My Uncle passed away a year ago, and I really miss him. He definitely was someone that God really broke the mold on, and I never quite knew anyone else like him. We talked about saving money alot, and he thought I wasn’t cutting corners enough, and I wasn’t afraid to tease him about some of his frugal adventures.
One in particular I remember well. He would never buy a candy bar, because it was much cheaper by weight or volume to buy a bag of chocolate morsels. I have fond memories as a child eagerly eating a handful of those. It was a way for my parents to give me chocolate without me eating the whole big bar, and I was happy with that. My uncle did me one better. He drove around with them in a paper cup in the cup holder of the car and ate them as he drove.
That seemed pretty sweet, until he realized that chocolate morsels, because they are used in baking, don’t have any extra coating to prevent them from melting in your hand. The car in the summer had the aroma of chocolate, which seemed custom made for a foodie, until you put your hand down and got melted chocolate all over it.
I guess, in the end, it cost him more, as most of the chocolate was rendered useless, unless we went to get an ice cream and then dumped the cup over it, and saved the 50 cents to a dollar twenty five disparity between a bowl of ice cream and a hot fudge sundae. Deduct the cost of driving around looking for chocolate morsels, and all we gained was an adventure, not the savings he set out to gain!
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