Kerch's posts & Organizing Kerch on 21 May 2007 01:59 pm
Shopping, budgeting and staying in control
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided that getting my financial situation in line is just about my most important goal… behind tending to my family and keeping my own talents stoked, of course. I’ve even noticed my youngest son asking more questions about saving money and preparing for his future. I’ve been watching as friends and clients try to get a handle on some kind of budget for themselves and for their businesses.
Sunday I noticed an article in the Baltimore Sun called “Getting dressed for less,” by Gregory Karp about budgeting and saving money. He was talking about a plan for saving money on buying clothes for adults.
The bottom lines are these:
- At this minute, you probably have enough clothes. Most of us do.
- Consider what you have and plan what you need. Don’t just pick what looks “pretty.”
- If you need something, shop second hand places way before department or specialty shops. That is thrift stores and yard sales and then consignment shops before going to retail closeout places — like TJ Maxx — AND THEN department stores, etc.
Then I noticed this morning over at 9:01 am that for the first time, apparel sales beat computer sales online. So people are buying more clothes on line than they are buying computers on line.
Geeks have always bought computer stuff on line. But RAM is RAM. It either fits or it doesn’t. But moms are catching on. Stuff comes in a box and you at least imagine you’ll send it back if you don’t like it.
And so now, if it’s so easy to do, how to you maintain some level of control over shopping for stuff you don’t really need and can’t even see or feel?
What happens when the box comes and you’re embarrassed to have spent the money. You can’t bear to open the box so it gets shoved under the bed…
I’m not saying *I* do this.. but what happens to the people who do?
It just seems to easy to get out of control.
on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:31 pm 1.Betsy said …
Shopping online
I detest shopping. I become overwhelmed by merchandise, the quantity of choices, the size variations with the same number, and all the people breathing my air.
Online I can peruse at my own pace. I can even fill my “basket” and leave it there for reconsidering later, or, if they’ve removed it, decide if it’s worth going again.
My “policy” is to “bring the stores to the house.” My daughter, like me, gets overwhelned with stores, so I took this up for her. Ordered lots of things in several sizes, and we opened the store one day together.
No pressure, no rules on how many items in the trying-on booth, no one bugging you. The understanding was OF COURSE some of it would go back.
I do this all the time. I have a system. All the invoices and return labels go in a small drawer the moment the box is opened. Baxes are saved. Anything going back goes right into the box, return info filled out, labels slapped on the side, and put in the hallway to trip over or put in the car. Mail-It place is on my regular route.
Most stores charge a small fee for returns. I have never thought it was more than the price of gas, wear and tear on car, or offend my personal values of conserving resources and reducing emissions.
It all goes back if we don’t want it. That’s the point.
For me, it works.
on 14 Jun 2007 at 5:11 pm 2.Leslie said …
Books, however, are problematic in their own way. The piles and the aspirations they represent. If I only had the time….if I only had the focus.
I used to have a pile of books on my nightstand that was referred to as “the books to read before I die”. Having them there felt like it was going to give me some kind of longevity. One day, my son moved the pile because he was afraid that it would fall over and kill me in the night.
And still I buy books. Still. I re-sell on Amazon from time to time and I donate to college book sales from time to time. But still, more come into my house to be read “someday” than go out.
Yes, I go to the library, too. Borrowed books get read in a timely manner. After all, I have to face the Lovely Library Lady every 3 weeks or so.
More borrowing - less buying. A worthy goal, to be sure!
–Leslie
on 18 Aug 2007 at 6:32 pm 3.Betsy Davenport said …
Books. Well. My house is cluttered, and the other month I looked around and saw that half the reason is that things aren’t in their “homes.” Next I saw that was the case because they are actually homeless. We have things that we cannot house. And most of it is reading material.
Other people have, I don’t know - what do they have? Collections of silver thimbles? Doo-dads, I can’t think what, but they typically aren’t lying around on every horizontal surface so you can’t find a kitchen counter. But, if I have stuff I want — actually want and don’t delude myself about “someday I might need it” — then the stuff has to have a home.
I purge the bookcases periodically and donate books to the library but now that my daughter is fifteen she has been reading books for two years that I’d have purged some while back. So, they are now keepers. Purging, then, is out of the question. I do not use the library because I can’t be relied on to return the books, or finish them in the allotted time. The other household members use the library and spend a tax-deduction’s worth of money in fines.
I buy them. I “window shop” at amazon and leave my lists there awhile cool off to guard against impulse buys. Or, I take that list to the local bookstore and pay a bit more but am glad to support an independent bookseller. Further, when I have to carry the real-live material world books out of there, I can’t help but notice how many there are, what they weigh, and that jolt of reality limits my purchases. On websites, the virtual book is a virtual burden and responsibility and it could even, maybe, be read in virtual time I do not have.
But the numbers of them! I can be discouraged by how few I’m going to get to read. Sometimes I remember to remind myself of the other side of that record: I will never, ever, run out of good books to read.