I remember hearing a piece of advice many years ago that has stuck with me in spite of the fact that I have never actually used it: when faced with a major decision, make an alphabetical list of both the pros and cons.  Well, I’m thinking about switching from LA Fitness to Retro Fitness, which is $15 a month cheaper, but I’m far too lazy to list twenty-six pros and twenty-six cons in alphabetical order, but here are some things that I need to consider:

LA Fitness:
- Has a pool, though I’ve never used it.
- Has a sauna, which I’ve used a handful of times, but it’s also full of naked dudes that are just waiting to post Missed Connections about me.
- Has heavy bags, which I used all of the time.
- Full of hot asian babes that’ll never talk to me, ever.
- I have “gym friends” there.
- More machines.
- Closer to my house.

Retro Fitness:
- $15 a month cheaper.
- Nicer (yet fewer) showers, though I’ve never showered at the gym.
- Individual TVs on each piece of cardio equipment.  LA Fintess has a couple of TVs hanging pretty far away that only show CNN or ESPN.
- Full of trashy broads that may possibly one day talk to me.
- Very close to a Taco Bell.

I don’t know what to do!

Really, Justin?  That’s the best title you can think of?

Anyway, sorry I haven’t updated in a while.  I may have been neglecting this site, but I certainly haven’t been neglecting my duties as a cheapskate.  While I have long-term plans to get rid of my cable television (something that would have been unthinkable to me even a year ago) and downgrade my gym membership, I’m currently downsizing my web presence and thusly saving myself a couple of bucks.  A year ago, I owned three domain names; rebel-alliance.net (which I’ve had forever), waxeater.com, and fighterhayabusa.com (for my old band).  The band is long dead, so when it came time to renew that one, I just let it go.  I haven’t done anything important with rebel-alliance.net in some time, so once that name expires, I’m going to let that one go as well.  Between those two domains, I’m saving myself about $16 a year.  Granted, that’s not a lot of money, but it’s money.  Next is waxeater.com, which I intend to keep and renew, but I took a serious look at the hosting package I was using to keep it up.  I’ve been hosting my domains with a company called HostMagix (at ~$55 a year) for a while, and everything had been great for years, but their support department (along with their sales department) has most likely fallen off the face of the Earth, because they haven’t answered a single e-mail for over a month.  So I began looking at similar web hosting packages that would most likely cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $5 a month.  But then I began to wonder; do I even really need a hosting package?  Outside of the occasional MP3, do I ever post anything besides text?  Can’t I just do that using a free blogging platform such as Wordress, Blogger, or Tumblr?  I compared the three sites and found that both Blogger and Tumblr will allow you to use your own domain name to point to your blog for free, while WordPress charges $10 a year.  Again, that’s not much, but it’s something.

As of now, I’ve got waxeater.com pointing to my new Tumblr account.  Tumblr ended up winning out against Blogger due to its much simpler and cleaner interface, though that can change any day.  And if neither really do it for me, I can always cough up the $10 a month for WordPress, which I have some experience with (this site is hosted by WordPress).

So between dropping two domains and moving the third to a free blogging platform that also offers free domain services, I’m saving $16 a year on domains and $55 a year on hosting.  Total yearly savings: $71

Not bad.

Remember this website?  I kind of do.

Anyway, Wendy’s fast food restaurant is currently running the Greatest Deal In The History Of Deals right now in the Greater Philadelphia area: Buy a tag at any Wendy’s for $1.00 (with eighty cents going to charity) and score a free Jr. Frosty with any purchase for a year.  I know.  When I first heard about it, I didn’t believe it either, but I stopped by local Wendy’s on Friday and bought one for myself.  It’s real, and I have one, and it’s already paid for itself.

#1 – Trimmed my own bushes.  I hate the heat, so all of last summer, I paid a magical black man to do it for me.  He’s magical because I was sitting at home one scorching Sunday afternoon, enjoying my air conditioning and drinking a lemonade, when I realized that my bushes were completely out of control and my neighbors probably hate me for it and that I would have no choice but to brave the outdoors and trim them at some point during the day.  Just as I finished sobbing and was preparing to actually put on some pants, the magical black man knocked on my door and asked me if I would like him to trim my bushes for me (for a fee, of course.)  Clearly this was a case of magic rather than some sort of extreme coincidence.  And he’s black because his parents were black.Total savings: $40.

