Shopsmith Forums

I grew up poor, I lived just above poor, I retired poor, and I expect to die poor.

So if I can afford a powerpro you might be able to as well. I'm sure some other have some ideas as well so feel free to add your ideas.

I'd say the first thing to do is make a nice table on paper to get started with. A row of cost saving ideas, a row of possible savings and a row to see how well you are doing.

Stop subscribing to magazines. Example of this might be you get three woodworking magazines at say $12 each per year. Savings $36. If that is more like 10 magazines well then you do the math.

Stop in at the coffee shop on your way to work 5 days a week. Change that to 1 or no days, savings at say $4 a cup for 40 weeks per year (40*4*4=$640)

Do a staycation. You could easily save enough for an upgrade. Normally go for two weeks, change that to one week. If you save say a $100 a day for that 7 days you save a total of $700.

Cable TV, I don't have this but from the advertisements I see this could be a easy $50 a month savings, even if you only do if for a year or two. Savings for year $600.

I don't have a cell phone but again from advertisements they can be quite expensive, so by going to a less expensive service or maybe even going without for a year or so could get you enough for that powerpro.

Got a cell phone and a land line? See about dropping the land line, savings of say $25 a month or $300.

I'm retired so I save money in the winter by staying at home a lot. I can go from 7 to 10 days without taking the van out. So far this year I have gotten gas twice and I still have more then a half tank so I will go another week or so before filling up. I know that this would be impossible for a lot of you but I think if you really watched your driving and limited your trips and combined outings you could save $500-$600 a year.

Eating out for us happen very little. Even when we do go out we hit places where two people can eat for less then $20. I'd guess we spend less then $100 for a year on eating out. Now you may not want this as a life change but for a year or two.... at least think about it. Since I know some people who go out 2 or 3 times a month and spend $60 at least each time I project a savings of (3*12*60=$2160) for them. You have to figure that out for your own situation.

When I worked I took my lunch most days. Others would go out each day and that took extra gas and say $5 for the lunch. I'm not sure of the cost of the lunches I had but I'd have to say I bet I save $3 a day on average. For someone who works say 40 weeks a year and ate a home made lunch 4 days a week then (40*4*3= $480).

Loto...... Now this is a true story. I went out with a group of people on Wed.'s, the other 5/6 of the group would buy tickets accounting for between $3/$4 each and I would save my $. We did this for 15 years. I would save up and buy a new tool, I'd then tell them about my new tool over lunch. They kept telling me how they were going to win it big sometime and then I'd be sorry. As you can guess it never happened but I got a nice collection of tools. So say you play $3 a week for 52 weeks you can save yourself $156. Now I know some play a lot more and perhaps some of you may have won some money but if you are saving up for a powerpro I'd start with this savings.

I'm a none smoker so I have no idea how much you pay for the pleasure but I did hear that in Chicago they are over $12 a pack. If you have two pack a day habit then I can see it might be hard to do but by cutting back to one pack that could be a savings of (12*365=$4380).

New car every two/three years? I can't do any real math here as there are too many unknowns but I think if you extend that by a year or two you can find a new powerpro in your future.

Hey if you pay say $37 a month for internet service if you give it up for a year then (37*12=$444).

What do you spend on birthday gifts? Wife/husband say $100, bet you could make something for less, then save the money towards the powerpro. You can add up some more by adding homemade gifts for the rest of your list. Not a lot of money but ever little bit helps.

I'm sure a lot of you have some other tips to save money so I will let you add them.

Ed

This is all good stuff....

Whether or not reible was living poor, depends on whether that Cordoba has rich Corinthian leather or the basic seating.

nuhobby wrote:This is all good stuff....

Whether or not reible was living poor, depends on whether that Cordoba has rich Corinthian leather or the basic seating.

There was a basic seating option?

And beside I was just living just above poor.

