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Lately, I have been thinking a lot about times where cheaping out has caught up to me, or how life would be better if I wasn’t being too cheap.
Places where frugal = frustrated.
One fantastic example is the computer that I am using to type this post on. I regret this purchase. It turns out that blogging takes more computer brain power than one would think. Ah well.
In related news, I am in the market for a new laptop.
I have always been reticent to spend money when a free version of something is available. There are a few interesting points to take away from this:
I Undervalue My Time
I would rather go chasing around, inefficiently, to find the piece of information that I need, or to find the free solution. In many cases, this is dumb.
I work a lot, between my day job and its commute, blogging and volunteering. I have way more money than time. Of course, saving that money is extremely important to me, but there are trade-offs.
When I am too cheap to pay for a good solution, not only does it undervalue my time, it also makes me less productive with the time that I do have because I am learning to do something the slow way. It’s a lose-lose situation.
A better solution would be to pay for information products that tell me everything that I need to know, in a logical, quick fashion. Then, I would quickly be able to take the knowledge and put it into practice, saving me learning time, and learning-by-doing time.
There is a lot of money in packaging things into an easy to digest format. Pat from Smart Passive Income learned this with his very first course. The market for eBooks and online courses is booming and showing no signs of slowing down.
I Think Everyone Thinks Like Me
This is a VERY common thing to think, and it can be rather limiting.
Do you ever watch “As Seen on TV” ads and wonder “who on earth buys this crap?”
Yeah, me too.
Well, someone does. Those commercials would be pulled lickety-split if they didn’t generate any revenue. The lesson is: Just because you wouldn’t buy it, doesn’t mean others people won’t.
How is this limiting? I mean, not buying crap is really good for the savings account, no?
In my case, it causes me to kibosh product ideas and online income ideas before they get off the ground. Instead, I should be testing the ideas out before I kick them to the curb. I don’t want to think about how many ideas I’ve glossed over in the past because I assume that the potential audience is just like me and wouldn’t jump on it.
I’ve Under Performed Because I Won’t Invest in Myself
A topic very much on my mind lately has been “where would my blogs be if I had put more money into learning to blog right away?”
This is a big regret of mine right now.
A book like On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog! would have propelled me forward by months. A course like the Pinterest Strategy course (currently accepting beta applications) would have done the same. There’s also Elite Blog Academy (which I hear a lot about and thus I am very curious).
Where would I be if I had opted to get a logo for my business, right away, instead of over a year later? Trust me, my skills in GIMP, the open source equivalent of Photoshop, are sub par.
If you are starting a business, online or offline, start it professionally from the beginning. It may seem hard to cough up the dough in the beginning, but getting your brand right from the very beginning makes a world of difference to how you are perceived by your clientele and even vendors. Don’t know where to find such a thing? Deluxe Business Services will even talk to you about your brand and logo needs for free on the phone, before working with you. They’ll also ensure you get 11 different file formats. Oh, and at the moment, you can get 10% off Any Logo Design Package.
I have been the person who needs to get something printed, but doesn’t have the right file format. A solid white background is very different than a translucent background, my friends.
Recognize where your skill set lies and optimize: spend on the things that you’re not good at, so that you can put even more into what you are good at. Let’s say that you are really good at designing jewelry to sell online, but not good at taking nice pictures to go with it. It is extremely tempting to still try to DIY it.
Your sales will suffer, though, and you know that to be true. Jewelry is very visual.
So what are your options? Spend hours online looking for tutorials, researching equipment, trying to edit your own pictures, being unsatisfied with the end result. Or, you could sign up to take a product photography class that teaches you everything you need to know, in order. Alternatively, you can hire someone to take the pictures for you. Either way, the value is there, even though it is extremely difficult to part with money when you don’t have any revenue yet.
Where I am Getting It Right
One of my passions is permaculture. I’m quite a newbie at it, and don’t even really have a yard. Permaculture is basically an ecosystem design approach that focuses on increasing linkages and decreasing risk. There are a million definitions, but in short, it’s a way to approach gardening, farming and landscaping.
