For the past few years I’ve made an effort to track our spending and try to save money. I think we’ve done a great job at reducing our debt and building a good savings. We’ve also managed to purchase a home and also own an acre of land which we plan to build our “dream house” on in a few years. We’ve managed to do this by watching our spending and being blessed with great jobs.

For the past 8 years I’ve packed my lunch at least 4 of the 5 days of the work week. I usually drink the office coffee and only occasionally treat myself to some Gourmet coffee. We also try to eat dinner at home or go for fast food restaurants. We have a planned budget and for the most part stick to it, however recently I realized that maybe I’m not as frugal as I thought.

We’re in the middle of some construction projects at our work which we volunteered to do during our not so busy season. We’re tearing down walls, building walls, laying ceramic tile, ripping up carpet, putting up molding and painting.

After using a roller the entire day I pulled it off and tossed it in the trash. Take note it was an all purpose roller from a hardware store that probably cost about $1.00. A co-worker asked why did you throw the roller away, you know you can clean those out and use them again? Sure, I could have spent 15 minutes cleaning out the roller and using it again tomorrow after it dried, but was it really worth it?

I’ve tried cleaning out rollers before and from my experience they never work as good as a new one and besides, it’s $1.00. He informed me he had rollers that he had been using for years.

Maybe I should have saved the roller. I should have taken 15 minutes of my time and cleaned out the roller to use the next day. I could have saved the company $1.00. Any thoughts?