I Wish I Was a Cheapskate

I wish I was a cheapskate! One of the issues keeping me from being a cheapskate is that I have a great difficulty resisting sales. Give me a coupon for 40% off, slash the price of remainder books to 3.99 or 50 cents...and I'll buy and buy. Another issue is that I have a lot of consumption heavy hobbies. Manga, video games, reading... For manga, I try to use coupons and the used market to reduce the price, and video games I rely on casual gaming[such as big fish games' 6.99 games] and the used market to reduce the price, but I do spend a lot of money on entertainment. Netflix eases the bite of movie watching by replacing $10 movies with $18 subscription, but that's still a lot of consumption.

And of course, there's the elephant in the room- jewelry making! I try to reduce by recycling components from older designs, but this week, I had a custom order, so I sprinted to Michaels[coupons in hand], and bought a few extra supplies to fill it. Of course, there's always something that catches your eye, so I got at least 3 unnecessary items.

I think there are a few traits a cheapskate needs to have: patience, lack of novelty seeking, and delayed gratification. Delayed gratification goes without saying, and patience is part of that- patience to cook up a meal when all you want is some filling and tasty takeout. Lack of novelty seeking would really help for people who consume to gain experiences. My theory is that some people consume for utility[the cheapskates], some for status, and others for experiences- and the latter is where I fall.