Frugal

If I had a million dollars in the bank, I still would cut coupons and bargain hunt.  Even if I had unlimited funds I would still look around for the best deal.  I had my first job and checking account at 16 years old.  I paid for my car insurance and my cell phone bill. I can tell you how much money is in all our accounts at any given moment.  Our checkbook is always balanced.  When I was 17, I was having a 20 cent discrepancy and I pulled out all my statements and poured through them.  It took me about 30 minutes to find that the bank had actually made an error.  Their computer actually added the numbers wrong.  I bet that doesn't happen too often, and I guess we just assume that the computer wouldn't be that stupid.  But for once I was smarter then a computer. :)  I have only paid credit card interest like 3 times my entire life and 1 of those times was an accident.  I take loans seriously and had our cars paid off in a timely matter.  Our loan for our Subaru was a 5 year loan, we paid it off in 3.  Our van loan was 3 years, we had it paid off in 1.  So pretty much I am the bank's worst customer.  I am not quite sure where my money sense comes from, yes I did take accounting in high school and college, but I was money conscious before that.  And I am pretty sure I didn't get it from my Mom.  :)
  I still have my splurges.  And some of the stuff I splurge on, would probably not be a top priority to most.  Like organic, chemical free deodorant or shampoo.  I am a constant researcher and I feel that if I can't safely swallow what I put on my body then I probably don't want to use it.  I will also choose organic meats even when it is double the price.  I do this stuff for the safety of my family.  So why in the world am I having such a difficult time spending $100 to diagnose our van's airbag problem.  The passenger airbag will probably not deploy in an accident.  That is usually where I sit.  Calling around to about 5 different mechanics, we were faced with only one option.  We have to spend $100 just to get a diagnoses and more than likely the cost of the repair will be in the $200 plus range.  For some reason this pisses me off.  Why in the world do you have to pay to have the van hooked up to a machine to tell you what I already know?  It is ridiculous.  So in cases like this my "money sense" is actually hurting me.  If they were to diagnose it for free, I would be more than happy to spend $400 to fix it, but my brain is stuck on the $100.  Especially when I can usually get a weeks worth of groceries for that price.  Obviously I will have to bite the bullet and get it fixed, but this will probably mean that I will have to put off our family beach trip another year and this makes me even more upset.
 Being frugal has its advantages and disadvantages.  God knew that I would have a big family and would need to stay home with them, so he gave me the skills I needed to be able to pull it off.  And if my biggest complaint in life is rip-off mechanics, then we are doing OK.