Our Frugal Friends use a Mac

I was talking to a frugal friend of ours a couple days ago and the subject turned to computers. I was shocked to learn that they had a Mac in their house as opposed to a PC. The reason I was shocked was because this family is VERY frugal. They live in a very modest house, carry no debt and minimize their spending more than just about anyone I know. While I try to be frugal, they are far more frugal than I.

A little background about them:

-They are married with 3 kids, a dog and a cat
-They live in a 1300 square foot house
-They drive older cars with no payments
-They only shop at discount stores
-They wear a combination of “hand me downs” and discount clothing
-They don’t have cable
-They don’t have a home phone
-They use a prepaid cel phone
-They don’t take expensive vacations

You get the idea. The bottom line is that they are very careful with their money, which I find admirable. I guess that’s why I was so surprised to find out that they are using a Mac laptop. If you’ve done any comparison shopping, you’d know that the Mac is usually about twice the price of a PC laptop. The only reason that I don’t have a Mac is because I can’t bring myself to pay the additional cost. There’s no question that Mac’s are good quality and I’m not saying that they aren’t a wise purchase, but they are more expensive than PC’s, which is why I was surprised to discover that my friend owned one.

As we talked a bit, I said, “I didn’t know you were Mac users. Have you always used Mac’s?” She said, “Yep, we’ve always used Macs because Jason’s brother owns a company that only uses Macs and he always gives us one of their old ones when they upgrade.” That’s when it all made sense.