As a personal finance blogger, I strive to make good decisions when it comes to money. There are times, however, that I know I’m not making the best money-saving choice, but the convenience outweighs the cost. Here are 5 of those instances.
1) Getting Your Nails Done
It is extremely easy and cheap to paint your own nails; however, it does take a lot of patience. The nail techs seem to do it all with such ease. Then again, this is what they do for a living, so they also have experience on their side.
Cost to paint nails at home: $7 for nail polish and a top coat that can be used for years
Cost at the nail salon: $10 per manicure
Let’s say you get your nails done twice a month.
Nails at home: $14 over 12 months
Nails at salon: $240 over 12 months
That being said, I personally don’t mind paying to get my nails done because I only have them done for special occasions or if I have a gift card to cover the cost. Therefore, it is completely worth the convenience for me. It saves me time and comes out way nicer.
2) Grocery Delivery
I have always hated going to the grocery store, and I hate it even more so now that I have an infant. Luckily, there are many options for grocery delivery now. I personally use Peapod by Stop & Shop (specific to the Northeast). Peapod charges a delivery fee of $9.95 if your total is less than $100 and $6.95 if your total is $100 and above. I get groceries pretty much every single week, unless we are on vacation. To make the math easy, let’s assume I need groceries 50/52 weeks a year.
Grocery shopping: Free
Grocery delivery (assuming total over $100): $347.50
However, Peapod has an annual membership called PodPass where you can pay for a full year’s worth of delivery (assuming the $6.95 fee) upfront. The cost is $127.78. Naturally, I take advantage of this because I know I’ll be ordering groceries for at least the next year.
The convenience here is that I would normally spend an hour at the grocery store, between shopping, loading my bags, paying and driving to and from the store. It now takes me about 15-20 minutes to add things to a cart online each week. If I shopped in store, that’s about 50 hours per year versus 16 hours of online shopping.
3) Cleaning Service for the Home
I’m sure this one will get some eyes rolling, but honestly I do not care. I still have to vacuum every other day, if not more, and still clean my counter and stove after cooking. I do my own laundry, as well, except for our bedroom sheets and bless the people who do that for us because there is nothing that I despise for than putting a fitted sheet on my bed by myself. They also do a deep cleaning of things that I would love to do in theory, but know it will always get pushed to the bottom of my priority list.
Cleaning service: $100 every other week or $2,600 per year
Cleaning my house myself: $0 (or whatever the cost of replacing the cleaning supplies is, though we do buy our own cleaning supplies for our cleaning service).
4) Restaurants
At least once a week we don’t cook dinner ourselves. We either go out to a restaurant (happening less frequently since our daughter made her debut) or order takeout. Since I’ve become a stay-at-home parent, I thoroughly enjoy and savor the moments I do not have to make the meal I am eating. I was very fortunate that my previous job provided breakfast and lunch, though most times I took advantage of just the lunch. I will never give up restaurants for as long as I live! Throughout the year, my husband and I also like to have at least a few special occasion dinners, for things such as birthdays, gatherings with friends and Christmas (it’s our favorite holiday).
Restaurants for the year: We budget $250 per month, so a total of $3,000
Cooking at home those times: NOT free, although many people view it that way. I’d say a dinner at home averages about $15 for the two of us (daughter has not yet started solids), totaling $780.
5) Cable
It’s incredible how many people are dropping cable and, to be honest, I envy them for doing so. While I know there is an abundance of streaming options now to replace cable, I still can’t get myself to bite the bullet for a few reasons. One, we have a package deal for cable, internet and phone line (our alarm system requires a house phone), so cable makes up 60% of the total bill. Another reason is for access to local sports and news. Lastly, we have a few shows that we enjoy on both HBO and Showtime.
We are fortunate enough to share a Netflix account with my family, therefore that is currently at no charge to us. We also are currently receiving Disney+ for free for one year. However, we would need to couple a few different streaming packages to get similar access to what we have for cable. While it would save us money in the long run, it’s just not worth the hassle of having various log ins and bills to keep track of for all different services.
Our total bill each month is $165, making the cable portion $105.
Cost for cable per year: $1,260
Cost of using just Netflix and Disney+ per year (for now): $0
