Coffee heat rising

Shopping

Got a freezer? Now’s the time to stock up

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beansIt looks like this is the time to hoard up some food, if you havesomeplace to store it anda few extra bucks. CBS MarketWatch reports that deflationary pressures have pushed prices about as low as they’re likely to go. Everything from soup & nuts to automobiles is marked down.

Earlier this week I found some very nice seven-bone chuck roasts at the Safeway: $1.47 a pound, a buck less than hamburger. I bought two and had them ground into burger (I’m not nuts about stewed beef; and I can feed hamburger to the dog as well as to myself).

If you have some money or some credit, now is the time to buy a car or a house. I sure can’t afford that and don’t know anyone who can…but somewhere there must be a retired banker or two who could manage it.

Seriously: As the piper comes around asking to be paid for all the rescues the taxpayer is subsidizing and for all the money the government is minting to engineer those subsidies, we’re likely to see some serious inflation. If prices go up and none of us can get work, we’re all going to be in deep trouble. Helle’s Belles: if prices go way up—or, to put it another way, if the value of the dollar goes bust—it won’t make much difference if we are working, because our wages won’t buy us a heck of a lot more than unemployment benefits will.

This weekend I think I’ll see if I can find a small freezer that will go through the door to the spare bedroom I’ve devoted to storage. It wouldn’t take a lot of extra freezer space to hold at least a couple months of food for me and the Corgi. Then as food comes on sale, I’m going to start buying, wrapping, and storing.

It looks like I’m going to need a new washer one of these days—have you seen the prices on the frontloaders at Costco? They even have one of those top-loading high-efficiency washers with no agitator at an almost affordable price (good-bye wadded up sheets and ripped shirts!).

The problem with buying a big-ticket item before one really needs it is that in these uncertain times it feels like a real bad idea to part with whatever cash you’ve managed to sock away in savings. And you can be darned sure racking up debt to take advantage of rock-bottom prices is a bad idea. But…if things get as bad as they could get, a freezer would pay for itself. So would some “futures” in rice, beans, and canned goods.

Do no-buy days work?

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For a while, I’ve suspected that “no-buy days”—days in which you deliberately stay away from merchandisers of all kinds—would cause you to spend less on those days but create a pent-up demand that would predispose you to more spending and stimulate impulse buys on the days you allowed yourself into the stores.

In the wee hours of this morning, as I was wondering how I could get around what is now a migrating closing date on my American Express account, it occurred to me that instead of “no buy” days, you could establish set “buy” days during a given billing cycle, and otherwise letevery day be a no-buy day. In other words, you would not set foot in a retail establishment or click on a Web store’s site except on specific days set aside to make purchases. This thought drove me to Quicken as dawn was cracking.

There I discovered that over the past year I’ve tended somewhat in that direction: more and more no-buy days and fewer and fewer days in which I do purchase things. In January 2008, for example, I made 16 trips to various food purveyors, dropping an astonishing $734.33 on groceries. In January 2009, I made 10 trips and spent $333.99 on groceries.

Evidently, fewer trips to grocery stores mean less cash spent on groceries.

Now, in January 2008, my German shepherd was still living. She ate a lot of food, and that may account for some of the whopping bill. But what really accounts for it is that I was in the habit of stopping by Trader Joe’s or AJ’s (a local “gourmet” market) on the way home from work, where I would regularly buy a snack and beer or wine. I’ve almost stopped doing that. To the extent that I buy beer or wine—which I’ve also almost stopped doing—I buy it at Costco, where Corona is to be had at a significant markdown over the grocery-store price. And I’ve been sick for the past month and haven’t felt like eating…that could have to do with the drop in spending.

The December grocery bill was a hundred bucks more than January’s, but then I did throw an expensive Christmas dinner party.

The truth is, it looks like staying out of grocery stores cuts one’s bills significantly. With a little tinkering—establish specific days for shopping, build a week or ten days’ worth of menus beforehand and attack the store with a carefully crafted shopping list, and shop more at Target or even (ugh!) Walmart—it ought to be possible to reduce the grocery bill to a sane level. Three hundred and thirty bucks for one old lady and one small dog is not sane.

The trouble with grocery shopping at Target is that Target is a dangerous place. The last time I saved a bunch of money on grocery items, I spent $150 on sheets and bedding that I really didn’t need. I also spotted a $250 bicycle of the type I covet, available at other purveyors for $400 to $700. Ditto Walmart: they have the minivacuum cleaner I want, the one with the electric cord. Every other store carries only the cordless variety, which won’t run long enough to vacuum an entire houseful of tiled floors. All the big box stores—Costco, Target, Home Depot, and Walmart—pose the same threat. You go in to buy necessities, but they offer so much other tempting junk that it’s very, very difficult to get out with your wallet intact.

