Saving money is a good thing.  Cutting costs is a good thing.

As with most good things, however, moderation is important.  It’s possible to eat too much pumpkin pie (another good thing) and it’s possible to over-economize.

Let me start by giving you an example of cost-cutting gone wild.  I found this “tip” on the website of the fairly famous Economides family (a/k/a America’s Cheapest Family).  These folks are known far and wide for their ability to control household expenses down to a bare minimum and they picked this money-saving tip from a reader to put on their site:

Stick little slivers of soap into old pantyhose. A guy in Kansas (my home state) recommends saving your little chunks of bar soap that are left after frequent use.  When you have a fistful of them, you can sew them up inside a little pocket made out of used pantyhose.  Apparently, that makes for a fine recycled/reconstructed bar of soap.

So, what is my objection to this money saving tactic and others like it?  The focus on pennies doesn’t account for the value of one’s time.

I don’t know about you, but my time does have value.  If I was going to clock in at a workplace every day, I’d expect to get paid for my time.  When I do a project for a client, I expect payment based (in part) on the amount of time it takes to complete the job.  They didn’t come up with that “time is money” thing out of the blue.  It’s true.  Your time, my time, even the Economides’ time has value.

And I value my time more than cost-cutting tricks like these can possibly offer.

While we’re on the subject of old adages, don’t forget that you can be “penny wise and pound foolish”.

Think I’m being a little too hard on this soap-saving scheme?  Let’s run a few numbers:

I can buy Zest bar soap from an online vendor for $.73 a bar.  If I shopped around, I could probably get it for less.  So, after several weeks of good hygiene, let’s say I’ve carefully accumulated all of the “soap slivers” and am ready to sew my little pantyhose pouch.  I’m going to gather the shards, break out some needle and thread (or a sewing machine) and retrieve some saved used pantyhose that are hiding somewhere around the house.  I’m going to grab the scissors and get to work.

How quickly do I have to assemble this pantyhouse scrubber to make it a reasonable decision?  Remember, we’re doing all of this to save a whopping $.73.

If you value your time away from work at the equivalent of only $18 per hour, that makes every second worth half a cent.  That means this whole project, including keeping the soap around, assembling everything, running back and forth from the bathroom to your preferred “sewing area” and all of the rest needs to happen in 2:26.  That’s TWO minutes and some change.  Forget about it.  It won’t happen.  Just gathering everything up will take that long.  You can’t make it worth your time.

Even if you could do this soap project in two minutes, we haven’t accounted for opportunity cost.  What kind of things are you NOT doing while you’re playing with soap shards in hopes of saving $.73?  Are they inherently more valuable than making old pantyhose into soap holders?  Are they more fun?  More profitable?  I’d certainly hope so.

This post isn’t really just a criticism of the Soap Shard Stocking.  There’s a larger moral to the story.  You should definitely try to cut costs whenever you can do so intelligently.  Saving money is a great way to assist in your personal financial development.  Economizing is great.  You must, however, understand the difference between smart economizing and spending dollars of time to get pennies in return.

In other words, time is money.  Your time has value.  Think about that before you end up spending thousands of dollars worth of our most precious commodity–time–in order to save just a little dough.

Note: There is a conservation-related benefit to the Soap Shard Stocking.  However, we’re discussing financial issues here, not environmental ones.  Depending on how you value conservation, this particular idea might make sense.  Unfortunately, many of the penny pinching tips you’ll find have no environmental value but offer plenty of time-wasting opportunities.