LJ Idol: Week Eleven - Haute
Jan. 29th, 2011 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ckocherHaute, I’m not. Never have been, never will be.
This is one aspect of the frugality my mother and grandmother taught me that has actually stuck. It’s so very hard to for me to pay a lot of money for something. Why pay hundreds of dollars for clothes? You’ll end up either never wearing them, or being too afraid to do anything in them while wearing them.
$40k for a car? No way. My car is a 1994 Sunbird, one that I bought brand new, and even though it’s definitely showing its age, it’s also paid for. Has been for over a decade. But even when I do get a new car? Something under $20. $15k if I can manage it. It’s just a car. It gets me from here to there and back again.
I flip through the pages of the shiny magazines at the store, and marvel over the $2,000 handbag or the $400 shoes. Apparently, I am of the peasant class – stocky, happy to grub in the dirt and grow my own food. I’m thrilled beyond belief with a $7 pair of fleece pants that keep my legs warm in the winter.
It’s not about comfort, or class. It’s about choosing to spend the money on the things that are important to me. A really good steak is worth the $30 price tag, because I savor it and know it’s a special treat. Spending a hundred bucks on a good pair of hiking boots? Totally worth it, because they need to last through the abuse I’m going to put them through.
It’s a problem though, in this day of the disposable everything. There’s a fine line between spending $1200 for button-up shirt, and spending $500 a year on clothes because they only last three months before falling apart. It’s really the mark of a spoiled society – that we have the means and time to ponder such things, when our grandmothers knew the value of a dollar far more intimately than we do today.
Haute? Not in my world. Comfortable? Happy? Absolutely.
*****Voting is now open for this week's round - if you liked my entry, please vote for me. I'm in tribe two!*****
This is one aspect of the frugality my mother and grandmother taught me that has actually stuck. It’s so very hard to for me to pay a lot of money for something. Why pay hundreds of dollars for clothes? You’ll end up either never wearing them, or being too afraid to do anything in them while wearing them.
$40k for a car? No way. My car is a 1994 Sunbird, one that I bought brand new, and even though it’s definitely showing its age, it’s also paid for. Has been for over a decade. But even when I do get a new car? Something under $20. $15k if I can manage it. It’s just a car. It gets me from here to there and back again.
I flip through the pages of the shiny magazines at the store, and marvel over the $2,000 handbag or the $400 shoes. Apparently, I am of the peasant class – stocky, happy to grub in the dirt and grow my own food. I’m thrilled beyond belief with a $7 pair of fleece pants that keep my legs warm in the winter.
It’s not about comfort, or class. It’s about choosing to spend the money on the things that are important to me. A really good steak is worth the $30 price tag, because I savor it and know it’s a special treat. Spending a hundred bucks on a good pair of hiking boots? Totally worth it, because they need to last through the abuse I’m going to put them through.
It’s a problem though, in this day of the disposable everything. There’s a fine line between spending $1200 for button-up shirt, and spending $500 a year on clothes because they only last three months before falling apart. It’s really the mark of a spoiled society – that we have the means and time to ponder such things, when our grandmothers knew the value of a dollar far more intimately than we do today.
Haute? Not in my world. Comfortable? Happy? Absolutely.
*****Voting is now open for this week's round - if you liked my entry, please vote for me. I'm in tribe two!*****
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 11:08 pm (UTC)