November 15, 2017
I’m not normally a big fan of BF. I’ve not been out in the early hours of the morning since I last humored my woollyheaded friends who really really wanted to go to Best Buy and the mall over ten years back – I went along to keep the boys company and hang out.
These days I only shop online but I hear tell that this year, online sales will outpace sales at physical brick and mortar locations so with some good luck, the sales get better accordingly. I’m sharing my list here
- iPhone charging cable, preferably 6 ft. My Amazon Basics cord has been abused terribly and is about to snap in two. Can’t decide if this is due to user error or poor materials but I’m willing to take the blame.
- iPhone for PiC with as much memory as can be crammed into a hand computer. His hand me down phone is dying a slow and painful death. Mostly painful for me, the Home IT person on call.
- 8 TB external hard drive. I missed that Amazon sale during FinCon where it was running about $130 but I also didn’t have a chance to do some research on which one is compatible with both PCs and Macs since we use both.
- Fireproof safe.
- Portable generator. I’ve got my eye on one that’s about $1000, I suspect they won’t be having a sale on them but it’s worth checking just in case. If no sale, we’ll keep on waiting because I’m working on cash flow recovery.
- Husky Universal SAE and Metric Mechanics Tool Set, 60-Piece set
- (Only a want) Purely if there’s another $25 sale or the like: a new Kindle. Mine has been dead for over a year now.
- Edit to add: blank address labels! I print our own address labels to spare my hands and save on costs. Maybe Staples?
:: Are you watching the sales for anything particular? Have you seen any great deals on any of this stuff?
September 25, 2015
Mrs. Crackin’ the Whip and I are in agreement. Shopping for certain things – bras, underwear, swimsuits and jeans – are a special kind of hell. In my case, shopping for anything I have to wear is hell.
My preferred shopping MO is pretty direct: Need a thing? Buy that thing, on sale, with a coupon. Leave.
And that’s when I was young and foolish, brimming full of can-do enthusiasm. These days, I’m not willing to waste even a single drop of energy, much less the full tank needed to go to the store. Oh how I wish I were like a gas tank that could be refilled with a swipe of the credit card. Fill up on Number Me, please, and a spare jug to go!
A normal day is full of getting up, working, taking care of Inchworm, working, more Inchworm, eating, cleaning, and oh yes, working. Who has juice left for the full expedition that is shopping? Not I, said the perpetually-exhausted-even-before-a-kid-working-mom.
Going out means getting dressed, packing up (with the kiddo) in that narrow time we have between naps, driving to a store, navigating the parking, getting ourselves into the store, picking out non-hideous things and then trying it on. Getting dressed wipes me out, then you want my precious brain cells to think about whether something fits? NOPE. Ain’t happening.
As much as being an entirely minimalist live off the land type sounds appealing in theory (kinda) (except I still want running water and indoor plumbing and The West Wing and a washer/dryer), that’s not even remotely likely so the Internet and the online shopping it makes possible is the best answer this millennium has coughed up in the fight against chronic pain and fatigue.
As a chronic slippery slope personality, I make it work for my budget, not against it:
- I am ruthless about returning anything that’s not perfect. “Just ok” is not good enough. There’s no room and no budget for mediocrity!
- Free shipping/returns do not influence my “this is reasonable price point”
- Never click Purchase immediately after filling my cart. Since it’s online, I don’t feel the pressure of Buy it or Get Out Of The Darn Store NOW. There is artificial pressure: “sale ends soon!” or “limited to items in stock!” but there’s always another sale and I never need anything so badly that it has to be THAT ONE RIGHT NOW. Uh, except for the one time.
- CASHBACK (Mr. Rebates), CASHBACK (ebates), CASHBACK (credit card rewards).
Secondhand (hi, Craigslist!) is amazing for almost everything but not for clothes since my size has only recently been more normal and even that’s rarely ever in-store so the only reason to leave the house to shop is the free food samples at Costco or Trader Joe’s. Just as well. I have a theory that the more I’m exposed to the crappier side of human nature between work and shopping malls, the more likely it is I’ll explode, messily, and without warning.
Honestly, my online shopping habit is saving lives here. You’re welcome.
What’s your poison? Can you shop at thrift stores and is it as amazing as I imagine it to be? (Vintage! Designer! Well constructed! All for $5.99!)
