I love sharing a good thrifted find or money-saving wins. It’s fun! It’s satisfying! It feels like getting a metaphorical gold star.
But in the interest of transparency, here are a few recent frugal losses. It can’t all be rainbows, butterflies, and perfectly optimized budgets, right?
GYM MEMBERSHIP
Well, this is embarrassing.
A year ago, John and I bought an incredibly economical annual pass to a local gym. It was a great deal—IF YOU GO. And we did! From November to February, we were faithful members. Then March hit, we went away on vacation, and suddenly our gym-going commitment fell off a cliff. I haven’t set foot there since…April? Our membership doesn’t auto-renew (small mercies), but the money we spent is now a classic sunk cost. A frugal loss and an exercise demerit.
YOGA PASSES
Which makes this second loss EVEN MORE EMBARRASSING. Have I learned nothing???
I originally bought a 10-pack of yoga classes on a great deal and used them up so quickly that the next time I bought a pack of 20 classes (even cheaper per unit). But then I hurt my knee, and then we were away for lots of the summer, and then I came up with all sorts of other excuses and the expiry date of December 2nd started to rapidly approach. Not only did I fail to use my last two passes, I cancelled three classes last-minute, which meant forfeiting those credits too. Yoga is not cheap, even at a bulk rate.
This was not a stellar return on investment.
CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Christmas is my biggest superfluous spending season. Partly because we don’t buy the kids many gifts during the rest of the year (some of what ends up under the tree is actually “needs,” like new jammies for Indy whose current pairs are now hilariously too short and/or tattered) and partly because it’s fun to give gifts at Christmas. (Though I am mostly an underbuyer outside of my family and we only exchange gifts with family that is with us over Christmas so no aunts, uncles, cousins or siblings unless we’re physically together over the holidays which I LOVE.)
We don’t buy gifts for Valentine’s Day or Easter, and birthdays tend to be low-key (understanding that is all very relative). I also don’t do Mother’s or Father’s Day presents. What I’m trying to say is Christmas does all the heavy lifting in terms of gifts.
But I do buy quite a few gifts at Christmas and this year everything seems so expensive. I don’t feel like I’ve bought an excessive number of gifts (again, that’s relative), but the financial outflow lately feels like shovelling money out the door with a backhoe. The things the kids want are suddenly much higher in terms of price point.
Tl;dr: inflation is a Grinch this year.
THRIFTED PILLOW COVERS
I bought some winter-themed pillow covers at a thrift store. They had an unusual texture/stitching pattern. I washed them…and a whole section of stitching unravelled into chaos. The kind of chaos that requires a much more competent sewer than me to fix. Sigh.
COUPONS ONLY WORK IF YOU USE THEM
This one hurts more than it should. Yogurt was on a good sale, and the container had a $1 coupon attached on the side. It was right there! Begging to be used! Did we remember to use it as we passed through the checkout? Of course not. I remembered approximately three seconds after getting home…which was about nine hundred seconds too late.
Your turn.
- What’s your most recent money fail?
- Have you ever bought a fitness pass or gym membership and then neglected to use it?
- What tiny money mistake irrationally bothers you (like my yogurt coupon fail)?
Discover more from The Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I can’t decide if it is a frugal fail or if I am so enmeshed in frugality that I am incapable of spending money. I bought some books, ones the library doesn’t have and that I believe will be keepers. Sure, most were used on Thriftbooks, but my TBR stack is getting taller. I keep ordering books from the library, and then they get read first because of expiration dates. Maybe I need to be like those people trying to get out of debt, but instead of cutting up my credit card, I should cut up my library card.
And now I am painting a mural on the side of the first library of my life! I went inside today to warm up, looked for a few authors that I’ve recently discovered, and saw nothing by them. So now I’m thinking of printing out my TBR from GoodReads and taking it with me on the next day I paint that the library is open. Only because I am so very frugal will I not do this—it might take a ream of paper and gallons of ink to print!
Never!!! Don’t cut up your library card, Jana. But I also 100% understand the sense of stress that can come from having a teetering stack of to-read books. It’s always such a balance as a reader. I constantly want to have access to an entertaining book (heaven forbid I’m ever out of books), but then it can get rather stressful to try to read all the books I’m interested in that happen to have arrived at the same time. #ReaderProblems
I saw your post about your first day and working with the intern. It must feel good to have some paint on the wall and have the whole process started.
