This is what we are up against.Follow

How so?

You're using an incredibly restrictive definition of frugal. Frugality isn't about total money spent, but about spending the least amount for what you get (not being wasteful). It's about "bang for buck". If you spend $10 on supplies to make one batch of ice cream and ***** it up, you've spent $10 for zero result. If you buy a second $10 worth of supplies and make a batch of ice cream, you've gotten one batch for $20. Assuming your objective was to have a batch of ice cream, the second option is actually more frugal than the first.

As you make more successful batches the relative "cost" of failing with the first decreases. Obviously, this doesn't mean you rush out to buy a hundred batches of ice cream, but if we're assuming that the family would make several batches over a period of time anyway, then this isn't costing more money than they would have spent anyway. Given this situation, if one family member (like the father) who is willing to sacrifice flavor for cost, keeps the bad batch in the freezer and puts that in his bowl while providing new/good ice cream to the rest of the family, then he's able to sit with his family with all of them eating ice cream together, while making up for the loss of the initial batch.

Net effect is that he regains the lost cost of the first batch. Obviously, he could do the same thing by just not eating ice cream, but if this was more of a social thing for the family, he might choose the course he did. Either way, it's still an example of frugality. He choose not to waste something which was (presumably) still edible and thus fulfilled the purpose of ice cream (it's cold), but just didn't taste great. He did so in a way that protected his family from the cost of the initial mistake (they weren't forced to either eat bad tasting ice cream or go without).

Why is this a problem? Why is this such a horrible thing that he and his entire family should be mocked for it?



I'm responding to people attacking someone for relating an amusing story about their grandfather. But it's my motives that should be questioned instead?

Ok, I thought you were saying Prius for the low gas costs, but if you were a minimal driver, gas costs are a low component of your costs comparative to vehicle price, so if you had a cheap truck that would be more economical.

It only appears that way because you're trying to use the term so loosely that you're using it wrong and hoping no one notices, which isn't exactly a new tactic. The hell you taking about? You created a hypothetical possible scenario trying to make the actual story that was presented seem better, and now you're defending your assumption like it were reality, all the while not realizing that it's you being criticized, not Romney. You're like the Jehova's Witnesses of the Republican party.