December 3, 2014
Accidentally saving hundreds
Disclaimer: This bit isn’t a tutorial, it’s really a tale of my lapse of judgement.
Having always been so petite that I have historically spent just as much money on tailoring clothes than on the clothes themselves, I suffered from a self-induced delusion that I could pretty much avoid buying maternity clothes.
I’ll just transition to clothes a size larger, I thought.
I can make do with my own stuff, I thought.
A couple long shirts and unbuttoned pants will do, I thought.
Why waste the money for such a temporary thing? I thought.
So wrong.
For a few weeks, nothing was showing. Smugly calculating my savings, my reckoning crept up on me. It was a bit of shock to realize one day that sure, the pants didn’t have to be buttoned to stay up but good luck actually getting them on in the first place. The body does some WEIRD stuff when it’s creating a human and the thing that weirded me out the most was this protrusion. It wasn’t long before my belly was entering the room before I was and let me tell you, that’s just confusing.
I liked SaverSpender’s general guidelines; I didn’t want to spend a log of money or have a ton of clothes I couldn’t wear for more than three to six months, so with that in mind, I hit Target and Old Navy for a few basics (free shipping, cashback rebates, you know the drill).
The prices weren’t bad at all. Thick leggings were less than $20, soft extra-long tees were about $12. I even picked up a couple blousey things for about $15. All told, between sales and lower prices, I spent about $100 for two pairs of thick leggings, a tshirt, two tank tops, a long sleeve blouse and a long, lightweight coverup-type sweater.
Unfortunately, targeting (hah) only really comfortable things meant that I was just casually presentable in public. Definitely not professionally as I don’t believe leggings are pants and I hated the maternity jeans offered but I figured I had time to deal with it. (AKA, ostrich it out for a while longer).
Also wrong.
The weather turned on me in so many ways. It was too cold and wet for the leggings which soaked up water like it was dying of thirst, got really dirty in the splashing about, and then it was too hot for pants entirely. For warm weather, I tend to turn to dresses but all but one dresses stopped fitting. After getting so stuck in one of them that I needed to be rescued, I wasn’t about to try again. Alas, pretty much everything in the closet has been tailored to fit (my pre-pregnancy self)!
Then a friend swooped in.
I’m not proud of this. I hadn’t been complaining, to the contrary, I’d been insisting that I was fine but did admit to caving and buying an emergency pair of maternity jeans. Friend wasn’t having any of my frugality; ze insisted that I needed some nice things and nice things I was going to get. I didn’t realize that this didn’t just mean we were going to take on the chore of shopping together, which I hate and so won’t do alone, but that ze was also going to insist on BUYING the stuff for me.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time anyone except PiC bought clothes for me, maybe when I was 15? But friend was so insistent, and thoroughly prepared to make a scene if I didn’t graciously accept the gift, that I bowed to the inevitable and accepted a handful of really nice clothes that were comfortable and professional. They’ve been wonderfully comfortable and nice enough quality for work. Though I don’t have to dress up, it still requires something way better than my Target buys, and I’m both grateful and embarrassed to feel “dependent” on the generosity of others.
If they’d been hand me downs, it wouldn’t have felt so weird. On the other hand, as someone who really enjoys giving people gifts of practical things they’d like and would use but wouldn’t buy for themselves, there’s something to be said for accepting gifts from people who truly wish to give them. It’s an odd feeling, and reminds me again of what Mutant Supermodel just said about being on the receiving end of thoughtfulness.
Later I found out that this was something ze had been wanting to do because it’s how ze bonds with another long time friend.
Spending some cash
The emergency maternity jeans, though somewhat oversized because I hadn’t gotten the best advice from the shop assistant, actually still get a bit of play. Turns out that while everyone tells you to buy your pre-pregnancy size, the discrepancy between that and my size now is so significant that jeans that fit well 3 months ago would require the use of tools and an assistant to engineer a way to get them on. So that wasn’t $45 wasted, I have jeans I can still wear.
I did recently go crazy in the underwear department, though. I got a $50 off $150 coupon from Destination Maternity and laughed at the idea of spending that much on anything there, but then, of course, things changed. And by things, I mean the massive circumference of the globe I swallowed. I like to do laundry weekly now, but post-LB, no one’s going to have that kind of time.
