Quality of Life Purchases

My wife and I are tight­wads fru­gal. We’ve man­aged to save a good chunk of money by cut­ting a lot of the “extras” out of our lives, such as fre­quent trips to the movies and eat­ing out on a reg­u­lar basis. Occa­sion­ally we have friends or fam­ily imply (or some­times out­right say) that we aren’t enjoy­ing our lives, and that we are miss­ing out on life.

Instead of going over the virtues of fru­gal liv­ing or the feel­ing of safety we have in know­ing that we have money in the bank, I’d like to talk about what I call qual­ity of life pur­chases. These are pur­chases that, as the name implies, improve our qual­ity of life. For example:

• We just pur­chased a mem­ory foam mat­tress top­per. I used one of these when I was serv­ing a mis­sion, and I got to sleep faster, slept bet­ter, and felt bet­ter through­out the day. In short, the qual­ity of my life was bet­ter. I’m con­fi­dent our new pur­chase will sim­i­larly improve our lives.
• I pur­chased some nice spat­u­las for Becca. Every time we cook she com­plains about our lack of a decent spat­ula. I splurged and paid a bit more than I would have if I had shopped at Wal-Mart, but the spat­u­las I pur­chased have great reviews and are well con­structed. Becca’s daily chore of cook­ing is now a lit­tle eas­ier, my chore of clean­ing up is eas­ier (dish­washer safe spat­u­las!), and life is a bit bet­ter for both of us.
• Over the past year or two we have paid a good chunk of money on exams and school­ing for both Becca and myself. The edu­ca­tion has been expen­sive, stress­ful, and pro­vides no tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits. But we are both bet­ter pre­pared for our jobs (or future job in Becca’s case) and have gained a valu­able asset: knowledge.

So what are the cri­te­ria for a qual­ity of life purchase?

1. Long-term. It is hard to say some­thing is chang­ing your life if it only lasts for a few min­utes. A good qual­ity of life pur­chase lasts for more than a day, a week, or even a month.
2. Qual­ity. Lets say you have the option of pay­ing $20 for some­thing that you expect to last 6  months, or $100 for a sim­i­lar item that you expect to last 5 years. Which do you think is the bet­ter deal and will ulti­mately leave you happy with your purchase?
3. Improve­ment. Whether it makes you smarter, builds your con­fi­dence or self-esteem, or makes your life eas­ier, a qual­ity of life pur­chase has to improve your life.

So yes, my wife and I are cheap. We don’t watch every movie at the the­ater. We don’t eat at Ruby Tues­day every week. But we are happy, and I sup­pose that is all that matters.