I haven’t bit the bullet to do a Permaculture Design Course yet, but I have taken a rainwater harvesting course, attended Convergence, taken an online introductory course, and purchased several books. Despite having watched literally dozens of hours of YouTube videos on the subject, the books and online course have been fantastic investments. Logical, organized, progressive, and not surprising me with terminology or words I don’t know because I haven’t learned the information in a set order. If anyone is interestesd in the subject, I highly recommend Gaia’s Garden
I’ve also invested in wine courses. I have my WSET Level 1 course under my belt and will be taking Level 2 at some point in 2016. My spouse makes an excellent point, that we enjoy wine and the sooner we learn more about it, the longer we have in our lives to benefit from that knowledge. PS: I highly recommend them, if you are interested in wine. They’re rather pricey, but very worthwhile.
In what areas have you found yourself being too cheap and regretting it?
All great points! I am a fellow cheapskate, but I’ve been working on changing that lately, so your post it timely indeed. My biggest hurdle is indecision. I change my mind way too often and scrap things just as they are taking off. I’m going to try taking baby steps to change that too. I’ve been AFC for a while, so I’d just like to add ~ Hi Anne! 🙂
Why hello there stranger! I hope all is well down in sunshine land 🙂
Permaculture is really a cool idea. You must be a nature lover, Anne. Congrats! I hope you become successful at it.
James recently posted…Selling Online? Time To Get Serious & Start A Business & Get Insurance
Hey Anne, I can definitely relate. The logo for my site was done in MS Paint and I’ve never upgraded it. Probably something I should do now that the site actually makes money. But I feel like it’s working so why spend the money. Perhaps that’s being too cheap.
Thomas @ i need cash ASAP! recently posted…Great Financial Goals For The New Year
When I started http://www.brkrumors.com as a niche site focused on Berkshire Hathaway news and rumors, I made the decision to fork over hundreds of dollars for a website template instead of going with some free one and spending ungodly amounts of time tweaking the CSS with my very subpar CSS and other related skills.
I *did* cheap out on the logo and just slap-dash made it myself, but I did promise that if I can get some traction going and see enough traffic growth, I would shell out hundreds of dollars for a professional logo design.
I think it depends on what your goals are with the website/blog. The personal blog I don’t care much as I see it as more of a canvas where I am making finger paint art, but if I was focused on driving traffic, revenue, and growth, I’d definitely be infusing capital into themes, SEO, social media, etc.
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I am so interested in getting a copy of On Your Mark, Get Set, Blog! I feel like more than 10,000 more things I need to know about blogging.
It’s definitely worth it to find something that can boost our skills set. This year 2016, I will surely have lots of training and seminars to somehow be a jack of all trades.
To be honest, I don’t usually regret being cheap/frugal except in 2 ways. The first is usually when I buy a cheap item and it doesn’t work out and it turns out that the original/full-price item is the way to go and then I end up buying THAT. The other time is without the doubt during vacations – when there is a place I want to go or see but cheap out and say “it’s okay, next time…” And of course, I don’t visit that local ever again or at least not for another 10 years.
I resonate with Asian Pear’s examples. Sometimes I have great luck with the cheap-o version of something and it lasts a long time. So I’m hesitant to buy top-end. But sometimes it’s worth it, and it’s hard to tell if you haven’t purchased that item before. And I’ve also passed on sight-seeing opportunities b/c they were pricey, but I don’t know if I’ll have the chance again.
It is definitely hard to tell if you haven’t purchased it before. For me, it’s not as frequently products where I am disappointed, more so experiences and not paying for training that would put me way further ahead in a short amount of time.
For lower to medium priced goods, I don’t care as much. There are some goods that costs hundreds or thousands, though, and I wish I would have opted for the next quality level up, because these are things that will last me for over a decade. In some cases, a life time (like a rifle scope).
Yes – so much yes on the vacation thing. That said, I used that logic to justify spending waaay too much on things like lunches out while in NZ. Ah well. I survived.
Vacations are one place where I have regretted being too cheap. Investing in training has been another thing. I can’t think about how much further ahead I would have been if I didn’t try to DIY every single thing and just coughed up the cash to pay an instructor or course.