Ed

I am forced to live with the embarrassing fact that after I retired my income went up...
Our big vice is eating out and going for drives. I could buy 2 Power-Pros a year on just that. BUT, I don't want to. We are working on cutting back a little and only eat out maybe 5 or 6 times a week now. I expect to lower it to maybe 3 or 4 times a week this summer. Like Ed we rarely break the $20 mark and can sometimes eat for half of that. We came through several years of very serious stress and getting in the car and going the less than 2 miles to our towns "calorie canyon" has been a huge help. BTW, money was not part of the stress beyond having it come in at the right time.
We went over 20 years without a vacation and haven't gone anywhere for several years now. We may go this summer.
We neither smoke nor drink. We don't drink coffee either.
I do drink Gator-aids Propel Fit Water but we bottle our own which cuts the cost by more than half.
My single magazine subscription, "Wood" was a Xmas gift from a daughter.
We just started Direct TV and we last had cable in 1975. Our antennae TV went to hell when they switched everything to digital TV. We have Direct's most basic package, 140 channels, about 12 of which don't suck...
I carry a Tracfone that cost me an average of $8 a month. My wife carries a Straight Talk that is $45 a month for unlimited talk, text and web. We dropped our land-line which was costing a bit over $60 a month.
Our Internet access is Verizon mobile wifi hotspot for $50 a month and also serves to take the place of GPS by using it and a laptop to access Google on the road. I'd rather give up a couple of grand-kids...
For my wife's birthday I allow her to take me out for a nice dinner.
Indiana had a lottery very early on, I have never bought a ticket... We have a large casino only 6 miles north of us with over 2,000 slots (and other ways to bet). I have never put a dime out of my pocket into one. I have been known to hit one of there great buffets when they had a special low price (like a $5 or $6 per person meal). There is a horse-track there as well but I have never placed a bet.
I have never bought a new car or truck or tractor. Most of my stuff is pretty old. People like to claim that a car is "nickle and diming them to death"... I have never found a "nickle and dime" car payment. I just keeping fixing them, most of the time with my own labor. When I finally retire one not many people want it, it's pretty tired. I made my last car payment about 1972... I have only paid cash since and never a lot of that.
I gave it a lot of thought and I'm sure I would enjoy owning a Power-Pro but I just don't want / need one enough to buy one.
I need to pick up a Vee-belt at a farm store in the next town south-east, maybe we will have lunch at the Chinese buffet next door to it today.

I agree with you Farmer, someone would have to give me a PowerPro for me to have one. Although somewhat younger and still working we live our life about like you, and enjoy it, no debt, no guilt trips over ungiven birthday gifts, just roll along and enjoy. Too many couples get into the habit of having to live like the Jones these days. Our children think we're cheap because we don't give each other gifts, what they don't know is, when we see something one of us really want, ie tools, craft stuff for my wife etc, we just order it and forget it, but too many years of juggling payments taught us to not want the newest shiniest thing on the shelf, nothing is worth going into debt over again. We sleep well!!!

Here are a few more thing that might work for you. My wife has heath insurance which we pay for once a year. By doing so they give us a free month. So say you pay $400 a month or (12*400 = $4800) By paying for the year we pay $4400, saving the $400.

What about those that stop by the coke machine and do that say 3 times a day. Let's say it costs a $1 each time and you do that every work day for say 40 weeks a year. Now say you stop for some free water for two of those other times. When we do the math (2*5*40 = $400).

I personally use a credit card for most purchase and for any utility/phone/repairs/etc that I can. I always pay the card off each month. I have an easy record of my purchases and can see how and where I spend money. And then there is the % back you get. I even do my paypal payments by credit card. For grins say you spend $1500 a month for a year and get back just 1% back (1500*12*.01 = $180).

I could go on and on but you will have to figure out where you can save and then do it.

For those that think they don't want a powerpro stare at this image for a while, you can stop looking when get to the point that you want one.

I already live pretty frugally and already follow most of those suggestions. Our only real "splurges" is our DirecTV and cell phones. We don't eat out much (maybe once a month if that), I take leftovers to work for lunch, I don't drink cokes or coffee, just water, don't smoke, don't subscribe to magazines, don't play the lotto, vacation time is spent at home, don't hit the bar after work, I drive an old car that is paid for and our truck will be paid for in a few months, etc.

I make decent money for this area, but I still can't afford a PowerPro right now. We have 3 kids and kids are expensive. My son is 13, is going through a growth spurt, and outgrows his shoes every other week (he's up to a size 12, one size below me). Our daughters are 5 and 6 and were never in daycare or public school until this year and seem to constantly be sick by picking up things from other kids. I could probably buy a new Mark 7 PowerPro with how much we've spent on antibiotics and doctor's visits this school year, not to mention their school supplies, uniforms (in PUBLIC school!!!), fundraisers, etc. Coming from poor families, never learning proper money management skills, we also made some poor financial decisions earlier in our married life ("put it on the credit card and we'll pay it off over the next few pay days!") that left us under a mountain of debt. We'll finally be completely free of credit card debt about the same time the truck is paid off. The only debt we'll have then is the mortgage and student loans.