In the end, I bought 4 bras and 2 weeks of comfortable underwear for $112, after free shipping and coupon. Pretty sure most of it will fit but we’ll see once they arrive. Even though hitting 3 digits made me wince, remembering how expensive regular bras are for me normally (upwards of $60), this isn’t a totally outrageous expenditure.
As it turns out, I’ve had to emerge from my slapdash-dressing hermitage many more times than I expected during these past few months, and will continue to need to, so it’s not completely out of the realm of sanity to own more than one bra that fits.
The Grab Bag
An unexpected bounty arrived the other day. For me, not for LB! That was exciting. Someone had asked PiC if I’d mind getting some clothing that might fit – of course I wouldn’t mind! – so he schlepped home a HUGE bag full of lightly used clothes. Rummaging through a bag of preselected clothes was a kind of fun I haven’t had since I was a kid. Most *nearly* fit, so I have a bit of an unruly look about me with sleeves too long and collars too wide. Nevertheless, adding a couple shirts and a few dresses to the wardrobe more than doubled it. I like going minimal but it’s been a little bit *too* minimal here for being (nearly) presentable in public.
Fun fact: I didn’t know clothes were purchased in actual stores until grade 7. All my clothes were yard sale buys, hand me downs, or made by Mom. This was a random act of niceness that brought a wave of nostalgia. Also, now I have a couple coats that fit around my wide berth!
Continuing the cycle
I don’t know if LB is going to be an only child or not, but I’m already thinking of who I can pass along some of this bounty to when the time comes.
April 17, 2013
We’re a little more than three months into living on a combined budget. And even though this is the first time PiC’s lived on such a detailed budget, we still seem to be doing sort of ok.
I say “sort of” because:
+ we’re not fighting tooth and nail over living by a budget (yay!)
+ we’re not fighting over anything budget at all (yay!) (yes, I assume there’s going to be some amount of disagreement and conflict when you’re learning to live in new boundaries)
– we’re not exactly ON the budget in some places (boo!)
– we still need to discuss how to offset some of the early spending highs (boo!)
It’s a wash, as far as operations go.
As far as execution … we’re having a touch of trouble staying in our budgeted amount in certain categories and not yet doing a good job of pulling back in specific areas to make up for it. This goes against the grain. I’m a money hoarder and I would much rather spend on the low side of any budgeted amount throughout the year and have some left over. This is, of course, not PiC’s style. 🙂
Nearly four months into the year, I’d expect that our spending should be at about 33% of the budgeted amount across all categories. I’m seeing spending as low as 3 and 7% (less regular/essential categories) and as high as 47 and 53% (ahem someone’s allowance).
Overall, though, we only went over our monthly total once in the last three months and the monthly averages are very close to what we expect to be spending each month. That helps ease the sting of what feels like budgetary failure.
Management is….
a bit complicated right now: we primarily use my American Express, and his Southwest Visa when it’s a non-American Express establishment. Then we have the odd cash or check expenditures. It all gets tallied into a spreadsheet on a (we try) weekly basis.
We’ve also finally opened a joint checking account to pay the bills from so that’ll help smooth out the problem of taking it turnabout to pay bills. And, happy day! I may be able to start closing out some of my other banking accounts. I’ve got accounts across four banks right now.
Admittedly, I’ve been refusing to close my oldest checking account because it’s the one I opened when I first turned eighteen and was allowed to open my very open checking account. (PF sentimentality!) And I enjoy the freedom of having the choice of accessing ATMs for two B&M banks… but considering I have two branches of the other bank nearby and go to the ATM about 6 times a year, that’s not a good reason.
Observations …
We eat a lot. Or rather, we spend a hell of a lot of money on not terribly fancy food. We don’t even buy beer (except once in several months), we only get basic (but good IMO) cheddar, we have a regular rotation of relatively “cheap” food & recipes around things like whole chickens but it’s more than offset by the handful of convenience foods that we buy for my fibro-body benefit.