But I will say: last year at this time I was spending way too much at Trader Joe’s and AJ’s, emporiums that sell almost nothing but groceries and household items.

Here, apparently, is the key to surviving on a reduced income: plan, plan, plan! Plan specific shopping days and gasoline-purchase days. Plan purchases carefully, using lists and resisting unplanned buys. Defer impulse buys until the next scheduled shopping day, to give yourself time to think it over. And plan to make every day a no-buy day except for the scheduled shopping days.

Flummoxed!

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bikeFor quite a long time, I’ve wanted to buy a three-speed or ten-speed bicycle. I have a coaster, but it’s no use for what I want to do: take long rides along the canal. Salt River Project has built a long, narrow park along the Arizona canal, with underpasses running under the main drags so people can go for mile after mile after mile safely. I live within walking distance of this convenient source of exercise and sightseeing entertainment. While I really do need the exercise, hauling my heavy coaster up from the bottom of those underpasses is not quite what I have in mind. I have to get off my bike and walk it out of the underground tunnels, a major pain in the tuchus. I love bicycling, though, and have thought that if I had a bike with gears, I could use it every day or two to get out of the house and also get some good exercise.

Wrong.

Yesterday I paid a visit to the bicycle store that, in years past, has sold me other bikes. Prices for multispeed bicycles range from $450 to $700!!! An ordinary cruiser with no gears and pedal brakes costs $350. Three-speed bikes cost more than 24-speed numbers. I don’t want 24 speeds—I’d never be able to figure out how to operate such an array.

I looked on Craig’s List and found the prices comparable for anything that appeared to be in decent condition. The rate of bicycle theft around here is phenomenal—at one point, a ring used to go onto college campuses in trucks and take bolt-cutters to the locks and just load the things up. So I’m kind of afraid to buy one second-hand, for fear of getting stolen property. Besides, the newer bikes are so involved and complicated, I would have no way of knowing what I was getting or if anything was wrong with it.

How disappointing. I guess I won’t be losing any weight that way. {sigh} It was probably a bad idea, anyway. What on earth would I do if I blew a tire ten miles from home? I wouldn’t have a clue how to fix it, and I sure don’t want to have to push a bike eight or ten miles.
🙁

Trade Made: Discount scored

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sanitasYesterday afternoon I took the Sanitas back to the Shoe Mill in lovely downtown Tempe (for those of you who haven’t been following along, these pain-free shoes are made by the original makers of the formerly glorious Danskos, which are now manufactured in China thanks to a corporate change of hands). This put $129.72 back on the AMEX card. Then I ordered an identical pair from Footprints.com for a total of $79.95.

Tax on the local purchase was $9.72. Shipping for the online purchase was $10. So even though the tax was on a larger amount, I see that as kind of a wash.

My savings on this transaction: fifty bucks.

One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that you can return most things to most stores. If you find a better deal somewhere else before you’ve put any wear on an item, take the thing back to the higher-charging merchant and buy it where you can save some cash. Ditto if you realize you don’t need something after you’ve made an impulse buy. Obviously, you shouldn’t abuse this—buying a dress or a jacket to wear to a wedding and then returning it to the vendor is exploitive and dishonest. But if you haven’t used it at all, there’s no reason not to return it.

More shoes…cheap!

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Whoa! Frugal Scholar left a lead in a comment on yesterday’s shoe-buying adventure to the effect that you can buy Sanitas seconds (and seconds for many other prominent brands) at a site called Footprints.com.

Well. Naturally I had to shoof that one out immediately.

This Footprints.com outfit IS kewl!!!! If you go to the “SALE!” page you can search by brand AND by size, so you can see whether they have anything that will fit you. Annndddd…what do we find here but the very $110 Sanitas the Shoe Mill was peddling for $120, marked down to $70. And OMG, some of them are actually in cute styles, rather than nurse’s clogs.

Drat!!! No Pikolinos, though. That’s the brand of the hand-made Spanish gems. Presumably if you’re making everything by hand, you don’t have seconds, eh?

Hm. No Naots or Mephistos, either.

But at least a zillion Birkies. If Dansko still fits your foot in its new incarnation, the site shows a bunch of those, too, including some attractive pump-like styles with soles that look sturdy enough to cushion your feet against the pavement. There are a lot of other brands, some of them Birkenoid or Danskoid, some of them of their own kind. They have men’s shoes, too.

And get this: You have as long as two months to try the things out!

