Secondhand is Firstrate!

A friend of mine e-mailed me this story after seeing the new blog. It's a great example of how secondhand items are a great way to save money.

Everyone needs un-frugal friends with lots of money! Our friend's Xbox 360 wasn't working right, but wasn't doing the red ring of death that Microsoft will fix. He wanted to play Rock Band so he just went out and bought a new one. He gave us his old one, and we turned it on and off till it did the 3 red rings, sent it in, and got it fixed. Now it works perfectly!

Some good friends of ours gave our eldest son a free super single waterbed last summer. It's got lots of character from having been passed around to family and friends for the past 30 years or so, but he loves it. All we had to do was buy new sheets for it. (This waterbed also set off a chain reaction of home improvements--we decided to paint his bedroom before plunking the waterbed down for who knows how long, and ended up painting just about the entire interior of our house, but that's a story for another time.)