I'm already living quite frugally, but the benefits of that are going to other purposes. However, I can see that one day I might be able to buy a PowerPro if I wanted to.

Ed, like you, grew up poor with grandparents. Walked the 1/4 mile to and from school as I was too close for the bus to pick me up. Didn't have money for lunch, so walked home for lunch and walked back. If the hens weren't molting, we had eggs and biscuits for breakfast, else we had biscuits and syrup. Lunch and supper were pinto beans and cornbread until the garden came in. Then we had tomatoes, corn, okra, potatoes, and more beans.

While I worked, always took lunch with me. Never smoked or drank. Once in a while, would get a soda. We don't buy them. Only drink around the house is water, milk, and some apple juice monthly for the grandchildren. I do all the cooking as wife has MS and totally dependent on me for everything. Our monthly entertainment is a pizza for $10 + tax. Buy one tank of gas monthly. It's all I can afford. Toyota Sienna is 7 years old, but has equipment for handicapp people, so have to keep that maintained. It's all the way up to 39,000 miles.

Get to go to church maybe 2 or 3 times monthly because of wife's health. But, we go to doctors about that many times per month, drug store about that often. We do have DirectTV so she can do something. She has great difficulty reading. No magazines, but lots of junk mail. I have a cell phone so when I'm out working in the yard or doing woodworking, she can call me if and when she needs something. My cell phone is prepaid about $70 per year.

We save in our Christmas club all our property taxes, car insurance, life insurance and maybe some gift exchanges.

My point was, since so many folks falsely believe that federal workers get a large retirement, 75+% gets about the same as those on Social Security. Two uncles worked for a paper mill, one a supervisor and the other a millwright, get about the same as I do. They don't have to pay any insurance premiums, but federal employees who want insurance must pay.

Lottery - to me is immoral, played it once so we could all learn how it worked, but never more. We knew then that we were tossing a dollar into the bottomless garbage can.

Haven't had a vacation in 30 years. Trying to pay off two trips to south Florida to see daughter and son-in-law graduate. Made a short 4 hour trip to where they now live after their child was born. But, we can't afford to travel. So, paying off cards as fast as I can at 10% interest.

Diet is lots of beans or dishes I prepare from scratch. I buy groceries once a month when the check posts in the bank. So, I'm richer than I've ever been, but still can't afford the upgrades. But, I love making sawdust and shavings on the SS as I did my first turnings this week. Now, that's fun.

Thanks, Ed. I do understand.

The lack of money is not the reason I won't buy the Power Pro.

In fact my shop budget has the money to buy Dusty's Unisaw if I wanted one.

My Shopsmith is exactly what it is a multitool machine, because it is multi tool it has compromises. I understand this and I'm willing to live with those compromises.

To me the value added by the Power Pro is no where near the asking price of the Power Pro. If they were even remotely close I would own one, but they aren't.

Also I believe market effects costs. So if everyone keeps buying PP at the list price then Reible is right the price will not come down. However when people stop paying the current price SS has two choices reduce the price or close. I'm thinking because they now have an exaggerated profit factor in the PP they will reduce the price before they allow themselves to be forced out of business. If that price gets to the point where I think it nearly equals value added i will jump on one.

However if I justify space consideration of a standalone table saw to myself first I will buy it instead.

The new Festool saw that was just released looks good and doesn't have space considerations nor is it priced outside my value added range, so it may be my next purchase instead. In fact this is the way my wife is pushing me.

I tend to agree with Ed on this.

It's not that I can't afford a PP I just don't think it's enough value add and I'm still skeptical about all of the electronics. I'm still struggling with justifying the cost for a used 510 upgrade (a few hundred dollars). It was easier and cheaper to modify work strategies and minimize table saw usage. I guess I'm just cheap.

IMHO, SS is missing the boat. They are targeting existing SS users and we are a limited market. Relatively few professionals and enthusiasts (the people with either the need or the willingness to pay SS prices) will purchase a SS. They just won't because it is a compromise tool. SS needs to cut their price and focus on growing their market share by going after the hobbyist woodworkers and home handymen.

Just my opinion.