Ssindi, you and I must be in similar stages of life. I've reached the point, finally, where I'm less likely to compromise or get by, and luckily, for many things, I don't have to. And I do appreciate that, and also understand many people for whatever reasons cannot. Not trying to rub it in, just sayin'.
We live in a place approximately a half million people per year come to for their vacations. Sometimes people don't understand why we would ever travel anywhere else. But no place has everything, and there are lots of places we want to see. So far, no one has thought to move places like Yellowstone or Niagara Falls closer to us, so we finally decided to stop waiting for that and go to them instead.
We are also, literally, surrounded by vacation homes. The one family east of us has a small log cabin twenty feet from the lake and they really use the heck out of it. They come from Alaska and spend the entire summer. Their kids come from Florida, pitch a big tent in the yard, and spend the summer. That set-up makes sense to me. The other two cabins near us, their owners pay a fortune in real estate taxes and are very rarely there. It cannot be cost effective, plus when they are here, they're doing stuff like maintenance. Not very vacation-like. That's why we'll stick to our camper. Can't beat it for being cost-effective and giving us flexibility.
But we still look for bargains. Like the time we bought my first set of DeWalt tools. My husband is great for digging to the back of the rack to see if anything has been overlooked. That day, their $400, five-tool set was on sale for $250 and we were going to get that. He dug to the back and came up with a bonus set that included the five tools plus a smaller drill-driver valued at $70. It was obviously older stock from a previous promotion, but it had the same tools and same item number as the five-tool set, plus the drill-driver. So we took it to the checkstand, pointed out the extra tool and the item number that matched the sale ad, and there was no issue. Not only did we get $150 off the five-tool set, but we got an extra $70 tool, just for being more ambitious than the person who stocked the shelves and failed to rotate the stock. That drill-driver has become one of our most used tools. Love that!
And we buy a lot of our needs secondhand, too, and are always trying to find ways to keep our costs down so we can afford our splurges, mostly travel.