I met an engineer whose wife told me he was frugal. She said cheap; I interpret.  Her example is that when they were first married, he drove a very old Volvo. Why spend the money on a new car? Unfortunately, the air conditioning didn’t work anymore. It could have been anything from needing a recharge to needing replaced, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that it cost money and time to even have someone look at the AC, a system that is not an essential characteristic of a vehicle.  The car will get you where you need to be – the function of the vehicle – without the air conditioning in working order.

The problem was multiplied by the fact that he had to park the car outside both at home and at work – in the sun, in the summer, in a southern state. This did not faze him, for he engineered a wonderful solution. To keep it in the shade and therefore, cool enough to drive, he cut out a piece of plywood approximately in the shape of the car as seen from a bird’s eye view, and lashed it to the car while parked. I am certain that he figured out a way to fold up the plywood with hinges in order to fit it in the car so that he could transport it from home to work and back again. This went well beyond those simple cardboard fold-ups for the windshield. This covered the entire car.  To that, I say with Spock, “Fascinating.”