I did a similar thing to you with a pilates 20 pack and then got a stress fracture, but I think I only missed out on using a couple of the classes because a 20 pack had a year to use. I think not using the gym membership would be a very common one. Our gym has the ability to pause your membership when you are away, so we do that; otherwise, we would not get our money’s worth, plus they charge weekly. You just have to remember to email them. We are very minimal with the kids’ gifts. Like you, we didn’t buy the kids things during the year, except for necessary clothes and shoes (and by necessary, that means a pair of school shoes, a pair of sneakers and maybe something to wear out if I thought it was warranted, plus their school uniforms and a very small selection of casual clothes). If they wanted something else, it needed to go on their birthday or Christmas list.
I do like having our gifting concentrated to Christmas. I think I would find it very stressful to be pulling together gift baskets and presents at other times of the year! (We don’t do grading gifts, either.) Christmas and birthday’s really are it.
Obviously, we buy our kids lots of things throughout the year like clothes and we take them out to lunches, etc. But in terms of things like Lego or expensive shoes, that is Christmas only!
When I buy passes, it usually means I will make sure to use them. It’s like an extra encouragement to do them because I hate wasting. But if it’s injury related reason, then it’s fine.
I definitely feel the extra cash flow this month that I am buying gifts for the girls but it’s really once a year so should be fine.
I *thought* the extra encouragement would do the trick… it did not. 🙁
You’re definitely not alone with the unused gym membership, Elisabeth! In fact, you’re in the statistical majority here – most people fall off after the first few months. Life gets in the way!
I had a similar mishap. My track sessions are month-by-month, and I’ve had to let two sessions expire in November because they just didn’t fit into my training plan. I wrote to the track people and tried to get them to move it to December, but they didn’t. It’s a tiny amount of money, and it annoys me more than it should!
I understand the annoyance! Being wired to always look to maximize our money and be mindful of spending and then feel like we’ve “thrown” away money is very frustrating!
I know I’m in the majority with the gym situation, but that almost makes me feel worse! Ha. I fit right into the stereotype and here I thought I could buck the trend 😉
Take the yoga /gym membership issues as a learning experience- you now know that buying a smaller amount would work better with your lifestyle ( even if the lure of lower per unit pricing is strong!).
Frugal fail: When I replaced a handle on the toilet, it kept running a little. I adjusted the chain repeatedly. Turns out the handle was getting stuck on the tank lid. So several weeks of water waste, and an additional $25 on the water bill. Which is not as bad as the time one toilet kept running and it doubled the water bill! The city had soneone come to the door to warn us of the issue- they apparently keep a rough eye on usage, so a huge increase alerts them. Embarrassing and expensive! But we appreciated the notice. (It was a busy time , so we hadn’t realized how bad it was.)
I just spent $$$ last night on my college daughter’s Xmas list. She only wants necessary stuff, but it’s expensive brands( $25 for special shampoo?!?) I got the as she’ll use it all and appreciate it more than a random tshirt or earrings. And I did make sure I found things on sale.
What a great reframe. YES. This is a learning experience. Also, I used most of my passes! Of the bulk 30 I bought, I used 25. I still saved money in the long haul (because of the cost/unit) AND I went to the gym for months AND I did 25 in-person yoga sessions. Which have all been good for me.
That is one thing I have to remind myself of at Christmas: spending money on something they actually want and will use is actually cheaper than buying a whole bunch of smaller things that they don’t want/need and will end up in a landfill! Plus, I’m sure that special shampoo will last for a long time. Higher quality items like that tend to have a lot less water and other fillers. I’m sure she’ll be very happy!
This is an almost-fail but your post inspired me to not make it a fail — I bought a yoga ten-class pack at the start of 2025 and I still have four classes left and only a few weeks to use them. I do have an extra long Xmas break this year so if I plan accordingly I can use them all then. Thanks for the reminder! (Also, I should probably *not* do the same deal if it pops up again!)
Yay! I’m so glad this post inspired you to use up your passes. At least one of us can be successful at using our yoga sessions.
That picture at the start made me laugh so hard, I love it.
I’m with you on the presents, even though I buy a lot of the clothes they will get second hand, and I’ve tried to get a lot of the presents on sale. But chocolate! For Saint Nicholas, the kids get chocolate letters and stuff and the price of chocolate makes me want to cry. (I have very clear preferences and I will only buy the cheap stuff for cooking). I may also have bought a fabric…
I was trying to come up with a picture that would fit the vibe. It’s actually my horror at the fact we had rain on our first full day of our March Break trip…thankfully, within an hour the rain stopped…but I felt it matched how I feel about frugal fails!)
