The Value Of More For Less

One of the keys to obtaining financial independence is finding ways to live your life for significantly less than usual.  When the average Joe (or Jane) spends $10 on something, a financially independent person (or ‘soon-to-be’) can score the same thing for much less.  Via this skill, people on the path to financial independence can save 50% or more of their income.

Sometimes a lot more…

My Confession

I have a confession to make:  I don’t give a crap what people think about me.  Image has never been something I cared about.  When it comes to my home, I never try to make it look awesome.  Rather than creating a beautiful home to set a false image of prosperity, I focus on our financial independence: Getting what we needed for a lot less than usual.

For the longest time this meant we had a sub-standard TV in the Tako household.  Our sub-standard TV was thick, had low resolution, terrible black levels, and washed out colors.  I wasn’t about to put money into getting a better one.

Don’t get me wrong – modern electronics are a fantastic thing.  Compared to when I was a kid, TV’s are gigantic now.  We grew up with a boxy 16-inch TV screen and thought it was great!  Now, it seems retailers hardly sell anything less than 50 inches.  I believe this phenomenon is primarily just a display of wealth rather than a true improvement in people’s lives.  Is the world happier today with big TVs than 30 years ago, with small TVs?  Highly unlikely.

Closing the Office

A few months ago, my previous employer announced they would shut-down the office on the west-coast.  The task of closing the office, fell onto my shoulders.  I did my work diligently, but I figured they would lay-off some or all of the west-coast employees.

As I worked with the east-coast to make the shutdown happen, I came to realize the company just didn’t care about the equipment in the west-coast office.  They had already fully depreciated most of the equipment (it had little accounting value), and they had no use for it on the east-coast.  Most of the office equipment would go to the recyclers – who take it away for free.

Making Opportunity Happen

Smelling an opportunity, I emailed a corporate vice-president to see if the employees could have the equipment instead.  I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?  Surprisingly, she said “Yes” for most of the equipment.  Score!  We cleaned that place out!  Employees made off with office chairs, a refrigerator, shelves, laser printers, even desks – all for free.  I got my tentacles on some conference room chairs, and a conference room monitor (mounted to the wall).  

Normally employees would use the monitor for video conferencing and presentations.  That happened maybe once a month, so everything in the conference room was practically new.  It turns out, the monitor bolted to the wall was actually a 46-inch 1080p LED TV.  Not just a monitor!  Here’s my lucky score after I delivered it home:

Did you notice there’s no stand?  Yeah, I noticed that too.  It only had a metal mounting plate used to bolt it to the wall.  I wasn’t going to leave the TV on the floor, so a solution was needed.  We wanted a TV stand, but I wasn’t going to spend $73 for a universal tv stand.

Building a Stand

Being a fairly handy guy, I figured I could build one pretty quickly.  A trip to Home Depot (and $10) scored me some nuts, bolts, a couple steel brackets, and furniture quality wood.  A few hours later, I had this whipped up:

As you can see in the photo, I kept the metal mounting bracket from the wall and built my stand around it.  

The End Result

OK so it didn’t end up being completely free.  I had to spend money on the gas to transport it, and $10 for the stand.  For someone who’s not a carpenter, I think it turned out OK:

Monetary Value

Today a TV like this retails for about $550.  Sure, it’s probably not the best TV out there, but what do I care?! It was free and WAY better than what we had before!  I also had the opportunity to grab 6 conference room chairs worth $180 each that we now use as dining chairs:

That’s a total retail value of $1630.  I now have a fancy TV and fancy dining chairs – for free.  That same money invested over 10 years at 8% would be worth $3,519.  Not a bad day’s work for one email.  

Finding ways to improve your life for little-to-no cost can really pay off.  Do this over and over again, and the results will be incredible!

Change brings opportunity.  –Nido Qubein