Lordie! So yesterday I dropped $830 on new visionwear. As a practical matter, I ended up with four new pairs of eyeglasses, so it’s not as drastic as it sounds. But still…like I had $830 just laying around the house?
Figure to make up for it by cutting $100 out of the monthly discretionary budget: for the next eight months, instead of having the usual $1100 to spend, the budget will have only $1000. That makes it seem like not such a big deal.
Except, of course, that most months I do spend all of $1100, and rather little of that is for indulgences. With every stitch in the house, including my underwear forgodsake, falling off my body, I do need to buy some clothing that fits.
But I think I can get away with it. There’s now plenty of stuff to wear while the weather’s relatively cool. And when I was wearing size 10 jeans, I discovered that I could convert the size 12 Costco specials into cut-offs and they fit just fine. So now that I’m down to size 8 in the Costco marvels, I should be able to turn the size 10 jeans into shorts for this summer. But that’s it: no new clothing purchases between now and next October!
Managed to keep the average price down to under $200/pair (the progressives were significantly more than that!) by recycling old frames. The (very expensive) rimless frames I bought back when I had a job, will, I’m told, probably last a lifetime — all one has to do is reattach the temple and nose pieces to new lenses. Also, though, I had a couple of extravagantly old frames, from way, way way back in another lifetime. These were regular wire-rimmed frames, one from Costco and one from a private optometrist — the latter, a very nice pair. The lenses in the two antiques were even more out-dated than my regular glasses (…you realize…if I bought the fancy rimless frames when I was employed, then they are at least five years old — but in fact they’re older than that).
Because I now can see neither in the distance nor in a close range (unless it’s held right up to my nose), and because of the amount of close work I do on computers, I need a whole goddamn vision system! And thanks to my stupidity in losing my very best pair of distance shades, I ended up having to replace a ton of hardware in the new prescriptions:
• 1 pair of progressives, for navigating grocery stores, classrooms, and other public places where I might need to see both in the distance and to read things
• 1 pair of clear distance lenses, for night driving
• 1 pair of extra-dark sunglass lenses, for day driving, neighborhood walks, and hikes
• 1 pair of computer-monitor-distance lenses, for working and for navigating the house and yard
In the depths of the Old Glasses Morgue, I found a pair of up-close glasses that still work nicely for reading hard copy — i.e., for things that are closer than a computer monitor but not within six inches of my face.
All of which is to say that to get around in my world and see what on earth I’m doing, I need six pairs of glasses.
You doubt it?
• I can’t see to work on the computer in the progressives, because I can’t spend hour on hour on hour with my head tipped back, peering down my nose.
• Progressives don’t work for reading newspapers, either, because you can’t see even one full page, to say nothing of a double-truck spread. Often you can’t even read a small article without having to move your head and peer down your nose.
• I can’t drive in the progressives in the daytime, because they’re not sunglasses.
• I can’t drive in the progressives at night, because the distance portion is not strong enough, leaving me essentially night-blind.
• I can’t drive in the computer glasses, because they’re not strong enough to decipher road signs.
• The Arizona sun is so glaring, especially in the summer, that it actually hurts to drive or walk around in it without sunglasses — and, as a practical matter, that powerful sunlight and UV light indeed do damage your eyes over time. You’re crazy not to use a good pair of shades here.
That doesn’t count the nonprescription shades and the nonprescription readers for use with contact lenses. And right now I am wearing the contacts, because I can see a lot better through them.
Whatever was going on with the eyeball (and continues to go on, as of this morning) caused some kind of damage. Through just the right eye, things look kinda hazy, the effect one gets when peering down the street through thick smog. The sky’s a funny color through that eye, too — brown-smogged, one might say. Now, the air here in Phoenix is indeed very dirty during the winter, so there may objectively be some smoggification. But I think it’s mighty peculiar that the effect is visible only through one eye…
At any rate, until I get the Vision System updated, I’m falling back on the contacts, which are a hellacious nuisance…but not, possibly, any more of a nuisance than juggling six pairs of glasses, no one pair of which delivers decent vision.
ooohh well...
A thought —
Cheap, er frugal, solution to the computer monitor problem: raise the monitor so you don’t have to peer down your nose. A stack of old phone books, or other books or a shelf unit (buy it or DIY) would do the trick. It might help your back problems too, since theoretically the monitor would be positioned so you’re always sitting up straight with everything aligned properly.
I’ve had the same glasses for 10 years. One pair, bifocals. I hate the bifocals. And now my arms seem to be getting shorter. At $200 just for the lenses and another $100 or so for the frames, it’s consistently been out of budget for the last seven (years). I actually need two pair — one for orchestra and one for everything else, but there’s another $300, more than likely. It’s always something … sigh.
If the monitor were higher, then I’d have to tilt my neck back even further. Ouch!
Actually, because of the back pain, I no longer can sit at a desk any more than a few minutes at a time. Sitting in regular chair with a laptop means I look down at the monitor, which is a lot better — both in terms of maintaining pain-free posture and in terms of what can be seen.