Chocolate is SO expensive now. I cannot believe the prices. I bought some chocolate chips for holiday baking and they are over double the price I was paying a few years ago.
I am laughing because my most recent post cannot be more different from yours, even though it is also about a frugality fail!
I have done the same coupon thing countless times. So frustrating!
It makes me feel better to know other people find the coupon situation frustrating! Arghhhhhh.
I just did the coupon thing! It was for a pack of hamburger buns. I caught my mistake right after I pressed the button to pay for my order. I was annoyed, but not annoyed enough to go to the customer service desk and get it fixed.
Usually I’m pretty good at using subscriptions but life happens. Oh well.
I am so often the same! If it’s only $1, say, for the savings, I won’t go back and have it adjusted. A decade ago you bet your bum I would have, but these days I just can’t be bothered. Which is it’s own fail…
Forgetting to use a coupon drives me crazy! I have a lot of frugal fails, my least favorite being when the stores has a rewards points promo for a certain amount spent and then I’ll be .50 short without realizing because it’s the cost BEFORE tax and then I don’t get the points. Believe it or not, this has happened at least 3 times and always makes me feel like such an idiot.
I find trying to get the price just right for a points deal (say: spend $60 and get 20,000) so stressful. I don’t get any more points if I spent $80…but then sometimes certain products don’t count (like milk) and then I forgot about taxes. All that to say – yes! This same thing happens to me. I TRY to always aim to be a little bit over because usually the only reason I picked up some of the products (hopefully on sale) was to get to the spending minimum.
OMG I know so many people who bought gym memberships and yoga passes and the per-unit cost was about $200 because they didn’t go. So you are not alone!
THANKFULLY, my per-unit cost is no where CLOSE to $200. So this is making me feel better 🙂
I’d say my yoga classes worked out to about $12/class. And the gym…$10/visit? Though it COULD have been pennies per visit if I went more regularly to the gym.
Well, I’m facing a $1200 car repair because of a 2 second mistake I made pulling out of our garage, so there’s that! Here’s my frugal idea: buy some weights and an exercise mat and do the free classes that physical therapists and qualified trainers provide on YouTube. So much easier to get motivated when you don’t have to leave your house! I do them twice a day!
OH NO!!!! I am so sorry to hear about the vehicle issue.
I do have weights and THREE yoga mats and I do sometimes do videos but I find it so hard to get motivated. My biggest issue is I simply don’t enjoy exercise. SIGH. I hate this about myself so very much…
I relate to the gym and yoga thing- been there, done that! There are just so many steps to leaving the house to exercise! We did actually just rejoin the YMCA but it’s more for my sanity/the kids. They can swim when it’s too cold to play at the park and my toddler can go to the childcare!
I have bought a lot of thrifted or yard sale clothes that were too big for my kids and never ended up working for one reason or another (wrong season, etc). So I try to just buy what we’ll use in a year!
Right?? I hate getting dressed to leave the house for exercise.
I have also bought thrifted clothes that ended up not ever fitting or being used. It doesn’t happen a lot, but is oh-so-frustrating. I try to take everything my kids outgrow (that is still in good shape) to consignment stores so I’ll often get back a portion of what I spent.
I read somewhere that gyms depend on people not coming. Like it’s so crowded in the first few months of the year, they have to staff up etc and then they make up for it the rest of the year when no one is there. I guess I’m just saying that you are not alone. I have never had a gym membership that I utilized consistently, which is the main reason that I don’t have one and only work out at home. We have a really nice gym right down the street, too. But it’s expensive.
My most recent frugal fail happened while I was reading this post. I’m sitting here enjoying my morning cup of tea, and the heater came on. Which means I forgot to turn it off when I went to bed last night, which is why it’s a balmy 70 degrees in here. It only gets down to about 60 with the heater off, we DO NOT NEED IT when we are cozy under our covers. (We don’t need it at all in my opinion, but I will lose that battle. That goes on your ‘things we disagree about’ list. I’d prefer the house a little chilly and wear a sweater, and Ted doesn’t want to be cold in his own house. Both valid. I turn off the heat when I’m home alone, which I have not been since last Wednesday. I fear for our gas bill, which will be HIGH.) And I was the last one to bed (at 9pm, we are all fighting a cold) so it’s all on me. BAH!
