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In the Depths of the Dillard’s Outlet

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I just bought $756 worth of clothes!

Yes. That would be eleven (count’em, 11) shirts.

And I paid $108 for the lot.

Yesterday morning La Maya suggested we explore the Dillard’s outlet store, in the Metrocenter Ghost Mall on I-17 just south of Peoria Avenue in Phoenix. I haven’t visited those precincts in years. The once-vibrant mall, North America’s largest at the time it was built, died a decade ago. A doughty Trader Joe’s hung on until, four or five years ago, it closed as the chain followed the white flight to the city’s overbuilt, overpriced suburbs. The Macy’s closed long ago. The Broadway died. Penney’s fled. A wan Sears store hangs on, for reasons I can’t fathom—no one ever seems to go in there—and a moribund amusement park runs seasonally. Otherwise, the main attraction is a bus station.

Dillard’s has chosen to convert its Ghost Mall store into a bargain basement, there to unload merchandise that wouldn’t move off the racks in its tonier stores.

I don’t ordinarily do well in such establishments. The lighting is dim, the atmosphere dingy, and the clothing jammed indiscriminately onto rack after rack after depressingly endless rack. It’s hard to separate the good stuff (if there is any) from the junk, and I have little patience with sorting through piles of orphaned, cut-rate clothing. Normally, all I can see is the rayon pink, green, and purple polka-dotted number, which seems to come to hand wherever one reaches.

So without La Maya’s urging, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to go there. In fact, I didn’t even know Dillard’s had an outlet store there. She said she’d found a bunch of sweet designer tops to wear on her recent trip to Hawaii. So…why not?

Hee heee! I’m sure glad I went along!

Pawing through the vast offerings of unsold clothing, we came across piles of upscale designer outfits in every size. We staked out a dressing room and, unimpeded by any nosy staff (as in “please…you want it? take it out the door! pay if you feel in the mood”), the two of us must have dragged forty or fifty tops back there.

About 90 percent of them didn’t fit. I’d guess a lot of the Asian-made clothing we find on the racks doesn’t sell because it’s mis-sized. Most were too large; some were too small. Several sleeveless shirts were cut unevenly, so that the arm-holes were different sizes. And these were fancy labels: Jones New York, Eileen Fisher, and the like. Every stitch was made in China or a third-world country.

Try on enough clothes, though, and sooner or later you’ll find something that fits and doesn’t look hideous.

Everything had already been marked down several times, and now the store was offering 50% off the most recent marked price. So a $7.50 shirt cost $3.25! The most I paid was about $18, and that was for an M.S.S.P. shirt whose original retail price was $128.

Wow!

So I came away with 11 tops ranging upwards of $60 apiece in alleged value, for just a little over a hundred bucks.

Two of them are tunic-length affairs. I’ve been coveting a pair of leggings ever since my favorite J. Jill saleslady suggested they’d be good with some of that store’s costumes. So as soon as I got home, I booted up Amazon.com and ordered a pair of ankle-length Danskins in black, to go with the M.S.S.P. top, and a pair of maroon tights from American Apparel, which should look awesome under the wild-looking Nygård thing with the fantastic Vera-like flower on the front—all very Finnish and politically incorrect in the worst way. Hope they fit—I haven’t worn Danskins since I was in my 20s, when I favored leotards to go with all those bell-bottoms and broom skirts. 😉

So it was a hugely successful shopping trip! We couldn’t have done any better at a thrift shop. And now I have almost a dozen much-needed, brand-new shirts, most of them far more feminine than the usual mannish stuff I pick up at Costco.

Twitter followers!

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Hi, there, beloved Twitter followers!

Thanks for following Funny about Money on Twitter.

Just to let you know… After some changes made following the Gawker hack, Twitter decided it wouldn’t accept any iteration of either my new or old password. I am totally out of patience with this game, and so I’m not even going to try to jump through still more hoops to get back in. This stuff has occupied way too many hours of my time, and the chronic frustration over the wasted time and recurring annoyance is making my stomach cramp, my jaws clench, and my head hurt.

So it’s not that I don’t love you (I do, I do!!). It’s  that just Twitter has tilted the pinball machine: enough is enough.

Happy New Year to the All You Twitterers!

Tax Break Comin’ Your Way! What Will You Do with It?

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Last week President Obama signed a bill that will lower your 2011 Social Security taxes from 6.2% to 4.2%, for next year only. This tax holiday, which, bizarrely enough, will cost the federal government $120 billion at a time when the government is facing astronomical deficits and we’re being told Social Security is headed for Hell on a skateboard, could save you as much as $2,136 next year. If you’re a couple both of whom earn over $106,800, you’ll see a $4,272 tax break.

