3 Things Not to Cheap Out On
Published May 5th, 2008
There’s a lot of debate about what it means to be frugal, versus financially responsible, versus just plain cheap. I think the line is different for every individual and their situation. For me, it’s all about value, and not necessarily about cost. It’s important to always get good value for the money I spend, and spending wisely, not paying more for anything than I have to. Who knows how long any of us has before our number is up, so I choose to focus on having a good quality of life and making the most of what I do have.
In thinking along these lines, I feel it’s important to talk about three things many of us know we should not cut corners on, but often never get around to dealing with. Not paying attention to these three things can be bad for your health, or the health and well being of those you love. Try to keep the big picture in mind when reading this post.
Three Things Not to Cheap Out On
1) Life insurance
You’d be surprised how many of us feel we’re young and invincible, think it’ll never happen to us, or feel we can’t spend the money on life insurance. Anyone who is no longer a dependent should have this insurance. You can get inexpensive term life insurance. The term is usually about 10 years and then you need to re-negotiate. You should get enough life insurance to cover any outstanding debt you have (including your mortgage). Ideally, you should insure yourself for enough that if the inevitable were to happen, your family won’t be out of a home.
Also, if you’re the sole income earner, you may want to consider insuring yourself for more to make sure that your dependent’s daily needs are taken care of for a period of time until they can get on their feet. With zero income coming in, the bills and living expenses would get out of control in just a short period of time. You would basically also be insuring your family against some of the lost income that you would have earned over a period of time.
This may sound dramatic, but considering that so many North Americans literally live paycheck to paycheck, or live on borrowed money, the investment of a few dollars a month in life insurance isn’t a want–it’s a need.
2) Pet food
One in 2 households in North America has a pet. Many people don’t think about the quality of what they’re feeding their furry wards, they just buy whatever is easiest in line at Wal-mart or the grocery store. Also, some people spend a lot of money at the pet store for a diet that isn’t worth the money. I’m encouraging you to re-examine your pet food situation. It used to be that the cheap pet foods were bad and the expensive pet foods were good. This is no longer the case, as the packaging and advertising use the latest lingo like “all natural” and “no preservatives” to try to trick us into thinking were getting a good products. The truth is that many pet foods out there are full of fillers and not much actual usable nutrients. Many of the higher end and prescription brand pet foods are very concentrated, so you actually have to feed less–and your pet is able to absorb more of the nutrients, actually producing a smaller stool volume. If your pet is producing large volumes of stool from the large volume of food you give them, chances are you’re wasting your money anyway.
Many people would argue that their pets do fine on low quality food. It may seem so in the surface, but there is a chance that they have more digestive upsets and less overall health in the long term. If I had a nickel for every time a client came into the clinic with a blocked male cat (urinary obstruction) and found out they could have helped to prevent this emergency with a proper diet…
If your pet does develop or suffer from a long term medical condition such as obesity or kidney disease, there are many prescription diets that can help. In a way, the prescription is the food–talk to your veterinarian about this.
In Canada, three of the best brands of pet food you can buy at the pet supply store are Science Diet, Royal Canin, and Waltham. These brands of pet food are all owned by prescription food companies so you know a lot of good research and technology has gone into these foods. Different veterinary clinics carry different brands of prescription diets such as Medical, Hill’s, Waltham, and Royal Canin’s prescriptions lines–all of which have diets for specific conditions, as well as life stage diets (such as puppy, adult, senior etc.)
A few tips, when buying the prescription diets: The price per kilo generally goes down when you buy the bigger bags. If you’re thinking of switching to a higher end diet, then get your veterinary clinic to figure out how much your pet needs, and the cost. If you are concerned about cost, and don’t mind the inconvenience, then you can always shop around to find out who has the best price for that particular food. There is no rule that says you need to buy your food from the same place you get your vet services (in Ontario anyway). They may need to make a call to your regular clinic to confirm the right diet from your file, but it shouldn’t be a problem. Just be sure to get exactly the food you chose. If you do buy food at a pet store, don’t let them convince you that their house brand is the same as one of the companies I mentioned above–no matter what the label says, they’re not the same.
3) Drinking water
Clean, drinkable water may just be your body’s most important nutrient for survival and long term health. You can go a few weeks with no food, but dead much, much, sooner with no viable water source. In Canada, we were lucky for many years to have ample sources of fresh drinkable water right from the tap. In the wake of disasters like the Walkerton tainted water scandal, and emerging reports of health conditions as a result of detectable chemicals and pharmaceuticals that have contaminated the water supply, it may be time to re-examine where your water comes from and what you are willing to drink.
In some countries hundreds and thousands of people die on a regular basis because they have no water, or the water they have access to makes them sick. Some others spend a large part of they daily time and energy making a pilgrimage to collect clean drinking water for their family. Things are changing so quickly in our world, who knows what it will be like for us in North America when we are older, or for our children and grandchildren. I feel like we should never take clean water for granted.
One other point I feel strongly about is not drinking tap water or getting ice in your drink when traveling away from home. This is not one place you should ever try to cut corners to save money. You have no idea how safe the water is to drink, and taking a risk picking up Hepatitis or other infections is just not worth the couple of dollars you save by ordering tap water. Ditto for infections and ice–obviously the ice in your drink had to come from water–and chances are they weren’t using Evian to make the ice cubes for your vodka and OJ.
Hopefully this post has given you some food for thought. I encourage you to think back to what I said earlier about value and what it means to your life…I’ll be writing more about that in the next couple of days so keep an eye out for it!
In the meantime, if you have any other items to add to this list, feel free to leave a comment below :)
Meg from All About Appearances and FruWiki on May 6, 2008
My husband and I have four cats and we feed them Science Diet. We tried a free sample of another name brand, but cheaper cat food and ended up spending nearly a grand last Christmas when our cat got seriously stopped up. So, that’s one thing we definitely don’t cheap out on.
One thing we noticed, though, is that we don’t have to feed our cats as much as a friend of ours who uses a cheaper brand. So, the cost may not be as bad as we thought. It’s also a reminder that it’s important to check how much pets really need, since many pets are overweight (a waste of food and the cause of more expenses down the road) and many could still eat less and be healthier for it.