Saving Money

I remember when Virginia and I were newly weds while we were in college back in the early '70s. We knew we were poor college students, and we pinched our pennies, but we sure had a good time doing it. The first year we were married we averaged $11/week on groceries... remember...it was 1971-2. I think we ate OK, and Mrs Lomax, who managed the student inn where we both pulled a few hours each week, let us fix a free burger every now and then. There were several other young couples we knew, and we were all pretty much in the same boat, always stretching the dollars we had. One couple thought they could save quite a bit of money on dish washing liquid by eating off paper plates all the time... go figure.

I guess over the years we have continued to be pretty frugal most of the time... sort of following in the footsteps of our parents I think. Sometimes we've had a few more dollars than others, but "saving money" is usually still not far from our minds.

This weekend we saved some money... at least in a few years I think we will have saved some. We've had an extra fridge in the garage... you know, one of those older ones that was in the house when we moved in. It works OK, but the compressor labors some, and it's old enough that it sucks quite a bit of electricity. Well, Sears finally put their little fridges and freezers on sale (notice it was a sale :-), so we bought one of each. They came into the warehouse, so Doug brought his truck over and hauled me over to pick them up. We put the fridge in the laundry room for cold drinks and overflow fridge space. We put the little freezer in the garage. Both of them are "energy star" appliances, and they're so small, that I'm sure they'll use less juice than the old one. What I don't know is how many years of saving electricity it'll take to actually save what we paid for them.

Oh well, I think we're done spending for a while... can't afford to save any more money right now. And... those little appliances will help us be a little more "green." Now... where are those paper plates??