funny

Chintzinesses? How d’you like that word? I can’t think of a word parallel to “frugality” (n) that means “an act of cheapskatishness.” Nor can I think of a word meaning “the state of being a cheapskate.” Cheapskatitude?

At any rate, our subject is that perennial favorite: When does one cross the line from frugality to chintziness?

This weekend I happened to mention to M’hijito that when La Maya and I were out and about in pursuit of a distant estate sale, we stopped at a Starbucks, where I ordered a café Americano. He allowed as how the only way to get a decent cup of black coffee at that chain is to ask for the café Americano, as their ordinary drip coffee is battery acid, fit for nothing other than as a cheap medium for sugar, artificially flavored syrup, and milk or cream. Café Americano is dilute espresso. The reason it tastes better than Starbucks’s normal drip coffee is that espresso beans are higher quality than the schlock used to make the battery acid.

Then he remarked that he highly resented paying $4.30 for an iced coffee (the price being the same, whether you take your coffee hot or cold).

This remark caused me to reflect that yes, I had paid $4.30 for a medium-sized café Americano. Uhm…yes. Four dollars and thirty cents for a cup of coffee.

I mean, really. Four and a half bucks for 50 cents worth of ingredients and three minutes’ worth of a minimum-wage slave’s time? Does that make sense?

Well, it wasn’t the coffee we were buying so much as the moment to pause and socialize—and to get someone else to provide the social lubricant of a hot, caffeine-laced beverage. Could we have gone to one of our homes and fixed our own coffee, saving about $8 on the $8.60 the two of us spent at Starbucks? Of course. But it wouldn’t have been the same.

As a practical matter, once we got back to our neighborhood, we each would have figured it was time to go on about our daily business, and we probably wouldn’t have taken the time  to fix coffee. Or, if we had, we would have diddled away too much time in one living room or the other, and then we each would have felt put upon by the many tasks that awaited us in our respective days.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m not way too tight about things like this.

Take, for example, the cell phone issue. I’ve resisted getting a cell phone because I think I already spend too much on connectivity—$78 a month to keep my computer online and the landlines running is too darned much for phone service. More to the point, in my mind I can’t afford another $80 to $120 for an electronic tether.

Really?

My gross income, if you include the $1,025/month coming from savings, is $7,000 a year more than my son’s. If, rather than setting aside my entire teaching salary, I self-escrowed only enough to cover my share of the mortgage (and let the future take care of itself, even that means the future surely will include a foreclosure), what remains of my gross would only be about $1,525 less than my son earns.

And he can afford an iPhone. Keeping that thing online costs $120 a month!

So why couldn’t I afford, say, a Droid, at $80/month to Verizon?

Surely I could at least afford an iPad. That costs only $15 or $25 to connect. And despite the fact that the way-cool iPad isn’t designed as a phone, an easily accessible app will give you free phone service through the thing! With that, I could have my cake and eat it, too: get the coveted electronic gadget, use it as a cell, and not even have to cancel the landline.

M’hijito never has paid for a land line. He uses only his cell phone. IMHO, this is something of an inconvenience, because he’s always misplacing the thing and not answering calls when he can’t find the phone.

SDXB recently canceled his land line service. He also is now using a cell only. He claims he doesn’t lose it because he carries it around with him everywhere, and because he has a single place in the house to keep it when he’s not using it.

Right. I had a single place to keep the $725 pair of glasses I just lost.

Still. If I canceled the landline, all that would remain of the Cox bill would be $50 a month for the computer connection (SDXB says he’s only paying $30 a month, presumably because he has a slower service).

My S-corp could pay for the iPad connection to AT&T—it’s only about $25 a month. If I could use that with Google’s Talkatone to make free phone calls, the worry about calling for help when my car craps out on the freeway would go away. And that concern is the only real reason I want a cell phone. If the S-corp were footing the bill for the mobile phone connection, there would really be no reason to cancel the land line, which allows for a telephone in every room in the house—no chasing around every time the phone jangles.

Canceling the landlines and having the S-Corp pay for the iPad would cut my personal nondiscretionary budget by almost $30 a month.

Here’s the question: Am I frugal or am I cheap to keep resisting the mobile phone?

For that matter, is it frugal or is it cheap to consider adapting the reasonably priced iPad (reasonably priced considering what it is!) for use with Google’s free voice app and calling that a “cell phone”?

Is it frugal or is it cheap to consider canceling the land line if I could get the iPad to actually function as a telephone?

Is it frugal or is it cheap to think coffee should be purchased at Starbuck’s only on special occasions—or preferably, not at all?