We are frugal not cheap

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My husband and I are fairly frugal people but I wouldn't say we are cheap. We spend money on things we feel we need to and there are some things we will buy name brand. A big thing we spend more money on is shoes. We have tried buying off-brand shoes for our son once and he destroyed them in a month. We can't buy cheap Walmart shoes for him because we would be spending more money in the long run. We had these twins in our classroom whose grandparents are raising them and their older brother and they are literally buying them name brand shoes every few months because they purposely destroy their shoes. I've seen them taking scissors to their shoes and in that case, I would say it may be better if they did buy them off brand shoes. Nothing irritates me more as a parent than a kid intentionally destroying their shoes and clothes. Kids have no clue how much their stuff costs. It's one thing if it's an accident it's another if it's intentional. I've seen other kids who have somehow magically made their off brand shoes last all school year and couldn't figure out how. My son wore them out so fast. I only buy them now when they're on sale for three or five dollars as a backup pair for my son or for when he has to do something where he could get his good ones dirty. Another thing I've started buying name brand are backpacks. Most of my son's elementary years we were going through three backpacks a year because they would wear out or break and when I did the math it made more sense to buy a nicer one. We bought him a better one for forty or fifty dollars last year and it has lasted him two years. We did the math three book bags a year at twenty dollars a piece is sixty dollars so even if it lasted a year we would be ahead but it lasted two so that's 120 dollars. It doesn't look like it will get us through a third year. We aren't quite sure how he is ruining them so fast but I think it may be with how much he stuffs it and then sits it down on concrete so the bottom of it is wearing out. We may try a little more expensive one this year and see if it lasts longer. We buy almost all store-brand food with a few exceptions of things like boxed mac n cheese, and a few other things we are picky about. We have tried some store brands of things we weren't sure about and some have turned out great and others haven't. We actually prefer Annie's boxed mac n cheese over Kraft and I think Annie's is slightly more expensive it's not a lot more expensive. We buy store brands in almost anything we can except when it comes to a few of our favorite things. We do a lot of Aldi shopping lately which is usually more affordable depending on what it is we want. We also do a lot of dollar tree shopping but some things are cheaper at Walmart depending on what it is you are looking for. My husband used to say I should be on "The Price is Right" because I was usually really good at guessing about what we were spending. I pay close attention to prices. Once during a baby shower, we had to guess how much everything cost and then add up the total, and whoever guessed the closest would win I was a dollar off so I won. The irony is my son wasn't even a baby at that point but I was always careful about spending on baby things when he was a baby so I remembered the prices. I could tell a lot of the people at the baby shower never had to be careful about what they spent. When my son was a baby we didn't have much so I saved wherever I could but I was never able to use off brand diapers for him we tried but they gave him a rash and we learned some brands wouldn't hold overnight like LUVS worked great during the day but wouldn't hold overnight for him and he always managed to pee out the side of Huggies so we had to use Pampers. I just remember the struggle really well when he was little. I have always made sure my son was dressed nice then and now but I've always bought things on clearance, or at stores like TJ Maxx, or when he was a baby I bought a lot of his clothes secondhand because he outgrew them so fast. I had a lot of people come up to me and tell me he was dressed so cute. I knew so many people who were paying top dollars to make sure their kids were dressed to the nines meanwhile my kid was wearing secondhand clothes and clearance clothes. I never understood why people went all out to dress their kids in expensive clothes their kid was only going to outgrow in a few months. Even when my husband and I got married we didn't have a big wedding we got married at the courthouse with a few people there and my sister threw us a party even though we told her she didn't have to she said she'd combine it with our mom's birthday so it wouldn't be just for us so we reluctantly agreed. We really didn't want or expect anything. I know some people want big weddings and if you have the money to do that all the power to you but there's no reason to go into debt throwing a big wedding. The wedding is just a party the marriage is what counts but that's just my opinion. There are times when you should spend some money if it comes to quality or if it's for a good reason but I will say there's nothing wrong with store brand in most things, weddings are great but you shouldn't blow your whole life savings on one, remember that sometimes if you are paying more you may be saving in the long run. Sometimes it is about durability like in the case of shoes and book bags. Most of my husbands and my money go to bills because despite trying to save money everything keeps going up in price and we live in an older house that costs more to heat and cool but we don't live directly in town so our rent is still cheaper than in town. We rent a house though, so we still pay more in bills than we would end up paying for rent and a few utilities at an apartment but this is another area we splurge on because we have a yard and a few more freedoms we wouldn't have in an apartment in town. We still pay less to rent our house than any houses or apartments would rent for there it's just that our gas and electricity are outrageous because of how much it takes to heat and cool but that said we'd still pay more for a house in town with the rent on them almost twice our rent here plus we'd still be paying a lot of utilities so in the long run we are still saving. Like I said sometimes it's worth it to pay more for certain things. Us being able to live in a house is one of those things.