Why We Spent $850 on a Barbecue

We recently purchased an $850 barbecue and when I told a family member, the first thing she said to me was “that’s a lot of money – I thought you were frugal!”.

What she didn’t understand is that we were being frugal by spending that much on a barbecue.

Let me start at the beginning…

A few weeks ago, we were preparing to make dinner on the barbecue. I was greatly looking forward to grilled vegetables and chicken – this was the first time using the barbecue since last summer.

So, you can imagine my dissapointment when my husband went outside to get the food on the grill and came right back inside, saying that the barbecue was completely rusted and unuseable.

That was a sad day.

What went wrong…

The mistake that we made was a year earlier when we purchased that barbecue.

We didn’t do our research. It was late spring and we just wanted to cook outdoors. we wanted burgers and sausage and chicken – all done on the grill.

The problem was that we only had about $150 to spend. We ended up purchasing a cheap, $125 barbecue from Zellers without much thought.

The result was a barbecue that was incredibly difficult to put together, cooked unevenly, and rusted to death in a year’s time.

Starting over…

Thanks to a bonus from my husband’s work, we were able to afford a much better barbecue this time around.

However, instead of just running out and buying whatever we could find, Richard spent hours researching the best barbecues out there.

After a few trips to stores with barbecue sales, we found a few Weber barbecues to consider. Richard did more online research and found that the one we were leaning toward the most was a very good quality barbecue and the price was actually pretty decent.

So, we bought it. With taxes, we spent around $850 for our Weber barbecue. It’s certainly one of the most expensive things we’ve ever purchased, but you know what? It was worth it.

There are some things you should condiser paying full price for, and I now believe a barbecue is one of them.

Have you ever purchased an expensive, but quality item instead of an inexpensive, but poor quality item?