Living on a Budget

Life on a budget is an interesting thing. Sandor and I have been doing pretty good since we buckled down and forced ourselves to stop spending on credit cards even for justifiable emergencies. In fact since we cut ourselves off the only thing that went on the card was his car getting fixed which was a really really justifiable emergency and therefore slipped through the no credit card rule.

I get the brunt of the budget wound because I am the one attempting to only spend 120 dollars on groceries every other week - and the term groceries is used loosely here, it includes all paper products for the house, as well as random other household needs such as say shower curtains. In my gusto to save money I found the wonderful world of the Dollar Store, which has shower curtains among many wonderful things it sells for a dollar. Seeing that while I have not reached the point in budget land where I am actually washing the shower liners rather than buying new ones every 6 months, I decided to try it out. I figured a $1 curtain rather than a $3 curtain was worth a shot. I mean, hey $2 can buy another loaf of bread, so it's worth a shot, eh?

Well, I am here to tell you, that while the dollar store purchases have been worth a shot on a number of items, it is NOT on shower curtains. I accepted the fact that there was going to be a print on my shower liner since they had no plain liners. And I accepted when I opened the package that the liner felt like paper - I'm not exaggerating by the way - actually I think it felt thinner than paper. And I even accepted that the print which I didn't even want was upside down and therefore we had upside down swimming fishes in our shower. I trimmed it up to the size of our shower (we've got one of those skinny ones in our bedroom so curtains always have to be trimmed), and went to hanging my newest money saving item. And this is what I found...

Said $1 less than paper thin liner with upside down print was not even the length of the shower! So, when I put on the actual curtain and tried to take a shower the water runs down the liner onto the real curtain and promptly drips on the floor - pretty much the exact thing a liner is supposed to prevent. I tried really hard for 2 weeks now to pretend that it didn't matter, but after much work attempting to save those $2, I went to Walmart this afternoon and got myself a $3 one. Take it from me when I say, even if you are on a budget the $2 is not worth it. By yourself a $3 liner and call it a day!