The theory behind it is that the increase people will see in their monthly or biweekly paychecks will be small enough to look like gravy and so they’ll diddle it away on stuff and services, thereby supposedly stimulating the economy.

Could be. Could be voodoo works to cure warts, too.

I must say, if someone handed me $2,136 it would go straight to savings—even if I were wealthy enough for that amount to apply. O’course, that’s not what you’re going to see in your paycheck; it’ll be dribbled out to you in $178/month increments, or $89 per paycheck if you’re paid twice monthly. Considerably less, actually, unless you earn a top-tier paycheck. In my case, this vast new lucre will amount, over the entire year, to $288.

But let’s say you earn enough to matter. In theory, if you’re earning that much, you ought to be able to afford to spend two, three, four thousand bucks on anything your heart pleases. Two percent of my former, relatively modest salary, for example, would have put an extra $1,300 in my pocket—but in the palmy days when I earned a salary, that was less than I budgeted for the American Express card each month.

Several options present themselves:

1. Diddle it away. We’re told this will improve the economy, making us all richer and happier sometime in the gilded future.

2. Pay down debt, if you still have any after the past few years of our national frenzy to get out of debt. It would make sense, if this is your choice, to figure out how much the windfall will add to your paycheck and set your online bank account to automatically pay it to the creditor that holds your largest or your highest-interest debt.

3. Set it aside to buy a big-ticket item, thereby keeping yourself out of future debt. A couple thousand bucks would buy you a nice refrigerator or—yes! a MacBook! Here, too, the smart strategy would be to arrange an automatic transfer of the temporary raise from checking to savings.

4. Donate it to charity. With the de jure unemployment rate still hovering near 10 percent, the de facto rate around 20 percent, and thousands more Americans poised to be dispossessed of their homes in 2011, the civil thing to do would be to put the money where it can help someone else.

5. Save it for retirement. This is just a taste of what we can expect when the Republicans get back into office, which is likely to happen at the end of Obama’s present term. Continued raids on Social Security will kill it fast. If you’re under 65, you’re going to need this money when you find yourself too old to work.

Just now,  my investments are earning between 5 and 7 percent; let’s say that averages 6 percent. And let’s say you’re 35 and you earn enough to qualify for the full $2,136: by the time you’re 65, this year’s windfall will be worth $12,268. If you’re a couple both of whom earn six-figure salaries, you’ll have an extra $24,536 in the community property, assuming you’re still married after 30 years. Ah, the miracle of compounding interest!

If it were me, I’d figure charity begins at home. At the rate we’re going, a person in her 20s or 30s can expect never to see a nickel from Social Security. If you have a Roth IRA, this will be an easy way to fund it. Simply have your bank send the extra income straight to the Roth. Second-best: if you’re not maxing out your 401(k) or 403(b), have your employer increase your contribution from your paycheck. Otherwise, invest it in a brokerage account, also by automatic deposit.

Getting Rid of Junk Mail: DMA and other choices

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The City is planning to make us put our garbage in new green bins for pickup in front of our houses, instead of in the giant communal bins in the alley. This will mean two space-consuming hulks in my garage instead of one—the blue recycling bin, which is picked up in front, resides in there now. My house has no place in front to stash an unsightly plastic garbage bin, and I don’t want it in my gardeny backyard, which I use as living space. So I’ve decided to put the blue barrel in the alley (there’s no law in Phoenix requiring residents to recycle) and put all the trash in the garbage.

So much trash arrives in the mail that most weeks just the junk mail alone fills about a third to a half of the blue bin. By way of not filling up the new bin so the garbage won’t fit, I finally got around to asking the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to take me off its members’ mailing lists. This, we’re told, is the answer to all your junk mail problems.

Not quite.

In the first place, registering for DMA is a hassle. You either have to send them an application by snail mail along with a check for $1.00 (yeah!), or you have to register on line, requiring you jump through a long series of hoops and give them an e-mail address. Once you’re finally in, you get to jump through MORE hoops.

What is it about “I don’t want to get junk from anyone” that should be so hard to express?

You have to go to several subsites at the DMA page to request removal from several different categories of mailing lists: credit card offers, catalogs, magazine offers, and “other mail offers.”

Click on “credit offers,” and you get to jump through another set of hoops, this one requiring you to divulge your Social Security number. Then you have to print out your request and mail it to Experian, apparently the only one of the four credit bureaus (there’s a new one!) to receive it. Go to “other mail offers,” and you’re presented with seven pages of marketers. You have to go to each one individually and beg to be removed from their nuisance-mail lists! About 99 percent of these are irrelevant: when was the last time you got an ad from ADT Security or Casino Windsor? From what I can tell, the worst offenders are not on this list.