#2 – Replaced my driver’s side headlight.  I had replaced the passenger side headlight a couple of years ago with little problem, but the driver’s side presents a huge problem because that’s where the battery is, and it makes it impossible to work without first removing the battery.  I have never completely removed my own battery, and electricity is scary, so I had my doubts, but I was able to do it without a) dying and b) blowing up my car.  Way to go, me.

Total savings: ~$20.

#3 – Ate two more free McDonald’s sandwiches.  After my last order from Amazon.com arrived with a coupon in it for two free McDonald’s sandwiches, I ended up giving them a positive review at work.  The next day, my co-worker came into work with two more coupons for two more free sandwiches that he had also received with his most recent Amazon.com order.  He hates using coupons, and he knows I’m a cheap fuck, so he gave them to me.  Awesome.

Total savings: ~$5.00

I have a 2001 sedan and the air conditioning has had a leak in the line for a few years now.  I guess it’s gotten worse, because I used to be able to get it refilled for a few bucks and be okay for the summer.  But not this year.  After getting it refilled and recharged a few weeks ago, my A/C is already blowing warm.  If I remember correctly, they quoted me a price of between $150-$225 to fix it.

It’s been in the high nineties for the last couple of days.  Can I survive two and a half more months of this heat without air conditioning in my car?  Let’s find out.

I guess I kind of cheated because some of the food was free.  It’s not like I found some incredibly bargain somewhere or something.

Every once in a while – maybe once every three months – work will offer up a free lunch for employees.  Today was BBQ chicken, with cornbread, corn, and potatoes.

Here’s what I ate (and drank:)

Trader Joe’s cinnamon apple oatmeal – $.33 for one serving.
Trader Joe’s vanilla almond bar – $.50 for one bar.
Diet Coke – free.  I took it from the conference room.
BBQ chicken – free.  About an hour later, I went back into the cafeteria and stealthily got a second helping.  I took it back to my office where I wrapped it up and threw it in our fridge so that I could take it home for dinner.  I also took a couple of free iced teas that they had over there for the rest of the afternoon.

That is a grand total of $.83 for the day.  Truly an exciting day for a cheapskate.

And what I mean by that is that I finally found the line (or a line) I will absolutely not cross in my quest to become a model cheapskate.

Occasionally the kitchen folk here will take the unsold items from the sandwich machine that are on the cusp of expiration, and leave them on a table in the cafeteria so that any daring soul can have them.  These items still have their original labels on them, complete with expiration date, so you always have a decent idea of what you’re getting yourself into.

But on Friday, I walked into the cafeteria at around 11:30AM to see what was doing when I noticed a tray that contained three plastic, unlabeled containers sitting by the sink.  One of the containers held one hamburger while the other two were tightly packed with two hamburgers.  I grabbed one of the latter and returned to my desk.

About a half an hour later, I was starving.  I grabbed a paper plate and opened the container so that I could remove the burger from its bun and heat it up a bit in the microwave, but the bread had fused to the meat and the two had become inseperable.  Furthermore, the bun was hard as a rock.  These free burgers were beyond inedible at this point, and I actually placed them back into their clear, plastic tomb and threw them out.  I threw out free food.

One of the most challenging aspects of being a cheapskate is continually shaving away your food costs while staying happy and healthy.  I love to eat – a lot – and I lead an extremely active lifestyle that depends a lot on maintaining a decent diet.  That means shit like off-brand tuna from the dollar store is probably out of the question.

Tuesday of this week was a real banner day for eating cheap.  I am curious as to how cheap it was, though, so I’m going to attempt to break it down.

Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with soy milk.  The cereal was on sale – two boxes for $5 – and it looks like I used about 1/5th of one box.  So that’s about $.50 worth of cereal.  The soy milk was from Trader Joe’s and is either $2.20 or $3.  I can’t remember, so let’s just say it was $2.50.  I can usually mil… er, squeeze six bowls of cereal out of one carton of soy milk, so that works out to about $.42.  Combined, that one bowl of cereal costs me $.92.  When I arrived at work, I made myself a coffee.  We have a Keurig at the office with about a million different varieties of K-Cups, so that was free.

Next was my mid-morning snack.  I had a Fiber One bar, and they were also on sale – two boxes for $5.  There are six bars in a box, so that means that one bar cost me $.42.

