Austerity without Anxiety: What will $150 buy me?

Based on experience, $150 will buy me 10 motorcycle trips to Port Bruce, including one cuppa Joe at the Beach Hut.

(I know. The Beach Hut burned down a few years ago. What is the new place called?)

It’s not that I have $150 to burn, but I saved at least that much this morning because I didn’t call a plumber to fix a 15-foot length of clogged drain.

$150 buys me 75-plus cups of coffee at The Red Roaster in Wortley Village, but instead of walking to the coffee shop this morning, I chose to get my own hands dirty for a change.

Honestly, I hate getting my hands dirty with black, sticky, stinky, slimy, sludgy goop, but $150 buys me a summer’s worth of hockey with a good bunch of guys.


So, I opened the drain, cleaned as much as I could with a 4-foot-long snake, then realized I needed to call a plumber with better equipment or come up with my own solution.

150 bucks buys me an hour of a plumber’s time ($75 or more just to invite him into the house for coffee) or skate sharpening fees for the rest of my hockey career.

I came up with a pretty nifty plan of my own.

I attached two 8-ft.-long sections of cedar strip with a splint (made from a paint stir stick) and cleaned out the pipe myself in less than an hour. Fifteen minute’s worth of clean up is all I now have on my plate before lunch time.




["Clean up needed. I hate getting my hands dirty but...": photos by Dirty Jeans]

$150 also buys me 15 games of Monday hockey whenever a spare is needed.

At 4:15 today I’ll be playing right wing for a change.

Awesome.

No. I don’t make house calls.

(And, no. I still don't have $150 to burn, but one game of hockey is a pretty good reward for saving a plumber's fee.)

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Austere. Frugal. Cheap. Handy. They all work together at times to save us money.

Did you get your hands dirty and save money recently? Let me know.

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