Saving Money …
I’m over the moon about changing our cell phone plan with T-Mobile. SingleMa and I got into a conversation on Twitter about cell phone plans. Next day, we found the new contract-free plans and each saved a ton! She reduced her bill by $40/month, ours should be less by $50/month. Woot! That annual $600 will go a long way to making up for buying a new phone a bit earlier than I wanted to. I hated dealing with the nonsense of their customer service which has gotten pretty iffy these past couple of years. It used to be rock solid but not so much anymore. A shame. I also finally sent in Mom’s death certificate to cancel her phone line, something I’m trying to be totally pragmatic about but I have to admit gives me a bit of a pang.
And after a couple months of paying too much for internet ($43) when our last promotion lapsed, I surfed AT&T’s promotions for Internet without a Phone Line while signed into my account and lo! They still pulled up the cheap-cheap plans! I experimentally put it in my cart, put the live customer service chat on, and found that I could indeed switch to the $20/month plan without cancelling service. Check. That. Out. AT&T, making life easy for an existing customer. Unbelievable. And I love it.
Total to be saved this year (8 months of each line being cheaper): $400 + 160 = $560!
Tax Time …
We got bitten by AMT this year. Sonnuva … it wasn’t terrible, insofar as the money’s concerned. My headache was another thing entirely, trying to learn everything specifically relevant I could about AMT on the fly. There was definitely cursing associated with this year’s taxes.
I managed to get all the forms in for an April 14th filing but then found out afterward that one of the forms was an estimate and the “responsible” (@$$shole) accountant didn’t bother to say so until well after the fact. Again: cursing. Bitter? Yes. Now I have to file amendments for this year as soon as those new forms are in. Another hour and a half of my life re-committed to doing unnecessary taxes. Still, the bulk of it’s done and that’s something to be grateful for.
::How are you folks doing with your money these days?
July 11, 2011
A woodcut arrived in the mail today. No kidding, an actual piece of art, that is also a wedding invitation was delivered by the USPS, Lord love ’em.
It never fails to amaze me how much better people are at this wedding thing than I, with the use of natural materials, and embossing, and engraving and you know, scheduling. That stuff.
This isn’t about the psychology of how to really mess with other prospective or future bride’s minds via fancitude. I’m bemused by that part, and quite impressed, to be perfectly frank. I have no intentions of ever attempting to play in that pool because I’d immediately drown forthwith. (I keep stopping to pet the woodcut every few sentences. It’s that cool.) I think the only thing more pettable would be flocking. But maybe that’s just tacky? I don’t know …. Right. Digressing again.
This is an invitation to a destination wedding for which I would have to travel a fair distance.** On an island. A pretty island, where we have other friends as well. Oh and food, yummy food all around the island! And we like this couple quite well. So there are draws to going for a few days, not just for the wedding, to make the scary ticket prices worthwhile.
But obviously, since my thoughts trend in that direction, I’m not actually very close with either of them, though we have known them for a longish time and know them through PiC, and PiC’s not so close with them either.
At least, we’re not the kind of close where we saw the announcement or the invite and were online booking our tickets immediately because we wouldn’t miss it for the world. Not the kind of close where you would be surprised not to be invited. Conversely, we weren’t shocked to be invited either. In fact, I can’t say what level of close we are. We like them. We get along well with them. We enjoy their company. It’d be great to see them and raise a glass to their union. Is that what it takes to rate an invite?
I get that people often have the freedom to invite more people to a destination wedding because you know many of them won’t be able to make it. Although for something like this where you’re not *that* far away, you might not choose to go that route that if you’re hoping to control head count. I’m guessing that’s not so much a concern for them.
My ruminations on the matter range thusly:
Do you invite all and sundry you would enjoy the company of and wouldn’t mind/can afford to pay for at such a shindig knowing that those you care about will come, the rest are bonuses?
Do you invite only those you most care about, and do they understand an invite is a selective thing and therefore indication of belovedness?
Or does the 80% rule pretty much always apply however you slice the invitations? (Expect that 80% of your list will probably RSVP yes or show up.)
For this invitation:
We would expect to pay at least $1100 for airfare depending on the flight dates, we have been offered accommodations by another prospective guest but I don’t know what those dates span (our dates would be cheapest Thursday through Monday it seems). If we had to go for a shorter trip, airfare would be a couple hundred more, or we’d have to pay for a hotel room for the additional day(s). Either way, we would have to pay for food and drink for five days. That doesn’t include any other transportation in between, or other outings or activities.
