Who else here is frugal?


If I had to describe myself as an audiophile in one word, I'd like it to be frugal. Iconoclast may also be right, but if I'm different it may be due to being frugal.  There used to be a TV show called The Frugal Gourmet. To paraphrase him, the food he cooked wasn't necessarily cheap, but he'd get as much value as he could out of what he was doing.


Being an iconoclast doesn't hurt either. Listening for yourself and buying what you like, regardless of what reviewers say and how expensive something is also points us towards this.


What about you? Do you feel better saving money than spending it? Then tell us about yourself. :)
erik_squires

Showing 1 response by winnardt

There are a few replies in this thread such as from zkidd and michaelg63 that show that the person replying doesn't actually know the definition of frugal. Frugal doesn't mean cheap, it means "not wasteful". Because the value of an item is driven by the market and we can never know the true monetary value of an item other than by its cost (or what someone is willing to pay for it), how do we measure frugality? About the only way is to compare what others have spent with what we are willing to spend for the exact same item. So frugality = was what I spent a deal compared to what others have spent?
In that vein, I definitely consider myself frugal, especially in my speaker purchases. I bought used (like new) Magnepan 20.1s for $5500 ($12,000 new) and got a $1000 off the B&W MT-60D (new) to add a sub and surrounds. So I spent $7500 for speakers that would normally cost $15,000 if new and I have both great home theater speakers and great music listening speakers. Since the Maggies have been favorably compared to speakers costing $20,000 or more, some might say I've been even more frugal than the dollars I spent suggest. I also purchased an Emotiva amp to drive the Maggies, and Emotiva gets great reviews in the value category as well.
I've always been leary of the kind of person who wants to tell me how much they spent on their system when the game is to save as much as much as I can and get the most I can for my money.