But over time, I've gradually softened this viewpoint. Mind you, I still don't think reaching for your credit cards should automatically be your first approach to dealing with any problem. But I now feel prepared to endorse a more moderate version of the saying: "If you have a problem that you can easily solve by spending money and can't easily solve without spending money, and you have the money, then you have no problem."
I first came around to this way of thinking back in 2017, when my old winter boots started leaking. For an ecofrugal person, the obvious thing to do in that situation would be to try to fix them, rather than spending money on a new pair. But in the first place, it might not work; in the second place, even if it worked, it would only be a temporary solution; and in the third place, I'd never really been all that happy with those boots to begin with. So I concluded that, under the circumstances, it made sense to spend some money — even spending an amount of money I wouldn't normally consider, but could easily afford — for a new pair of boots that would completely fix the problem.
Since then, I haven't been what you'd call a knee-jerk shopper, but recently I've found myself placing a lot of online orders, every one of which addressed some sort of "pain point" in my lifestyle. The term "pain point" is kind of marketing jargon, but I think it does a good job of expressing the idea of one of those little things in your life that's just always bothering you, like a rock in your shoe. It may be no more than a minor annoyance, but if it's a minor annoyance you experience every single day, it adds up to a problem worth spending some money to fix.
For instance, in recent weeks, I've felt entirely justified in spending money on:
- A new over-the-door shoe rack for our basement door. Since we use our kitchen door as our main entrance to the house, we need a place nearby to put wet shoes. There isn't enough space for a wall-mounted shelf, so until recently, we were using an over-the-door shoe bag on the back of the basement door. But the pockets weren't really big enough to accommodate Brian's shoes, which therefore had a tendency to fall out, sometimes on our heads, whenever the door was moved. Also, wet shoes trapped in the enclosed pockets would take days to dry out. So eventually I got fed up and hunted up this shoe rack at Home Depot, which can accommodate shoes of any size and actually provide enough airflow around them to let them dry out after a wetting. This new rack looks much better, works much better, and (with a minor adjustment to the door) actually allows the door to close.
- A new folding umbrella. When my purse was stolen in 2018, I treated this crisis as an opportunity to upgrade my everyday carry. I vowed that I would replace each and every item I had lost with something at least as good, if not better. Yet as time went on, I realized I hadn't really done this with my folding umbrella. The old one had been kind of flimsy, not great protection in a storm, but it did have one big advantage: it folded up to a compact 7 inches, allowing me to tuck it into the purse vertically. The new one wasn't really any sturdier, but it was longer, forcing me to lay it down lengthwise in the bottom of the purse, which left me less room for everything else. After spending two years cursing with frustration every time I tried to cram all my stuff into the bag, I finally decided to shell out some money for an umbrella as compact as my old one — and since I didn't want to have to replace it yet again in a year, I decided to get the best one I could find at that size. A search for "best folding umbrella" led me to the $50 Davek Mini. Normally, this price tag would be a deal-breaker, but after two years of living with this pain point, I was ready to look on it as an investment (especially since the umbrella comes with a lifetime warranty, which reviews say the company is really good about honoring). The new umbrella feels very sturdy, looks cute, and fits neatly in the purse, leaving me enough room to add back in the collapsible cup I hope to be able to use again soon once Starbucks joins the rest of the world in concluding that surface transmission of COVID really isn't a threat.
- A new cordless phone. Ever since we switched from Optimum to Verizon, we've been having problems with our phone occasionally failing to ring when a call comes in. Verizon, needless to say, was unable to solve this problem and told us our phones must be to blame. Initially we were skeptical, but sure enough, when we tried unplugging our cordless phone, it seemed to solve the problem. Unforunately, doing this creates three new problems: (1) we're tethered to a cord every time we have a conversation, (2) we can only get caller ID by checking the printer, and (3) the ringtone on the corded phone is really loud and annoying. So at this point, we had three choices: (1) live with these three problems, (2) live with the problem of an occasional dropped call, or (3) just shell out fifty bucks for a new cordless phone (from a different manufacturer, just to make sure) to deal with the problem entirely. (Mind you, we don't have the new phone yet, so we can't be sure it actually will fix the problem, but we can always return the phone if it doesn't.)
- A warm cardigan. As I noted in February, I've been repeatedly frustrated over the past several years by the gap in my wardrobe left by the demise of my favorite winter cardigan. I have one cardigan that fits and goes with everything but isn't warm; I have one that's warm and goes with most things, but is so huge I can barely get my coat on over it. So when I found a simple grey wool cardigan on ThredUP in what looked like my size, I just took the plunge and clicked "buy." Yes, there's the risk it won't fit or won't meet my needs, but if it doesn't, I can always return it. And if it does, that will be one more pain point removed from my life.
New handles for the TV cabinet. A few months ago, one of the handles on our TV cabinet broke. We quickly realized we couldn't repair it, and replacing it was complicated by the fact that the old handles were a non-standard size. We searched the entire stock at Home Depot and Lowe's and couldn't find a single pair that would fit into the existing holes. So we just lived with it for months, opening the door by grasping it at the top. It wasn't that hard, but it was an annoyance, as was the lopsided appearance of the now one-handled cabinet. So I finally did a little more investigation and found that Home Depot sold handles online that could adjust to fit holes of any size. Took but a minute to place the order and no more than five to install them.
All told, these five items cost us around $220 — not a trivial sum, but a sum we can easily spare — and each one of them will make our lives just a tiny bit better, every single day. If that's not what money is for, I don't know what is.
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