Latest Frugality

Sitting here warmed by a $6 electric heater hubby picked up at the thriftstore when I complained of the cold. We had good luck to find one in a cold snap here.

What have I received in the mail?

• Magazines, of course
• My daily subscription to the Wall St. Journal
• A bottle of Kiehl's lavendar lotion (for filling out forms for L'Oreal)
• A bottle of Frizzease which I won from Marie Claire

My el cheapo navy fedora arrived, too, which deserves some time here....I was surfing the net and looking for duplicates of the slippers I had found at the Thurs. (Tues.?) Morning store - and landed up at www.haband.com - You may know the name, as I believe it's them who advertises heavily in the Sun. ad supplements. Somehow I landed on the sale page & notices that they were selling men's "rain hats" for $3.99.  Now, by the look of it, this was the same sort of hat selling fashionably for $15+ - & the shipping was FREE, so I treated myself to a navy nylon fedora to add to my fedora wardrobe.....And sure 'nuf, it was EXACTLY the same model I have & have seen elsewhere - in navy nylon - but not a shiny kind.  In short - a GREAT stylish fedora for $3.99!!!

This validates a rule I have formulated over the years - If an item is in style & there is a generic equivalent - shop generic & save lots of $$.  That would be getting olive tshirts & camo pants at an Army-Navy Surplus Store.  My ex was big into that, & we shopped often.  I was surprised at the good deals I could get - even for me.  And he got boots & so on.

Lots of clothing is really uni-sex, as they used to say in the olde dayz....except that the placket for the buttons goes one way for men,  & another way for women (ditto the fly, I think). But who notices?  So if you find something in men's wear that you like & it fits you, why not?

The secret for both generic and men's wear is that the makers are not slaves to fashion, & produce the same basic items day in & day out - which makes the finished product cheaper than the fashionable ones! I looked at the ads that came with my hat - & perhaps someday I will venture to buy some jeans or something there....I do like plain generic clothing I can accessorize.

THOUGHTS ON HEALTHCARE

Making great progress with what ever was affecting my scalp - & by the time I see a dermatologist, It will be 3/4 cured! There was an interesting article in the latest FORBES magazine about Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business prof, who managed to have a heart attack, advanced -stage cancer & a stroke all within 3 years.  And he survived it ALL.

He was very pro-active in his own care, finding that diet affected his diabetes as well as his coumadin dosage - and he bought his own testing devices to take home & put them to good use - When he had a stroke, while waiting 3 weeks to see a speech therapist, he went out & bought himself Rosetta Stone's ENGLISH & began to re-teach himself language! (It can be done - my own father re-taught himself language after his cerebral episode, too)

One of the conclusions of the article were that much self-care would be emphasized in the future.  Now I just thought that self-care was a result of my crummy ins. plan - but it's all over now.

Altho how we are all going to train ourselves as diagnosticians is almost beyond me. (There is, however, a lot of info on the net nowadays....)

The moral is the same old one - don't get SICK if you want to be frugal! Invest in your own HEALTH!  End of life care is terribly expensive - so hope to just conk out as my grandmother did, without any real illness before her death...She dreaded "the old people's home" and so do I - One needs to see life and noisy kids and animals and all rather than being around sick people all the time!

I don't think I am doing too badly - my contemporaries are all grey or white-headed! and look years older than me.  I don't know about my innards - but I am doing the best I can there, too!

And knock on wood - no cancer or anything like that for me! (What was that prof doing to his body to have 3 such serious calls in such a short time? He doesn't seem to ask himself that - but he does seem to have been driven, which couldn't have helped.... )

That's Pam's rant for the day!  How are you all?

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