife and I offered to give her some info to help her with the task of dog ownership. Not only has my mom ignored the advice we have given her, but she has decided that her non-pet owning friends are better suited to offer advice than we were. Needless to say the dog has been sick several times and it has take her vet to convince her that the things she is feeding the dog are not good for it. All this because she refuses to let her vet advise her on matters pertaining her dog.
At one point my mom was a pack rat in the worst way...a trait that she shared with my dad. After he died, I was able to get her to throw away a lot of what he had accumulated, but she was not so eager to get rid of the boxed of bags, ties, butter containers, plastic milk jugs, jars, and plastic ware. It took her basement being flooded last year for her to finally realize that she had too much junk. Thank to Elk Creek overflowing its banks and making a mess in her basement, she got rid of a ton of junk.
The horrible thing about my mom and her being cheap is that when she finally decided to spend money on something that she really needs (a new bathroom or her front deck for example), she gets over charged. Since she never shops around she takes the first offer that is made from the first available contractor. Thanks to this behavior, she has spent 3x as much on her deck and 2x as much on her bathroom as she should and to top that off, the quality was well below par.
All this leads me and my sister to try to convince my mom to move in with one of us. My mom has been very resistant so far to either idea. The thought of coming to Texas scares her enough she won't even visit. I have been out of WV for over 20 years and she has only visited once, 10 years ago. My sis is working on a plan but so far mom is not cooperating. I hope sis can convince her that moving is the best thing for her.
Sigh.
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