As a practical matter, sitting in the (astronomically expensive) Thos. Moser rocker to do about 95% of my work (the other 5% is done laying on the bed) has made an AMAZING difference to the back. Yesterday, the damn thing was pain free for the Entire. Freaking. Day. Hard to believe, but true!
In some ways, old-fashioned bifocals are actually a little better (at least for some folks) than progressives. Sometimes, in some settings, my old bifocals are a lot better…certainly for driving, where you don’t risk breaking an ankle because you can’t see where you’re putting your feet. The top (distance) section of bifocals-with-a-line is larger and stronger than the teeny distance section in progressives.
You have to pay through the wazoo to find an oculist who knows how to make progressives properly. At least, that’s been my experience. The progressives I bought at Costco, which were quite a bit cheaper, were a total bust — I couldn’t use them at all; no, not after several weeks of trying to get used to them. Fortunately, Costco took them back.
I paid about three times as much for nice frames and new progressive lenses at the present optometrist and found the result much, much, much better — was able to navigate the world straight out of the guy’s shop, with no promises that someday maybe I’d get used to them if I’d just put up with two weeks of misery.
Ask friends and check with Angie’s List to try to find someone who can make a decent pair.
Oh god! Trying to read a music score. There’s a whole ‘NOTHER conundrum!!!! One thing you can do is take the thing you need to work on (in your case, presumably a score and a music stand) to the optometrist, so she or he can understand what you’re talking about. Describing this stuff in words does nothing to help these folks visualize what you’re dealing with. Carry all the junk into the shop and show it to them! That helps a lot.
I got a new prescription and pair of glasses last month. I’ve officially moved to the progressives, which I’m finding work pretty well for me. Thanks to my awesome vision plan through work, it cost me less than $150.
The vision center did suggest those transitions lenses to me, but I’m not a big fan of them since they won’t work in the car. Instead, I’m interested in the clip on sunglass covers for my lenses. Have you ever tried those instead of a separate pair of sunglasses? I just hate the thought of carrying around an extra case with glasses in my purse.
Some of my friends have used the transition lenses and really like them. For my taste, they don’t seem to get dark enough. In Arizona sun, especially when it’s pounding down on the asphalt and making the road glow like a furnace, I prefer sunglasses that are really, really dark.
If I lived in a more clement climate, though — say San Francisco or even San Diego, or one of the more northerly states — I surely would try the transitions.
Yeah, I’m not interested in Transitions lenses for those same reasons.
Have you had any experience with the clip on sunglass lenses, though? I’m just looking for feedback from people who have used them to figure out if they are worth the cost. As I understand, they are made to clip over your prescription lenses so you only need to carry this little clip on thing instead of entirely new pair of prescription sunglasses. I want to know if they are any good before I invest in them.
I did have a pair — from Costco, I think — that came with the option to buy clip-ons, which I tried. Personally, I wasn’t nuts about them — they didn’t seem to block enough glare. I like my shades to wrap around a little, to cover the eyes enough to keep out as much glare as possible. Also I prefer polarized lenses, for the same reason: glare reduction.
I don’t know that I would use a retrofitted clip-on unless the Rx glasses came from some online place and were dirt cheap. Too much chance of scratching those pricey lenses.
$830…? I feel faint…I go next week for my eye exam….MAN I’m not looking forward to eye-glass shopping…Based on this my $1 “readers” seem like pure genius. Where did you make your purchase?
If you don’t need progressives, you can get prescription glasses online very inexpensively. You need to measure your pupillary distance or make the eye exam technician choke up the data — they don’t want to give it to you because they know if they do you’re gonna go off and order the glasses on the Internet. Check out this page for links that may be helpful: https://funny-about-money.com/2012/07/13/cost-effective-source-for-eyeglasses/
I’ve been buying mine at Central Optical, an upscale boutique where they fall all over themselves to be nice to you and where the choice of really, really cool frames boggles the mind.
However, I have purchased glasses, happily enough, at Costco. Consumer Reports some years ago did a comparison in the quality of prescriptions and put Costco’s eye exams at the top of the list. If decent plain-vanilla frames will do ya, it’s sure worth checking that place out.
My daughter got the free–or in her case, very cheap–glasses from Coastal. She likes them just fine. Some of her friends have used Warby Parker. Google and you’ll find them both.
Yesh. My son has been using Warby Parker.
From what I’ve been told, as long as you don’t need progressives, these outfits are a great deal. Apparently they don’t do progressives, BUT you can buy the W-P frames and get someone else to install the lenses in them. This would represent a large savings, since at retail outlets the frames cost as much as or more than the lenses.
I paid $720 for my original progressive lenses plus the fancy frames. Soooo…in that light, $830 for FOUR pairs of glasses is just not all that bad. Assuming the glasses turn out to be fully functional.
Here’s something amusing, in that department: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timmaurer/2013/10/16/revolutionary-retail-test-driving-warby-parker-and-dollar-shave-club/