I’m thinking about your kids gifts, wondering how similar/different we were. We never gave Valentine’s gifts, but I did used to do a big family Easter basket with something for everyone. Other than that, I think it was always birthdays and Christmas, though I think I spent more on birthday gifts than Christmas gifts, because my Puritan ancestors didn’t celebrate Christmas and thought it was taking away from the meaning of the holiday. JK. The real reason is that at the birthday I only had her to buy for, and at Christmas I had other people, so it was (and I guess still is) an economic decision.
You know how I feel about being cold. Though, to be fair, I am keeping the house a whole degree cooler now after receiving our last electric bill!
This reasoning makes so much sense with the birthday! I also think it depends when the birthday is celebrated. I feel like Belle (in March) gets more gifts than Indy (late November) because he’s closer to Christmas.
My whole life is a series of frugal fails right now. We bought a new car and put a significant down payment on it. I’ve had a series of health-related bills (contacts, PT, etc.) and I like the phrase “shovelling money out the door with a backhoe.” So much money going out – not so much coming in.
I’m considering a gym membership for next year, but I fear I might end up in your situation where I just never go. But I am really good about going to fitness/yoga classes when I pay for them. Hm. I probably won’t.
There definitely are seasons where it seems to be a race to spend money! I also feel like every few years there is something big (like a car or a house upgrade). It rotates, so something like a new car expense isn’t constant, but the next year it will be a new deck, etc. Again, WHERE IS THE ADULTING MANUAL, Engie??
I thought I would be better about going than I am. Like Julie said, gyms are literally banking on this.
I am so similar to you in terms of gifts/when we buy them. We do more for Christmas – birthdays have never been a huge thing. We buy a few things and make a meal of their choosing. When they were little – they each had like 2 kid parties, but mostly we did something fun as a family and we’d have grandparents over for cake.
My frugal fail – I acted as a personal shopper for Tank and Lad and called them on video so they could choose what they wanted from a consignment shop. One of the shirts I bought Tank didn’t fit. It was slim fit or something. He’s not a big guy by any stretch, but the cut wasn’t right for him. I gave the shirt to my SIL to use for one of her skinny sons or her petite husband.
My irrational money frustration is when I saved receipts at Costco so I could send them in and get like 100 in gift cards for buying things that I was already gonna buy like paper towels and tp. I never sent them in and I realized I missed the postage date the NEXT DAY. Urgh.
I’ve never joined a health club and not used it. If I pay for something – I’m gonna use it. I get a free membership to an amazing health club, because it’s connected to Coach’s PT clinic. I almost never go though – but it’s free. I used it ALL THE TIME, but during covid I realized I can use weights at home and do online videos and it is just so much easier than leaving the house, and I almost never skip.
Oh, I did just buy HBO MAX for a year at $4.99/month . . . maybe we’ll cancel Netflix? This might end up being a waste, because we don’t watch much TV but I feel like when we can watch TV nothing is on that we like, so I’m hoping we find something that appeals to us.
Wow! That is A LOT cheaper than Netflix and Disney+ (we have both). Eeks. To be fair, we don’t have cable and I think we mostly get our money’s worth out of both services (mostly John + the kids) and I would do just about anything to keep my Spotify subscription.
That is one of the tough things about thrifting – usually no returns. Which CAN, in some instances, mean something can end up being more expensive because it takes several iterations to get things right.
That Costco situation would drive me bonkers. We have something similar with a local gas station; each liter of gas you get 7c worth of free groceries. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve walked out the store and reached in my pocket only to discover a gas receipt I forgot to spend. I think they technically expire after a month but I’ve never had a cashier not apply the discount, thankfully!
The gym one is a classic!!! i have a story to make you feel much better. There was a time where I went to the gym regularly, then I stopped going during Covid and then of course fell out of the habit. The problem was, I didn’t cancel my membership because I was convinced I was going to start going again any day. When I FINALLY did go back, they looked at my account and said, very cheerfully, “It looks like you haven’t been here in 1,100 days!” I can’t remember the exact number, but it was over 1000. SERIOUSLY. WHY did they feel the need to tell me that??? Anyway… I’m happy to say that I do go regularly now, but wow, I wasted a lot of money.
This DOES make me feel better. I was actually thinking of you while writing this post and reflecting on how faithful you are in terms of going to the gym. This gives me hope. Maybe I’ll be a gym rat yet?? Haha…
I’m sorry, Elisabeth, but I’m sat here laughing. Why? Because haven’t we all done this at some point in our lives? I can’t begin to tell you how many dumb things I’ve thought were a good idea at the time (Tap classes anyone?) that ended up being a money pit. And the coupon thing is my Kryptonite. I seem to always forget to do those.
