I have been known to want to cut corners. It drives my husband kind of crazy. Thankfully, for his sake and for mine, I have grown out of it for the most part. I should clarify that I have never cut a corner merely to be lazy. If there was one thing my mother taught me it was to do a job well the first time, and that has been a true piece of wisdom consistently. (For the record, she taught me much more than just that, and most of it was good to know. I hope to pass on more than this little piece of information to my own kids as they grow older.)

What I actually mean by cutting corners is that I want to save money where I can- also known as “being cheap”. While frugality is an admirable trait, being cheap winds up doing the opposite. It turns out that buying something cheap is rarely the better option. This doesn’t mean you should buy the most expensive option on the shelf. I rarely put anything with a brand name in my cart. Usually the store brand is good enough. It’s the really off brand that starts causing problems. When it’s miles cheaper than all the other kinds, and not on clearance for some good reason, you should really just say “no”.

For instance, I have learned that you can’t cut corners when it comes to packaging tape. If you try to buy the cheap packaging tape you will just wind up screwing yourself. It happens to me every time. The thing is that the cheap stuff is thinner. So as soon as you manage to pick at the edge enough to lift it, and then you pull some, it just can’t handle the resistance and it will tear until it is the width of dental floss, and it will continue to tear at that same, minimal width so long as you keep pulling. Trying to unravel all of that to get back to the wider tape is crazy-making, to say the least. What you wind up with is a giant wad of ripped up, cheap packaging tape before you throw up your hands and go out to buy some decent stuff. I have learned this the hard way more times than one. From trying to ship a box to a friend to trying to pack up our house, it never worked in my favor to cut the corner. I just wasted more time and more money. I had to learn to just say “no” sometimes.