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Crafty Ways Patience Pays

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Perhaps in some alternate universe, crafty ways patience pays would be more lucrative than stock, real estate, or busted-up bonds.

In this universe, patience pays is an investment that is fleeting and forgotten.

In the land of instant coffee, InstaPot, and Instagram, patience is adulting in action.

“Patience doesn’t mean passivity or resignation, but power. It’s an emotionally freeing practice of waiting, watching, and knowing when to act.” Heck yeah, Judith Orloff M.D. at Psychology Today!

On more than one occasion, if I put on actual pants instead sweatpants and muster the might of patience, the reward is worth the wait.

Automatic Avoidance

When an item is loved to death, which happens in my frugal life, I infuse patience with a shopping moratorium.

It’s easy to pull up my computer and type in any desire or whim into the interwebs. Happily, it will spit out 5 pages of shopping results that can be filtered by price and date.

At one point, people had to wait for catalogs to show up, comb through them, order, and then eventually receive their purchase. Now, I can order something and receive it in 2 days.

Fruit flies can colonize my kitchen in 2 days.

In the before times, there were actual barriers. Now, I have to fabricate them like a less corrupt version of Dolores Umbridge.

Is that even possible?!

One way I cast patience is by creating a pause. I think about how much I use the item. If it’s frequently, like short-sleeve workouts shirts, I’ll put a note on my phone. I keep a running shopping list of things that I plan to acquire but haven’t.

Sometimes items languish on the list for months before being bought.

Sometimes they aren’t bought and are erased instead. Plus, a shopping pause allows logic to override a whim. An avoided whim is how the house wins!

Delayed Gratification

I invested many months of time before I bought my winter hiking boots.

Since last winter, I needed new boots. I’d been rocking my insulated boots for over a decade. Considering their consistent use in the arctic tundra I call home, that lifespan is longer than a cellphone.

After many years of happy use, the tread went from slightly useful to impolitely useless. The kicker was when Mr. BuLL and I were hiking a slick trail. My treadless boots caused me to skid down the path and bump into a large, sharp, angry-angle iron that poked out of the ground.

My gaters were cut and my leg was bruised.

That final painful push was what I needed to search for new boots.

Hiking boots were put on a note on my phone, and I started researching. Boots are different since I bought my last pair. Once I found what I wanted, I delayed the purchase.

Some of that was intent, as I waited for discounted gift cards and for mu boots to go from out-of-stock to in-stock. Some of that was accident, as winter melted into summer and life continued in bigger, broader directions away from winter hiking.

Crafty ways patience pays is that the many delays leveraged tiny advantages into big savings. Between 2 gift cards I won, a purchased discount gift card, and a price match found while waiting for the sales staff, I bought $229.95 boots for $44.94. I paid 20% of their value.

From the downhill event to money well spent, it was a minimum of 6 months. Probably longer. Along the way, I saved money and built anticipation too.

Post-purchase, I spent the next few days walking around to ensure the fit was right. Then, I rubbed wax into the leather for protection and extra water resistance. Once, I accidentally grabbed them for a summer hiking trip but quickly put them back because their insulation would’ve created a searing foot sauna. Even my unconscious was excited to break in the new boots.

Anticipation turned a necessary purchase into something that dripped with excitement and oozed enthusiasm.

Growth Happens

Smaller purchases like clothes and boots can benefit from delayed purchases, but bigger expenses like homes and retirement accounts are crafty ways patience pays for long-term growth.

Slowly chipping away at a mortgage or retirement requires a different kind of patience.

Not the short, shiny brilliance of a few months of effort but the long-haul sheen of years’ worth of persistence for a fully funded retirement account, or a house is paid in full.

Trying to forecast the future and predict the price of freedom is a challenging feat. Then once a number is guesstimated, small payments are collected. The required payment is made, once, twice, or thrice a month depending on the payment schedule. Yet, the payment is made 3 days out of 30 yet it consumes more thought time than processing time.

As much as I would like to pay the balance in full like a credit card bill, I would have to bankrupt one to cover the other. Bankrupting my future for my home sounds as appealing as bankrupting my home for my future.

Instead, patience is infused, and like other sentient beings, I hope I’ll be sane by the end.