Also, those thrifted pillows were not your fault. Nor accidents and illness. We can’t plan for those.
Tap lessons!!! I would never have thought of that. I suppose they paid off for Fred Astaire…maybe not many other people?
I’ve had a couple of subscriptions that offer a better deal if you buy a whole year upfront, and then I didn’t enjoy them as much as I’d hoped, and I wished I’d just done a month to see whether I liked them or not. I sure hope I’ve learned my lesson! In fact, I think I need to make 2026 the year of getting my subscriptions under control!
That is the tricky thing about buying a year-long anything. It is only a better deal if you use it. Sometimes paying monthly ends up being more economical. I know some people only subscribe to certain streaming services a few months a year when certain things are on. In the end, it would be a lot cheaper to go monthly in that instance.
Oh my goodness Elisabeth, I have the exact same gym fail! I got excited finding a cheap gym membership with a 12 month commitment (why did I agree to a lock in contract?!) I was SO confident I would go. And then I got sick, busy, travelled, and then it just seemed… too late to start. Which makes NO sense. Definitely a frugal and exercise fail!
I am in the same position; I could theoretically go back now (I have access until into January but…blergh. It feels like a failure to go now which IS THE WRONG ATTITUDE, I know).
So relatable!!!
The visual of shoveling money out the front door with a back hoe is powerful.
We do buy things during the year on a as-needed basis- shoes, pajamas, other clothing.
I honestly do my best to look for bargains but sometimes it takes mental space and time, and sometimes you get what you pay for.
Don’t really have a recent fail… but I did buy a pack of spa passes to that Korean spa and sauna, but I have two years to use them so I have to go ten times in two years. I think I can do it.
Yes, to looking for deals definitely taking up headspace. Sometimes it really is NOT worth it.
If you have some spare spa passes let me know; I can help you use them up, haha!
Well it makes you extra relatable that you even have some frugal fails! We can’t all be perfect and you’ve saved enough in other ways to give you a budget of sorts for fails! It is hard to buy a punch pass and not use them, though! I definitely have had times when I did not use a gym membership enough to make it worth the cost. Then I had kids and haven’t had a gym membership since! I have underutilized other memberships, though, like the Children’s Museum. I think we went enough to make it worth the cost to the gifter but we could have gone way more. But I could not go on my own with both kids and maintain my sanity so we went far less than ideal! It turns out I just really do not like that museum so now I know to ask for a different membership! Like the Science Museum where I can actually leave Paul unattended for a bit if need be which makes a 2:1 museum visit much easier.
I used to only buy 1 starbucks latte/week. I have way overspent there lately and have bought 3 lattes in the last 5 days… but I enjoyed the heck out of them and needed the extra caffeine to power me through book fair volunteering. And I bought Taco an expensive cake pop this am even though he also had a donut for breakfast. But he associates SBUX with cake pops, so if I was going to stop and get a coffee on the way to his school, he was not going to be happy to not get a cake pop out of the deal. At least he ate every crumb? The worst is when we buy things and they don’t eat them. But I can’t eat their leftovers since they are germy + I can’t eat gluten!!
I just did my post on Taco turning 5 and opted to post before we give him presents because people might be appalled by how little he gets from us… We got him a lego set and lite brite and then Paul picked out a Bluey book for him at the book fair. We actually did not buy a present for him for his birthday for the first 2-3 years of his life because he got so many gifts from others plus he had no idea who gave him what so we figured, why give him a present if he doesn’t realize what came from whom!!
I feel like I should have a line-item just for fails!
Sometimes it can be hard to know how practical a certain membership will be. The Children’s Museum sounds great on paper, but I can see why it wasn’t ideal in practice.
I feel like Starbucks and other things like that often get a lot of attention for ways to save money, but I also think that they can provide a disproportionate amount of enjoyment. In that case, they’re a great investment! I also think sometimes, especially for savers like us, it can mean a lot to tell ourselves we deserve a splurge. You really cherish those Starbucks experiences and so I say go for it!!!!
Ha. No shade from me EVER about the number of gifts. Lite Brit brings back sooo many memories.
I used to keep extra gifts my kids received when they were little and give them to them at other times in the year.
Happy Birthday to Will <3