Best Purchase You Made (Durable Consumer Goods)

[free4pr]

I personally can't see where a digital camera "saves" money. Ink is very expensive for printers. And, photo printers use alot of ink. I love my film SLR camera and have no desire to go digital. I think people will be sorry years down the road when most of their pics are stored on some outdated disc or the homemade photos fade. Just my 2 cents.

I don't print my own pictures. I wait for a sale and order them. Last week there was a coupon code for 100 free prints! I paid just under $5.00 (for shipping) for the photo finishing and shipping of the equivalent of 4 rolls of film! So I SAVED on the price of film, developing, the price of having them saved on a CD-Rom, and gas to take them to and from the pharmacy!

I used to kill a roll of film every 3 weeks taking photos of my babies.

Did I mention the time it'd take to drop them off and pick them up. MY time is money!

[disneysteve]

the price of having them saved on a CD-Rom

You should still burn your files to a CD as a back-up, but you can do that at home for next to nothing. Blank CDs are dirt cheap, pennies for a disc that holds a few hundred images.

[boefixepa]

I'm with you on the digital camera. Half the time I didn't even make it to the store with the film! After hanging onto a roll for 4 years that needed developing I finally tossed it. I have two CD's full from the same trip (taken by my uncle with the digital camera) and I don't think mine would be that great anyway.

My wedding pics were all digital and I LOVED IT. The photographers just gave me DVD's and I can email them, post them, get prints of them, tweak them....whatever! I also have TONS more pics than I would have if it was film!

[tabbycat31]

I personally can't see where a digital camera "saves" money. Ink is very expensive for printers. And, photo printers use alot of ink. I love my film SLR camera and have no desire to go digital. I think people will be sorry years down the road when most of their pics are stored on some outdated disc or the homemade photos fade. Just my 2 cents.

I don't print pics myself. If I want prints of my pics, I take my memory card to Walmart and use their machines. I get photo quality prints for 15 cents each.


I take a LOT of pictures..... whenever I go to an event, I snap away. Since going digital, I've also taken pics of things I never would have done with film. I enjoy taking pics of things like flowers, birds, etc that I would have never tried with film.

I have an online photo album website, taht I do pay for hosting (it's $24.95 for the year). I could go to an ad supported free one, but there's too much effort in moving 5 years of photos. And I like going to a website WITHOUT any ads.

ETA I never email photos. If I want to show someone the photo link, then I will give them the URL. I despise attachments in my email and I never send any with them (unless it's a resume).

[disneysteve]

Now that we've dissected digital photography, let's get back to the original question.

A purchase my wife and I made early on, right around the time we got married while we were still renting a home, was an upright freezer. This has more than paid for itself over the years as it allows us to buy in bulk, stock up on things when there is a really good sale, cook in large batches and freeze single serving portions, etc. In 15 years, we've probably saved enough money on orange juice alone to cover the cost of the freezer. Plus, my cooking and freezing food, we often avoid going out to eat on days when we're pressed for time or simply don't feel like cooking because all we have to do is pop a container of homemade soup or lasagna into the microwave and we have a hot meal in a couple of minutes with easy clean up.

[catlinye_maker]

The last time we needed a new stove (years ago) I took the overflowing change jars and cashed them all in. It was just enough to buy a Frigidaire smooth-top stove and to this day I still love it. Cooking messes clean up with a plastic scrubbie and dish soap, it simmers like a dream, has a self-cleaning oven. I'd never go back to a coil stove. And despite all the warnings about using special pans on the smooth-top stoves, we use our old cast iron with neither scratches nor uneven cooking.

(These days, since I'm more fiscally savvy now, the change jars get cashed in more regularly and transferred to a savings account.)