Ask Lemmy

I usually take my hourly wage and compare it to the inconvenience. For example, if that inconvenience takes about an hour of my life, but saves me more than my hourly wage, I take it. There are exceptions of course, for example if I am low on money.

Eight

I’m pretty broke and have been for most of my life, so I’m pretty willing to be inconvenienced. Only thing I have to my name is a very old house in need of substantial work I can’t afford to do, on a very small town lot, and a car that’s falling apart.

I keep my heat set to 60f/15.6c at most, which is well outside of my comfort zone (I prefer being too warm over too cold). I use heated mattress pads/blankets to make it bearable, as they cost exceptionally little to use round the clock for a month, around a dollar a month vs the several hundred per month my heat goes up when kept to a comfortable temp.

I grow as much of my own food as I can. I know people do the math and determine that home grown somehow costs just as much as store bought, so it’s only good as a hobby, and I genuinely don’t understand that calculation. I compost and mix compost into my garden soil and my food is basically free..? And I recently added a small flock of chickens that eat my plant scraps and food scraps, and their waste is great fertilizer. It’s a nice holistic system. I also have some plants like tomatoes and peppers that grow year-round in hydroponics, the small amount of electric and powder nutrients used to grow them costs far less than the food they produce. I’m working on expanding my hydro options to sell surplus to friends and family.

I use compressed sawdust pellets (like for pellet stoves or horse bedding) as cat litter. It’s basically the same thing as feline pine but it’s $7 for 40lbs, which is enough to completely toss and replace the litter about 10 times per bag, more in summer because I use less (takes longer to dry out so needs to be replaced faster anyway). The litter is compostable, so it goes into a special pile that gets used as yard/flower garden dirt. However this requires that I stir up the litter at least twice a day, to allow the urine to dry properly. Else it just reeks of ammonia.

All food scraps, whether cat food or human food, get saved for something. Scraps my chickens can’t/won’t eat, like raw carrots, onions, garlic, and celery, get turned into broth along with bones. After being turned into broth, the remaining material goes into my worm compost. Anything chivkens can eat, especially cat food my cats don’t eat, gets saved for them. Egg shells get saved (by everyone who gets eggs from me) and used as calcium supplement for them.

If I can build or make something, even poorly, I’ll do that before buying a thing (beer, bread, covey coop, chicken coop, shelves, etc.). If I can repurpose existing tools to do a thing I only need to do once, I probably will even if the task is far more frustrating as a result. I desperately wish we had tool library here so I could just borrow stuff. But no. And on this same sort of trajectory; I’ll do things manually rather than using gas or buying new tools. I inherited a ton of really high quality hand tools from my grandfather, and I use them quite a lot. I also shovel snow by hand rather than putting gas in my snowblower, unless we are expecting a blizzard.

I have more but this is already too long so ima just stop.

Yesterday I transported a seven-foot long, 70# piece of furniture across town by bus.

In a though spot? No new stuff. Rent, food, internet, electricity. Put everything to the side I can afford.

A lot, I've walked across a city rather than pay for a taxi

I live in a tiny garage "apartment" with only a washing machine, no dryer, and essentially "babies first refrigerator" too small to even keep a tub of ice cream in the freezer just so that I don't have to live paycheck to paycheck.

I have no idea, I'm quite frugal already without it being an inconvenience. If I'd step it up a notch to inconvenience I wouldn't be saving much more.

I use spotify premium.

I usually consider

• how much I hate doing it
• how long it will take to do vs
• how long it will take to find someone to do it
• how much it will cost. The weight of what is acceptable changes depending on how much I need the money at that time.

I will pay to avoid inconvenience.

I'll use an office stapler to close a limb laceration before going anywhere near an emergency room because America is a fucking capitalist hellscape. So, moderate, I guess.

i have been looking high and low for months in my local charity shops for a specific cd, that i very well could have bought online for a fairly reasonable price

It depends on how much money you make, right ?

I'm fortunate enough that I have no issue covering essential expenses, so I've setup an automatic transfer after payday to move some of my wages to a savings account. In other words, I don't have to inconvenience myself at all to save

Enough to use the stupid fucking fast food apps that need to ask which location I'm ordering from six times and every screen takes two seconds to load.

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I don't think that the question aligns that much with how I usually think, I usually think of spending as the inconvenience itself.

Honestly not much generally, life is for living, I'm privileged enough to be in a decent paid job that affords me that luxury. Though if I'm on a run of not saving for a few months, it's time to find something to dial something back a bit, because that's a sign I'm potentially living unsustainably

I learned the hard way when I was younger that living financially sustainably should be priority one, every month you live unsustainably is at least a couple of months it'll take to climb out of the hole. And once you're pretty deep things take their toll on your happiness

It kinda depends on the domain. Some tools I could buy to make my life easier would be nice, but I can't justify the cost vs how much time they would save me. On the other hand, certain things that are hard on my back, knees, etc. are bought quickly especially in my mid 40s now.

For travel, anything domestic I will make some sacrifices, but maybe not all of them (night busses are still iffy). International where my but is in a seat for 15 hours (to fly to visit my parents every few years), I go with a decent one.

Bed-related things get priority for money since I'm spending 1/4 to 1/3 of my day in the thing and my body isn't what it used to be. Office chair is about to be on that list as well, though I've been putting it off for ages (and increasingly feeling it for a bad height match to my desk).

I only buy new devices when it really becomes an issue for core usability (from phones to PCs to vehicles to farm equipment). I would rather repair or limp along with it until it dies or I can't stand it anymore. At that point, I will usually by the newest (PC or phone) or very recent used (vehicle/equipment).

I almost never order snacks or fast food delivered, cheaper to walk to the store if I want it

If I can save money I probably will. Rarely I consider it an inconvenience though.

I'll take a bus for 1h rather than pay a taxi to get someplace in 10 min to save $40.

I'm a musician, and not a particularly successful one. So I inconvenience myself a lot, all the time, to save money.

More dependent on how much money. $100 is a lot for me in general, so I'll definitely go out of my way. $20... Maybe, depending how much inconvenience and how much the remaining price is. I'll never under any circumstance inconvenience myself over less than $5, because I can't fathom a situation where $5 saves my life. Maybe if my entire family died.

I will pay to avoid inconvenience. I work a stressful job, I won't sacrifice what little free time I have to do things like decorating.

My tolerance for inconvenience is rather low.

I'm currently renovating the toilet, I'm not going to pay someone else € 3500 for six days of work (six for me).