Moving on to “magazine offers,” you come upon a two-page list of 36 magazines. Again, you have to manually contact every single one of them to beg them to stop sending you “offers.”

Like I have nothing better to do with my time?

The outfits that really blitz you with trash are not on these lists. Nor are the chain grocery stores that fill your mailbox with newspaper pullouts advertising “deals” on piles and piles of junk food.

If you seriously want to reduce the amount of trash delivered to your recycling bin through the mails, be prepared to spend a lot of time and some money. Go here to discover the endless series of hoop-jumps you’ll have go through to stem the tide of junkmail pouring into your home.

Valassis and Red Plum, which evidently are responsible for a fair amount of trash, provide a single page that promises to remove your name from their lists (eventually). So does ValPack, which is in the business of sending you blue packages full of coupons for things you never buy—unless you’re into junk food.

Really, every time the Postal Service announces it’s in the red and may go out of business, I think I won’t weep much when that happens. Surely UPS and FedEx will cost junk mailers so much they’ll quit sending piles of useless paper to everyone in creation. Then no doubt they’ll try to get our e-mail addresses and blitz us there.

👿

Merry Christmas! Have Some Fun!

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Have you seen the delightful site called Today I Found Out? I literally stumbled across it, having finally gotten around to reinstalling the StumbleUpon toolbar after the late, great hard drive crash.

Check out this infographic about one of my favorite critters:

10 Amazzzzing Bee Facts Infographic

[Source: Today I Found Out]

Is that or is it not a hoot? These funny strips are nestled in among conventionally written blog posts, each of them reporting some interesting or odd fact. As far as I can tell, every story comes with an extra payload of related and sometimes amazing factoids. Did you know that the “pull and pray” method is actually just about as effective as using condoms? Who’d’ve thunk it? Truth is, for the average Joe & Jane, rubbers are a great deal less effective than some of us have been known to hope.

Did you know the stuff inside an Etch-a-Sketch (one of my favorite toys when I was a little kid…and just freshly invented, as it develops, there in the Late Cretaceous) is extremely flammable? Bet you didn’t know what was inside it at all, didja? Or when sliced bread was illegal? Or who invented Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

This is an absurdly fun site for closet eggheads, the type who used to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the bathroom when not playing with their Etch-a-Sketches. Check it out!

God’s Free Carwash

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So…you think you’re frugal? See if you can top this one. 😉

It’s off to choir tonight, there to rehearse various songs of praise to the deity. While we’re inside the choir room singing, it is pouring in the parking lot.

Conveniently, just as practice breaks up the rain stops, after having chased most of the traffic off the streets. Cruise home, detouring through the neighborhood to gaze at the Christmas decorations. Our little corner of the city is so beautiful at this time of year. Everybody goes all out with the lights, and the rich folks leave their living room drapes open to display not only their spectacular Christmas trees but also their elegant interiors. I was going to walk with Cassie tonight, but she hates water, so decided to take advantage of being out in the dark in the car.

This tour completed, it’s time to tool into the garage, grab a dry microfiber rag from its table-top basket near the dryer, and wipe all the clear, fresh, soft-water rain off the windows and then off the top, doors, hood, and bumpers. Voilà! A clean car—free! As we scribble, it’s glowing in the dark.

How many people wait until it rains to let God run the carwash?

Unfortunately, She’s planning to leave the faucet running tomorrow, so I expect between here and Scottsdale, whence I have to hie myself for breakfast, the Dog Chariot will get its share of road mud. Oh well. At least for the time being it’s clean and dry.

I made a little discovery some weeks ago: a microfiber rag is ideal for cleaning the inside of the Chariot. If you use just plain microfiber cloths—either dry or very slightly moistened—to dust your house, the next most logical thing is to amble out to the garage after you’ve finished cleaning the furniture, dampen the cloth if it’s not already that way, and use it to wipe down the dashboard and door panels. If the outside of the car is free of gritty dirt, you can then get your dustrag good and wet, grab a second microfiber cloth, and use the wet one to wipe off the paint and the other one to dry behind it. Clean house once a week, and you can spin off a quickie weekly carwash, too, without ever moving your bucket of bolts out of the garage.

The car ends up looking nice and clean—to finish the job, all you’d need is to vacuum it, but that’s usually beyond my ken.

Don’t try this impromptu wipe-down on a new car, or on any car with a brand-new finish. But when your vehicle arrives at the grand old age of 100,000 (miles, that is), its finish is already a little scratchy, and so any light grit you might have picked up by dusting—or coarser grit from the road—just adds to the patina.

So, have you got a cheaper frugalism?

Images:

Trees and Snowman, by Mike Spasoff, Granada Hills, California. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Wollongong Miner’s Cottage Decorated for Christmas, Wollongong, NSW, Australia. GNU Free Documentation License.