{cackle!} I am going straight back to Shoe Mill to find out the brand name of that pair of heels I coveted. If these folks are carrying it, I’m gunna order it from them, straightaway. I may return the Sanitas and replace them with a pair from Footprints.com, too.

Thanks, Frugal!

Shoes

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Women’s shoes that do not hurt and do not look like orthopedic appliances for nurses are incredibly expensive.

Hevvin help me, this afternoon I dropped $450 on three pairs of pain-frees. Amazingly fine pain-frees…but my god.

The attempt, undertaken almost a year ago, to buy pain-frees at bargain prices by raiding the Clark’s outlet failed miserably. I did buy several cute pairs of Indigos that seemed comfortable enough in the store. Yup. They were just great, as long as I didn’t try to walk in them. As soon as I tried to walk any distance further than across the store to the mirror, they wanted to fall off my feet, exactly as one would expect backless clogs to do, being nothing other than slides on platforms. I had to struggle to keep them on, and that was very uncomfortable, indeed. Eventually I figured out that they would sort of stay on if I adopted a mincing gait, taking teeny little steps that didn’t require me to lift my feet off the ground for more than a fraction of a second.

Picture, then, mincing a third of a mile across a university campus in shoes that wanted nothing more than to fall off or, preferably, to twist their wearer’s ankle. That’s about how far I have to walk from my car to my office.

Well, hell. I knew better than to buy bargain shoes at an outlet. The immediate cause of the neuromas that have damn near crippled me for the past 20 years was a pair of sweet little heels I bought at a shoe outlet. They seemed comfortable enough—when you’re young, beauty knows no pain. After I’d worn them for a few months (all the time, even walking the dog…which occasionally entailed running), my feet hurt so much I couldn’t walk in anything. I couldn’t walk barefooted, for crying out loud! Not until I tried on a pair of Birkenstocks (ohhh lovely! perfect for officewear) was I able to walk around an amusement park on vacation with my husband and child. It took over 15 years for my feet to get to the point where I could wear anything other than Birkenstocks or Mephistos without excruciating pain. Heels have been out of the question for decades.

So. I should’ve known that shoes that cost something under $40 were going to mess up my feet.

Old, tired, not cute
Old, tired, not cute

I dispensed with the Clark’s Indigo slides in the late great decluttering adventure, tossing them in on top of the mountain of clothes that went to St. Vincent de Paul. Absent the shoes that I couldn’t wear to walk in, I still needed a pair of unclunky brown shoes and a pair of brown Danskos (having worn my beloved old brown pair until they fell apart). So this afternoon, with $2,500 in the much-refreshed savings account, it was off to my favorite purveyor of pain-frees.

There I found that the original Dansko shoe (which died when Dansko was sold and the new owners started having the style manufactured, with evil results, in China) is still produced by an outfit called Sanita. Lo! A pair of Danskos that actually fits like the REAL Danskos used to fit.

Buy: $120.

Then, these hand-made Spanish shoes of amazing cut-out leather, almost lace-like, utterly free of pain, the effect incandescent with élan.

Buy x 2: $320.

That would come to, yes, $440.

Plus 8.1% tax. Don’t ask.

But I was personful: I put back the INCREDIBLY cute pair of heels that hurt only one toe and would have looked so unbelievably awesome with the pin-striped pants purchased in the late great recluttering coup. And I also put back the STAGGERINGLY cute moccasin-like flats hand-made by the same Spanish shoemaker. So, you see…after all, I did not spend $600 on shoes today. What a triumph.

As a practical matter, shoes purchased at this particular emporium last for many, many years. The pair I had on when I walked in the door are about six or eight years old and still fully serviceable. When I went into the closet this afternoon to throw out three pairs of shoes to make way for the three new pair, I really could find only one pair decrepit enough to justify tossing, and I haven’t bought good shoes in more than two years. Guess I’ll have to count the three pair of Clark’s clogs I tossed as the “one out for every one in.”

I think that, especially where shoes are concerned, it’s better to spend more on good products less often than less on shoddy products more often. I dunno about you, but when my feet hurt, I’m miserable. And most shoes hurt my feet. Women’s shoes are designed to hurt your feet: a good 95 percent of them are bone-crushers. When you find well-made shoes that don’t hurt and aren’t hideous, you should buy them, cost be damned. When I pay $120 for pair of Danskos Sanitas that last upwards of six years, their actual cost to me is about $20 a year.

So. In 2009 I’ll pay $75 for the use of three pairs of not-hideous, fully pain-free shoes.

Not a bad buy, eh?

shoesJan08

LOL! The pair on the left is not really peacock-colored. They’re black and a subdued green, with gold thread decoration.

The sequelae to this story appear here and here.