Carpet the Color of Money
Long time readers may remember that back in 2009 and 2010, my sister, my mom and I wrote a blog about frugal living.
That was a different time for me.
Bart and I were both working full-time and we were working like dogs to pay off our student loans before Ella was born. We lived entirely on Bart’s salary and every dime I made went those loans.
Neither of us made a ton of money and living in Boston was expensive, and so we spent basically nothing extra that year. Virtually the only time we ate out that year was when we were traveling for Bart’s job and he had a food allowance.
My mom bought me a few maternity items and every other pregnancy item I wore was borrowed from friends.
Someone from church offered us their baby clothing hand-me-downs and we gratefully accepted it and didn’t buy a single piece of clothing for Ella until she was three months old (and then I bought something off the clearance rack at Old Navy with a coupon).
I distinctly remember one evening that Bart went back to the grocery store to have our receipt adjusted because they’d messed up the coupon deal and charged us an extra $7.
The three years that followed in Austin were also times where we were pretty tight. It was quite a bit less expensive to live in Texas, but now only Bart was working (I was making all of about $50 a month on my blog), and we also had a baby.
Plus, we knew an MBA was probably ahead, so we felt like it was only a matter of time before we dove back into no income for Bart and giant student loans.
I felt like basically anything I could do to save money was worth it, even if it took me an hour of phone calls to save five dollars.
Frankly, the two years of the MBA were probably our largest living years of our life – we lived in the nicest, biggest houses we ever had (thank you, cheap North Carolina rent), and we traveled like crazy because we knew we’d never have so much free time again. We were still pretty careful with our money, but we weren’t in the “don’t spend a single cent more than necessary.” And we were to the point in our life where sometimes saving money wasn’t worth the time it took – with my work and three little children, sometimes time was more precious than dollars.
In the two months between the MBA finishing up and Bart beginning his new job, we spent a lot of time talking about our financial future.
It’s fairly common for MBA students to start living high as soon as they graduate and are making some decent money again. They pay the minimum on their student loans and spend a lot.
We definitely didn’t want to do that – we wanted to pay off our student loans as quickly as possible and continue to live on my income and use Bart’s salary to pay off our loans, make progress on our mortgage, and make up for the two years when we hadn’t saved money at all.
Then, we moved into our new house.
And it is a great house, with a ton of space and lots of possibilities.
But it’s a ten year old house, and it has had previous owners with taste quite different from our own, and suddenly, it seemed like we probably ought to replace the green carpet that covers 75% of the house as soon as possible.
And if we were replacing the carpet, it made sense to repaint first (particularly the orange of our master bedroom, the eye-wateringly bright mint of Ani’s room and the strange blue stripes in Ella’s room). And if we were repainting, that was probably the time to get the semi-weird stone installations pulled out and new bookshelves built in.
Also, the kitchen island is granite, but the other counters are a non-matching laminate.
Within a week, we had a to-do list that was easily topping $30k. For a house that was basically already in good shape.
And we hadn’t even talked about the backyard.
On Friday night, after the girls went to bed, Bart and I sat down and had a serious talk about our financial priorities again.
We decided to put any major house projects on hold for at least a year. We’d DIY a few things if we were so inclined, spend some time figuring out exactly what we wanted to do with the house, and focus on our other financial goals.
To some extent, we’re going back to our “keep non-essential spending to a minimum” ways. Frugality has always been a pretty fundamental tenet of our marriage and our family, and neither of us feels comfortable abandoning that. We both hated the idea that we’d both finally be making money and have little to show for it in a year except some newly painted walls and some nicer carpet.
Later, when we hanging up some things in my office, I told Bart, “I already love this carpet more. Now I look at it and instead of thinking, ‘this is quite ugly,’ I think ‘this carpet is the color of the money we’re saving.'”
Then Star spit up all over the carpet and we thought, “Aren’t we glad this isn’t brand-new, expensive carpet?”
Sometimes, there’s nothing that feels better than being frugal. Even if that means having an orange bedroom.
Well, you've managed to make an orange bedroom and green carpet look quite nice, so well done 🙂 I'm with you, though. I HATE the carpet in this house (cream-colored that shows every speck of dirt) and it was in rough shape when we moved in (think neon pink and green stains throughout the kids' rooms), but it just makes no sense to replace it with small kids and a cat who is prone to peeing on carpet and clawing up the stairs. Now, every time the kids grind play-doh into the carpet or have a potty accident I think, well at least it's not nice new carpet.
