+- Woodnet Forums (https://www.forums.woodnet.net)
+-- Thread: How does everyone save for tools (/showthread.php?tid=7337924)
How does everyone save for tools - Arlin Eastman - 03-05-2018
Me I steal my wife's change and put it in my piggy bank and get about two dollars a month. I have an allowance of $50 but since my shop was put up it is going to pay the bank for it.
So how do you guys do it?
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Bill Wilson - 03-05-2018
Sorry Arlin. That information is classified. If I told you, my wife would have to kill me.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Stwood_ - 03-05-2018
We rathole cash. Not just for tools.
Course I don't buy hardly any tools anymore. I have all of them.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - MichaelMouse - 03-05-2018
(03-05-2018, 01:08 PM)Arlin Eastman Wrote: Me I steal my wife's change and put it in my piggy bank and get about two dollars a month. I have an allowance of $50 but since my shop was put up it is going to pay the bank for it.
So how do you guys do it?
Things have been tough since I quit going TDY. Fortunately all the big stationary tools were purchased before I retired from that job. Soviets pretty much picked up room/board when I flew with them.
Now SWMBO allows me 50% of profit from shows/sales.
I have inflated my expenses a bit here and there, I must confess.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - MarkSingleton - 03-05-2018
While it sounds easy, the main thing is to have a fund and NOT touch it.
When you find a bit extra, stick it in that fund. I make a few bucks by
recycling cans and bottles. LOML and I both put all our loose change
in a jar and occasionally I will stack/wrap it. Goes into the fund. If I sell
a tool, goes into the fund. Etc. It adds up over time. The main thing
is NOT to touch it, until that day arrives, as mine did the other day
(see my post about that) you KNOW that you have pinched and scraped
to get that fund able to take the hit, and it is very satisfying to make a
good score as we all know.
LOML knows I have a fund. She does NOT know how much is in it at
any given time.
Some things a guy just keeps to himself.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - joe1086 - 03-05-2018
Every project my wife decides we need includes an additional 10% for tools. Hit the jackpot this time....we're doing a bathroom remodel and in the last few weeks I got a nice tile saw, new drill/driver set (not much more than a couple of replacement batteries), and a laser level. Although I did tell her that I planned on putting the tile saw on Craigs List after I was finished with it.
Start new projects that SHE wants...
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Cecil - 03-05-2018
(03-05-2018, 01:46 PM)Bill Wilson Wrote: Sorry Arlin. That information is classified. If I told you, my wife would have to kill me.
I am no longer married. The tools did have something to do with that! It was more that tools, obviously, but they were a factor.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Cecil - 03-05-2018
(03-05-2018, 01:08 PM)Arlin Eastman Wrote: Me I steal my wife's change and put it in my piggy bank and get about two dollars a month. I have an allowance of $50 but since my shop was put up it is going to pay the bank for it.
So how do you guys do it?
First, I buy mostly used tools. Sometimes the folks on Woodnet mess me up, by posting great deals, which I cannot pass up, but mostly used.
I live in a area of the country where housing is dirt cheap. People are leaving the high taxed rust belt states in droves, leaving a supply/demand curve for housing in favor of the buyer. I can spend what would be housing budget in other areas of the country, on tools. Eventually that will end, because I will join the leavers when I retire, if not before.
I don't necessarily budget for tools. I budget for discretionary spending. Tools comes out of that piece of the pie.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Bibliophile 13 - 03-05-2018
Once I built up a workable collection of tools, my wife and I made a decision that the hobby needed to be self-sustaining at the very least. Ideally, it should be an asset to the household economy, not a liability.
So if I need a new tool, then I need to first build and sell something. It's not all that hard to do, and there are a few items (wooden spoons, spatulas, tobacco pipes, marking gauges, mallets) that I make on a semi-regular basis in order to keep the hobby solvent. Sometimes I even make a profit! That goes in the date-night fund. (That said, I need to take my wife out on a date soon. Anybody want to buy a marking gauge?)
It's not just the woodworking that gets this treatment, though. We decided early on that we were not going to invest large amounts of money into hobbies unless they made an equal contribution to the household in some way--whether that's in terms of money, health, intellect, or aesthetic beauty. So we work wood, tend a garden, play musical instruments, and read books aloud to each other. Those hobbies all enrich the household in some distinctive way. I don't have any way to quantify each hobby's contribution to our family economy, but the contributions are real nonetheless.
RE: How does everyone save for tools - Cecil - 03-05-2018
(03-05-2018, 04:33 PM)Bibliophile 13 Wrote: ... That goes in the date-night fund...
I found the secret! I should have learned that years ago.