For lunch, I had a “chicken pita wrap” out of the sandwich machine for $1.50.  I also had another cup of coffee which again cost me nothing.

About an hour and a half after lunch, they had a retirement party for the administrator here.  I posted about it.  The promised “refreshments” turned out to be hot dogs, hamburgers, macaroni salad, potato chips, and drinks.  I had a burger and a bag of chips, which cost me nothing.

Between the burger and chips and the chicken pita/wrap earlier, I was full enough to skip right over my mid-afternoon snack.

When I got home, I had a Safeway brand snack bar that was on sale at 3 for $1.97 (such a weird price) which means that bar cost me a whopping $.66.  It was a lot less satisfying than the $.42 Fiber One bar, so I felt ripped off.  I also had an energy drink I had picked up at the supermarket for $1.98.  I’ve had a serious energy drink problem for several months now, although I am working on it.

I went and trained and when I came home, I made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  This one may be a little tougher to figure out.  The bread was a whole wheat loaf from Trader Joe’s.  I think it cost me $2.19, and there are probably about 12 usable slices in a loaf.  That means two slices cost me around $.17.  The peanut butter is a natural peanut butter that cost me $3.29.  One jar of peanut butter usually lasts me about one and a half loaves of bread, which means I can get about nine sandwiches out of one jar.  That work out to $.37 of peanut butter per sandwich.  The jelly is not as generous.  A jar of (low sugar) jelly costs me somewhere around $3.50 and it doesn’t last quite as long as the peanut butter – I can maybe get six or seven sandwiches out of it.  If I stretch it out to seven, that means I’m using $.50 worth of jelly on every PB&J.  So, that sandwich probably cost me somewhere around $1.04.

So my grand total for Tuesday comes to $6.52.  If it wasn’t for that stupid energy drink, I would have spent less than five bucks for the entire day.

That’ll be my goal for next week – spend less than $5 on an entire day’s worth of food and drink.

The sandwich machine mentioned yesterday offered up a respectable looking chicken pita today, so I caved and bought it.  It was only $1.50 and it looked infinitely better than the lunch I brought with me.  While the food ended up being better than I expected, it wasn’t much and I was already hungry again no more than ten minutes after finishing the thing.  That’s when I was presented with today’s cheapskate dilemma: In an hour and a half, there’s a going away party for our administrator.  There are signs for it all over the building, and at the bottom of the signs it says that “refreshments will be served.”  Cake and chips are usually standard for these types of events, but “refreshments” is sort of ambiguous.  That could mean anything!  Water can be refreshing.  Do I wait an hour and a half for what could end up being a small carton of locally produced fruit punch?  Or do I visit the gift shop for some peanut butter crackers?  Or do I dive into my bagged lunch and eat a yogurt?

Clearly the cheapest option here would be to wait until the going away party and risk being let down by my choices, so that’s what I ran with.  The only problem is that I’m far too hungry to hold out for an hour and a half.  So what do I do?  Rather than spend my money at gift shop ($.60) or eat my yogurt (10 for $5, or $.50,) I chose to try and trick my stomach with a free coffee from our office coffee machine.

There’s a cafeteria area directly next to my office at work.  There are a couple of soda machines, a sandwich machine, and your standard snack machine.  The sandwich machine can be, at times, an excellent source of cheap food.  A turkey sandwich will run you $1.25.  The only thing that keeps me from eating lunch from it every day is the fact that the quality and quantity of food available is completely unreliable.  One day it will include the aforementioned turkey sandwiches, maybe a tuna salad, crab cake platters, etc.  The very next, it’ll include fifteen liverwurst sandwiches and some milk.

The snack machine, when stocked, can include some decent chips and candy.  The biggest problem is that it is rarely stocked – maybe once a month at the most.  Another problem is that it’s not really cheapskate-friendly.  Candy will run you either $.85 or $1, while the chips cost either $.60 or $.75.

Most of the better candies found in the snack machine are also available in the gift shop, located at the entrance of the building roughly 100-110 feet away from my desk.  It’s maybe a two or three minute walk at most.

What I started doing about a year ago is, on the days that I either forgot to bring in or I’m out of store bought snacks from home, I’ll make the trek down to the gift shop to buy chips or candy.  Why?  Because everything is ten cents cheaper than the snack machine.  The extra exercise is a bonus and usually makes me feel minutely better about buying M&Ms.