Guesstimate Budget: Could run up to $2000 for 4-5 days.
I could possibly get creative with buying some miles to get at least one ticket nearly covered, possibly. Bring that down to around $1500 max. But I’m not sure how to fit this into our schedule, even, just a couple months away from our wedding if we have one. And I honestly don’t know how important we are to them. Feels like we should know this sort of thing but …. we don’t. Thoughts thoughts thoughts.
Open to the audience:
If you were in my sandals, would you be Kauai/Bahamas/Tahiti/tropical island bound?
If you were on the other side of the list, how did or would you curate your list?
** NOTE: I completely goofed calling this a destination wedding! This is a wedding that we would all have to travel for but the couple actually live there now. They moved back to this island a little while ago and I managed to forget this because they lived here for so long. Derp! I was also thinking of it in the sense of a destination wedding because so many of their friends over here were invited.
March 1, 2011
Partially on a whim, I’d embarked on an UnCash spending strategy for 2011.
I’d wanted to stop making unplanned purchases this year, or rather, have a contingency plan for most basic and probable spending needs to redeem points for gift cards and avoid spending real money. I’d harken back to the college days, (ah yes, when I could only shop at Borders funded by Discover rewards money!) redeeming American Express Gold Card Membership Reward points, Thank You points and other reward points for a small stash of gift cards. It’s a small stash, after all, because earning those rewards requires spending cash in the first place.
I’ve always done this to some degree, but have mostly fallen behind the eight ball. It’s time to pull the straps back up on this strategy and see how well I can do with picking up the gift cards first, then spotting the sales!
Besides, with the as-yet unbudgeted wedding, even though PiC and I still haven’t come to any decisions yet, stashing cash just makes sense. Even as low-key as we’re going to go, no photographer’s going to take points for payment. (Are they?)
So far, I’ve collected:
$25 – Victoria’s Secret
$75 – Spa Certificates
$50 – Banana Republic
$50 – Amazon, via Swagbucks and other miscellaneous deals.
$50 – Starbucks for PiC
The key problem with this tactic, of course, is the limited types of gift cards offered by the rewards program. But quite honestly, I’m not going to invest a massive amount of time and energy into this. I already know which cards pay out the highest percentage per dollar spent per spending category, that’s always going to be the first priority to maximize. Redemptions will then follow on as every program has at least one useful option, even if it’s not an immediate need or want. This is a long-term strategy anyway, so it won’t fill in all areas of spending, especially not high-spend areas like gas or groceries, but it can occasionally supplement.
January 6, 2011
We rang in the new year driving down the highway counting down about ten seconds off the real time. But never mind that, onward!
Savings
I’m looking at three specific areas to save money in January:
1. Cell phones – consolidating my parents and PiC and myself onto one family plan
2. Cable/internet/landline – PiC’s promotional rate for all three services has expired and he’s now happy to let me reduce to the most basic or do without some services. I’m considering the options, though my heart is sad to consider options that don’t include BBC. Alas.
3. Insurance – I’ve been carrying a variety of insurance policies and he and I need to take a closer look at whether we’re overlapping or if we can consolidate for better rates at some point. This is mostly planning, I’m in favor of getting an umbrella policy if we end up combining finances and y’know, marrying it up this year.
Income
1. There’s bonus talk in the air this year, based on last year’s performance, and I had intended to put it toward a big fat trip this spring but as it turns out, that might not really take the form we once imagined. (That bit goes under spending, doesn’t it?)
2. My first year comes to an end this spring and I’ll be up for a review. I fully expect to make a strong case for a raise since my six month review was entirely positive but I’m not sure that the organization tends to be generous on either front (raise or bonus) in comparison to previous years and employers.
Investing
1. PiC and I will be sitting down to evaluate his investment strategies for age and goal appropriateness.
2. My trading account has been dormant, accumulating bits of dividends, and it’d be nice to have a few more income-earning stocks. Time for more research!
Spending
1. Travel will take a chunk of money, depending where we go, and if we count honeymooning in there, that’s another chunk. Then again, honeymooning might happen next year.
2. There’s the small matter of a wedding. I’ve got no plans other than to keep it as simple as possible.
What are your plans this year?