'Cuz I'm a Gambler and I Only Play the Game My Way

When it comes to wasting money, I've always thought I was pretty good at avoiding significant monetary losses. My first trip to the racetrack in Ruidoso, New Mexico, began and ended with me betting $6 on 3 different horses. Not a single horse placed.  $6 down the drain. When we go to Vegas, I give myself $80 to play the roulette wheel.  I either lose it all or come home a few hundred dollars heavier. But $80 is the max I allow myself.

But lately I've been putting a lot of effort in to being thrifty and stretching our family's dollars as far as they will possibly go. I clip coupons, buy the store specials, stick my list, and pretty much keep our expenses trim.

Two of the items that we all have to buy is trash bags and toilet paper.  I absolutely hate to pay $6 for 30 trash bags or $7 for 6 rolls of toilet paper.  Those two things always seem overpriced to me.  Okay, okay. I didn't wage war on the toilet paper because, let's face it, who really wants to? So I pay a higher price for a very good brand and be done with it.  But the trash bags?  Too expensive. If they guaranteed me that the bags held up well until they made it to the dump and then disintegrated quickly into healthy earth loving mulch, then the price wouldn't bother me so much. Yeah right. I've waged war on the trash bags.  I just bought my first package of store brand trash bags.

This is where the gamble comes in.  I'm either out the $3 for crappy bags or I just saved my family $3.  It's a crapshoot no matter what I do.

Guess what?  The store brand is durable and comes with the fancy drawstring tie/handle.

How smart am I?