Arkansas Blog

Until digital controls came along a washer or dryer was a simple thing to fix. I was amazed 25 years ago when I learned how easy it was to replace a belt on an electric dryer. About one hour of my unskilled time + a few basic tools. To replace a water pump on a washer took two hours.

I don't think toaster manufactures are required to keep parts around for repair,
esp since most of today's toaster makers are overseas and may not be in bidness
when the thing burns out.

Again, this is what's news in The Moron News of NWA.
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If I lived in Mayberry I would be a regular customer at Emmett's Fix-It Shop. It's like pulling teeth to get us to throw anything away. (You should see the garage.)

I haven't gotten too personally uptight about the financial crisis. We've always been pretty frugal, have no debt, always buy used cars, shop at garage sales, have (in the past) heated the house with a wood stove, etc. Of course I hope we don't all turn into the Joads, but I'm not too worried. I already know how to be not rich.

The people who will suffer most are the ones who put 100% of their energy into accumulating wealth, or especially the pretense of wealth. They live in monster houses and have triple garages filled with leased Hummers, Lexuses, and boats. 20 or 30% of their retirement is a much larger sum to fret over than what I have to lose. They've already been rudely awakened.

Most of the digitization of common household appliances was done not to benefit end users but rather to prevent the reverse engineering required for third party parts. Thank you Digital Millennium Copyright Act for preventing competition in the land of the free and home of the brave.

In accordance with our principles of free enterprise and healthy competition, I'm going to ask you two to fight to the death for it."
Monty Python

Don't know where you'd go to get a toaster repaired (IF you wished to) but do THANK Durham Electronics in LR for staying the course - you can actually get A/V stuff repaired there for a fair price, even tho' you can't buy much of it any more!!!!!!!!!
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I would like to see the paper report how the Sunday Jobs section (normally the biggest day by far) was only 3 pages. Not 3 pages both sides, just a folded single sheet of paper. The front page was the title page with no jobs.

The foreclosure section has been running 7 to 9 pages on Tuesdays which seems to be the day that has the most forecloseures.

Get a toaster repaired? Where? Five or six years ago I could have if I'd wanted to. I had an fix-it man who loved to tinker. A very good and pretty pricey -- for then -- electric heater? Five or ten bucks and it was good for another few years. Same thing with an electric fence charger that got fried by lightening. But he had to quit when he started having vision problems.
Pretty much the same thing with my since-completely-retired appliance repairman.
Pricey appliances? Not anymore in this house. I've gone both routes, pricey and cheap, cheap, cheap. Both have lasted about the same time, eight to ten years, although little plastic parts tend to break way too often, especially at $30 per. It makes more sense to me to spend $300 or $400 to get a new whatever than to pay in excess of $200 to repair an old one.
And I've gone the do it yourself route too. But the last time my dishwasher bellied up, the replacement part alone cost $140. Fergit it.
Of course I was spoiled by my father's refrigerator which lasted trouble free for more than 40 years and my first freezer, also trouble free, that lasted nearly 30 years.
And truth be told, they weren't the energy hogs that you might think. I can't say the same about appliances I bought in the 1980s.
Cars? Honey, let me tell you about the last vehicle I sold. It had 240,000 miles on it. The headliner was sagging and the paint was about washed off in places, but I loved that truck. Kept it for a year or more after we got a new one and actually liked to drive it better. But the insurance was killing us, so I sold it.
That was two years ago and I still see it around. The paint job looks a bit scruffier and I think the AC has bellied up again -- a recurrent problem from year one -- but it still scampers when you floor it. The driver managed to pull away from me. ME! That doesn't happen often.
In any case, more frugal because the times they have a-gotten tough? Nah. Like Hugh, I already "know how to be not rich."

I've been through hard times, even lost everything we owned under the Reagan rule.

I once told hubby, during a black time, that my idea of *rich* is being able to go to

the market and throw anything I want in the basket.

That said, I am rich today and even able to share.