I am selectively stingy with certain things in my life

There have been times in my life that my friends have gotten on my case about being stingy because of certain things that I will not spend money on. I do not like going to fancy brand-new restaurants that I consider to be overpriced. I do not pay for premium products generally speaking and I even shy away from bars that have a great view but charge what I consider to be overpriced prices on their beverages.

I am not stingy. I just don't like paying what I consider to be "too much" for things. I try to explain to my friends that are calling me stingy that this is a big part of the reason why I am financially stable. It is kind of amusing to me that the people who are criticizing me or calling me stingy are also friends of mine who have almost no savings yet they are sitting across the table from me with the latest $1400 I-Phone.

This is the first thing I am stingy about: Phones.

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Let's start with my phone. When I broke my Huawei phone by dropping it multiple times and by getting it wet once, I needed to get another phone. It was actually kind of a relief not having a phone for a few days and my lack of sense of urgency in getting another phone was alarming to my friends. When I did finally go to the store to get a new phone I started at the cheap end of the rack and moved my way to the left. By the time I found the phones that were in my price range I was right next to the flip phones that I can't believe they still manufacture. If it wasn't for 2FA, I would probably just get a flip phone to be honest with you.

I'm going to be straight up here. The Galaxy A03 is a piece of shit. You can't really do anything on it and when you do try to do something that a lot of people do with their phones like take photos, it takes a long time to load and the pictures are always going to be crap. This is the reason why almost all of my bowling photos look out of focus. It is not an advanced piece of machinery and it wouldn't surprise me if it has been phased out already. My friends pick on me for my crap phone but it cost $100. I wasn't expecting a lot from it. Basically, I told the guy at the shop that I will buy ANY phone in a particular price category that was not manufactured by Apple and was capable of handling 2 simcards. The fact that I ended up with an A03 is simply because it was the first one we tried that was able to check both of these boxes. I have zero brand loyalty and probably only spend 15 minutes a day on my phone each day. This is mostly to look at memes while I am in the gym.

We can probably see how terrible the camera is in my next two examples of where I am selectively stingy.

You can kind of see Nadi in the background there because any time I put something on the table she presumes it is food.

Anyway, that is my latest mobile gaming rig. It is a Nintendo 3DS and I think I paid $150 for it including 2 or 3 games. This was many years ago and was purchased exclusively because of the fact that I was about to go on a very long-haul flight. I had intended to get a Nintendo Switch but those, at the time anyway, were $500 if you wanted it bundled with the Breath of the Wild Zelda game. I was in a Game Stop (do those still exist) and mulling over the fact that $500 seemed like a lot of money to spend on just one game for one trip. I don't think the flight was that much.

Right next to it was a 3DS and I guess they were discounting these because they were phasing them out in lieu of the Switch. For far less money I could get the console and 3 games. It turns out that I made the correct decision because I absolutely loved the Zelda and Metroid game that came bundled with it. The battery life on it is also exceptional.

I am not an avid gamer anymore and another thing that I enjoyed about this decision was that years later I would get a chance to play Breath of the Wild and I really didn't enjoy it. Thank goodness the prudence took over that day in the GameStop because I would have been pissed at myself if I had dropped $500 on something and didn't even like what I was playing in the end.

next up is a prime example of my selective stinginess

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These are my $4 reading glasses. I use them, as the name would suggest, to read. I also use them when I spend hours a day staring at monitors. I don't really use them for anything else.

About a week ago one of the arms popped off and I have simply not bothered to get another pair because they still stay where they are supposed to on my face when I am sitting and reading or looking at monitors. I don't see the point in getting a new pair if they are still doing their job. I almost never wear my glasses outside of the house and when I do I am with my friends who will make a joke out of it but everyone has fun because of it. It's a win/win.

Trust me, I have a spare $4 lying around.

To nail the point home about how I am selectively stingy I want you to refer to my recent posts about how I am still planning to get hair transplants. This is a cosmetic and elective surgery that is actually extremely expensive. I feel as though there is a very real difference between "expensive" and "overpriced." The surgery is going to cost at a minimum 110 million VND, which is over $4000. If i want it done extremely well, it is going to cost in excess of $5000. This will end up being more money than I have ever spent on anything in one day in my life but to me, it is worth it.

It is not overpriced because it involves extremely skilled individuals using very expensive equipment to perform a process that has been decades in the making. Therefore I think it is worth it and I will pay the price.

I am not cheap, I just feel as though I am sensible with my money because like most middle-class people, I have limited funds but would like to not have to worry about how I am going to pay my rent this month.

Are there things in your life that you are selectively stingy about?