You are doing this exactly right. I especially liked when you said, "We both hated the idea that we'd both finally be making money and have little to show for it in a year except some newly painted walls and some nicer carpet." There are SO many people who don't think that way, to the detriment of their bank account (and debt level).
As for your husband going back to the store to save $7, I think that amount is totally worth it! Maybe not for a few dollars, but definitely for $7. My husband purchased a few bottles of steak seasoning last month to take on a camping trip, ended up not using them, so I took them back to the grocery store and got a refund — the total was about $5.50. I don't use prepared steak seasoning so I knew they'd go to waste otherwise.
I just wrote a few days ago about my minimalist lifestyle, and how that ties into my mindset of frugality, with an ultimate goal of financial independence:
http://www.zandria.us/archives/main/2015/07/29/why-i-am-a-minimalist/
I am soooooo over the warm Arizona paint colors. Uuuuugh. GIVE ME WHITE OR GIVE ME GRAY!
xox
This post made me so anxious. We're going to owe a ridiculous amount of money when I graduate NYU and while I love my degree and program and NYU I'm left feeling like this was in the end a really, really dumb financial move. We have had two babies (both girls) while I've been doing this graduate degree and I'm finally graduating next year. NY is even more expensive than Boston and I have no idea what to do when I graduate. My heart wants to stay in NYC forever, but my brain cells are screaming at me to move back to TX so we can hack away at these loans instead of me working full time simply to pay minimal on loans and for a nanny.
I loved your frugal living blog!! 🙂
Regardless of our financial situation at the time, I'm never one to spend more than I have to!
Our home is a work in progress as well (even now, 4 years & 3 kids later!) but I like to have the perspective that the longer it takes for us to accomplish major decor projects, the longer I get to daydream about all the possibilities!
LOVE THIS SO MUCH! The carpet in my bedroom is cobalt blue! I can't even begin to fathom what the previous owners were thinking. It would be expensive to replace so I've learned to live with it and, truth is, I barely notice it anymore.
Hey, there are worse shades of orange for a bedroom to be! And I think (provided it's still in good shape) the carpet ain't half bad either. But I love love love the stone arches in your hallway! We just paid off my student loans in December, and for the first time in our married life we both have full-time jobs (husband was in grad school for the first few years), but sometimes it's still hard to do our budget and not get to go buck-wild with all the things we want to do. But it's worth it just to be on the same page and know we've got savings goals for the future.
I found your frugal blog last year sitting at an airport and real all posts while waiting for my next flight!
I'm also very frugal and we have jut bought a house. Unfortunately we have more to do than paint and get new carpets 😉 I hope though that we won't have to spend more that we planned (and I also hope that the house doesn't collapse when we take down two walls next week ?) but I'm also very excited about this project as we will live VERY close to family (my parents live across the street ;))
That looks like a super nice house! But green, what a weird carpet choice. This is exactly why for our first house we wanted something that was completely updated (since we were looking where the houses were 50 years old) since right now we did not have the money, time, or skills to do anything major. BUT, even still, yard projects, maintenance, and new furniture/decor has been so much work and money for me!
I love this! We bought a former rental that pretty much hadn't been touched in a decade. Way, way worse off than yours. The first week we ripped out carpet (lets just say lots of pets…), installed new flooring, and painted. And that's pretty much it – and we've been here a year. It's so smart to wait for the zillions of other projects though. We knew we'd have to gut our 35 year old kitchen at some point, but now that we will soon be in a place financially to do so, I feel so much more confident in knowing how I use it and what I need. I'm sure you'll feel the same benefits (in addition to the financial ones) when the time comes for you to make house decisions. As always, good things to think about.
In the pictures, the carpet does not look green. I was expecting like 1991 hunter green. 🙂 The house looks super nice. And I actually really dig the rock work. 🙂
Ah, I loathe being in debt and feeling like every penny goes to the loans. But, it is satisfying to save and be free from debt too. Also, I swear I've never seen so many strange colored walls as I do here in Arizona 🙂
Love this!