Recently, I encountered something called the "cheapness spectrum". Cheapness, in terms of spending habits, is a relative thing, and it can be formed on a spectrum that goes from least cheap to most cheap, like this: Free-minded spending, reasonable-spending, thrift, cheap, dirt cheap, and cheap-ass cheap.
A free-minded spender would be someone who spends money mostly for convenience, doesn't think about the amount they're spending and whether the product was worth it. A free-minded spender would very likely go in to a store and grab whatever they needed, pay, and leave. (I used to be like this a long, long time ago. looking at my life now, I'm not sure how i feel about the change -3-)
The biggest difference between reasonable-spending and thrift is that, the reasonable-spender would buy things from department stores, they would think about the price and the worth but will most likely still pay the full price for something they truly loved or really needed. Thrift people do this way less, and they like thrift-stores like Value Village and Salvation Army. This is understandable, why settle for the full price when it might go on sale later, or you could find something similarly attractive for less? And another difference is that, thrift people like the word "Sale", very much.
Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty and talk about cheap. You might be wondering why there are so many different kinds of cheap, aren't all cheap people just cheap? During my 24 years of living with Asians and encountering all sorts of cheap, let me assure you there are differences. If a thrift person goes shopping for a hundred times, once he will buy something he loves despite a too-high price, a cheap person would do that only once in three hundred shopping trips. The cheap person may consider sale prices, but they would not instantly drop their cash just 'cause a shirt went down from $70 to $35, if they see a red tag that says "additional 30% on top of sales", then maybe. If there's another tag that says "special day, everything 50% off on top of the additional 30% on top of sales", even better. A cheap person is way more likely to bargain (even if the seller didn't post any signs that says 'reasonable-offers accepted' or whatever), they do it, 'cause why not?
Also, don't wanna sound racist but, eight out of ten cheap people are Asians.
Now here's dirt-cheap (Are you still reading this? Geez you must be really cheap~ ) How do I sum up dirt-cheap.... hmm, I guess you could say, cheap people are everywhere, but dirt cheap people can only be found dwelling in a few unexpected corners. Places such as gotten-from-lying-to-the-government-about-income government houses. These people have gotten so cheap to the point they abandoned some of their morals. These people have spent every single second of their lives thinking about how to get the most out of their money. It's actually kind of painful to live with them if you're not one of them, 'cause that's
all they ever talk about. I once went out to eat fried chicken with a dirt-cheap family, and they sat down in this tiny KFC getting into a fiery argument on whether they want ten drumsticks with two dollars, or seven chicken thighs with three dollars. Then they came up with a bunch of other theories about how they could save money if they bought this one combo of just chicken thighs with another one with just drumsticks or whatever. What seemed like an infinite amount of time had past. I don't even remember how everything worked out, but only that after coming out of KFC smelling like I worked there for a whole day.
It might be hard to believe, but there is a level that's even beyond dirt-cheap, and that's cheap-ass cheap. In a way, you could say that cheap-ass and dirt-cheap are equally cheap. If dirt-cheap people cheated for their cheap, then cheap-ass people worked for their cheap. Cheap-ass cheap people are life-style cheaps. They pretty much do everything and anything that's even remotely possibly done by themselves, by themselves. They mill their own rice, grow their own weed (the medicinal kind. only the dirt-cheaps grow the other kind [so they can sell it]), make their own fabric, knit their own socks, built their own bed, and sometimes even their own house. They don't care if they're dead-tired from worked an entire day or night. Basically to them, money is more important than health.
OK. I think I wrote everything I wanted to about this cheap spectrum. Man, why'd I spend so much time doing this? Is anybody even reading? Anyways.... I'm sure we all have diff opinions on what we define as cheap so, if you're super bored and 无聊, you could make your own spectrum! You could send me your spectrum and we could put them together and even write a book about this: "The Science of Cheap".
On this spectrum, I fall mostly under thrift, with occasional drifts to cheap, where do you fall?
