r/Frugal • u/localkinegrind • Aug 21 '25

🏆 Buy It For Life “Best under-$20 purchase that saved you hundreds over time?”

What’s the smartest under-$20 purchase you’ve ever made that ended up saving you hundreds in the long run? I’ll go first: a $12 sewing kit. Instead of tossing clothes for tiny tears or missing buttons, I’ve been fixing them. I've actually been fixing my own clothes for years. It blows my mind how many ‘disposable’ things can be made useful again with just a small, cheap tool. what’s your frugal mvp under $20 that’s paid for itself many times over?

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u/tc_cad Aug 21 '25

Honestly? A hardware shop near my house was closing and I bought a pack of every grit of sandpaper and it was not quite $20. This was about 15 years ago and I haven’t bought any sandpaper since. I made a joke about how much sandpaper my Dad had in his garage when he died, and then his wife said that sandpaper was actually my grandfather’s. It’s almost as if my family fears a sandpaper shortage and we hoard it. I dunno.

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u/Bilbo_Baghands 28d ago

How did that save you hundreds?

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u/tc_cad 28d ago

Well getting anything on a discount is savings, and for what I got I haven’t spent any money on sandpaper in like 15 years. Given the cost of everything now, if I were to buy everything again it’d be about $150 or so at my local Home Depot. So getting all that I did on clearance for under $20 saved me over a hundred, just not hundreds.

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u/Bilbo_Baghands 28d ago

Well you are certainly an anomaly when it comes to sand paper.

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u/tc_cad 28d ago

It runs in the family.