Tag Archives: money

December 14, 2010 · 11:28 AM

On Eating My Words

Despite being one of the thriftiest people on Earth, I abhor shopping at Ross.

And TJ Maxx.

And Nordstrom Rack.

And any place that requires an inordinate amount of “digging” to find what I need. One would think that a cheap-o like me would call TJ Maxx my mecca, but one would be forgetting that my need for organization will always, always trump my frugality.

I have needed structure and order for as long as I can remember. Not an obsessive compulsive, lock-and-unlock-the-door-six-times type, but enough that walking into a store with rows and rows of clothes makes me want to turn around and flee.

Did I mention my other disorder, commitment-phobia? When it takes decades to make seemingly insignificant decisions (which boot? Black or brown? Knee-length or ankle?), it becomes nearly impossible to make decisions if nothing is in its proper place. How do I know if I’ve seen all of my paralyzing options if they are strewn down an aisle?

Last week, however, I had to make a concession: I was throwing a party, I needed decor, and I needed it cheap.

And I knew exactly what this meant.

I Binged all the thrift stores I could think of, and was a little embarrassed to find so many of them in such close proximity to my home. How did I not realize they were there before?

Anyway.

I walked into Ross and braced myself for feeling like a arachnophobe in a store full of spiders. But as I made my way to the back of the store I saw the rows upon rows of glass vases — exactly what I was looking for. I bent over to pick one up to check its price tag, and nearly dropped it to its death on the tile floor — $4.99! Was I hallucinating? Is this a joke? Or is this Merry Christmas to me?

I quickly stashed every last one of them in my cart, totally convinced that I had just snagged the deal of the year and surely 15 angry women would be coming around the corner to claim their vases too.

Jingle Bell Rock tinged in the background as I had these paranoid thoughts. No angry women. Just Jingle Bell Rock.

I hurried around the rest of the store convinced I was going to find a hundred other things I couldn’t live without, but sadly, Ross only had one treasure to offer me that day (or any day).

My next stop was Tuesday Morning, which was so chaotic and out-of-order that I almost reconsidered before making it past the front door. I walked down two aisles and saw that their glass vases were $9.99 — apparently not all discount stores are created equal. I felt a surge of pride at my wise Ross choice.

And even though Michael’s isn’t a discount store, it is decidedly crafty, and I had hopes it would be cheap. It was not. Not only did they not have anything I could use, but they had things I couldn’t use that were overpriced. I moved on quickly.

Twenty minutes later I was standing in Target because I couldn’t think of any more discount stores. Target had exactly the ornaments and ribbon I was looking for, but I realized that I felt like a failure for paying full price. And since I was in a such a panic about not being able to find more things I needed, I bought twice the ornaments necessary, grossly overestimating the size of my glass vases.

When I got home and started putting the vases and ornaments together, I realized that the vases were filthy. They were completely covered in dust and I spent 15 minutes hand washing each one. At first I was irritated, but that feeling quickly dissipated each time I turned a vase over to clean the base and saw the price tag. Yes, I thought to myself, I am willing to spend 15 minutes for $4.99 vases. Who wouldn’t?

I feel like I owe an apology to discount stores everywhere: Why do I judge you when you are so good to me?

The decorations worked really well, and I was thrilled with the look. In fact, I got several compliments on them throughout the evening, and now I am going to use them to decorate our home for Christmas.

I am secretly hoping that someone comes to my house and asks about my vases. I am looking for an opportunity to sound exactly like the radio commercial, “I got it at Ross!”

7 Comments

Filed under UpWORD (Beauty)

Tagged as design, house, money

July 1, 2010 · 3:00 AM

The Double-Edged Sword Known as Craigslist

Few people can argue with the victorious feeling of finding the exact item on Craigslist for which one was searching.

In my case it was a black bookshelf, six feet tall, with five adjustable shelves. Bingo.

Oh and the irresistable price tag of $20. Double bingo.

That is more or less the end of the fun of Craigslist: you find the item. You email the owner. You wait in anticipation for them to say they haven’t already sold it.

Then the work begins.

Where do you live? Where should we meet? How am I going to cart a six-foot-tall bookshelf back to my house?

The seller of this bookcase gave me her address and said to arrive around 6:30PM. I had plans at 7PM on the other side of town, but as any Craigslist crawler knows, if you snooze, you lose. I confirmed that I’d be there at 6:30PM.

“Oh and just a FYI,” she noted, “I don’t actually live there anymore. I have renters in this house. They said they’ll put my bookshelf in the backyard and you can just pick it up.”

Um. OK.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she said. “Can you pay me via PayPal? Like right after you pick it up? Since I won’t be there?”

Clearly this is an exercise in trust. We both know I could pick it up and disappear without paying her. I know I wouldn’t do that, but she doesn’t know I wouldn’t do that. Craigslist transactions are full of this kind of blind faith.

It occurs to me shortly after making these arrangements that a six-foot tall bookshelf may not fit in our SUV. I loathe the idea of borrowing someone’s truck, or worse, going there in our SUV only to find it won’t fit and we have to return with someone’s truck.

Mike suggests we buy some twine so we can tie down the hatch if the shelf won’t fit inside, so I stop by Home Depot on my way home from work. Who knew there were 15 different kinds of twine? I am not a twine expert, but suddenly I am comparing rope widths, impact resistance, and cotton versus poly. A phone call to Mike in the middle of the twine aisle solves my problem, and I leave with something called Heavy Duty Jute.

Four hours later, after work, Mike and I hop in the car headed for Leschi.

Everybody in Seattle knows the tricky thing about the affluent Leschi area — it classifies as Leschi immediately after you cross over Martin Luther King Jr Way. Before crossing over, however, the neighborhood is notoriously sketchy, a combination of First Hill, the International District, Denny Blaine and Garfield High. So when someone says they live in Leschi, you’re never sure if they have a two million dollar home or bars on their crack-house windows.

Guess which side of the tracks my bookcase was on?

Technically, it was one block east of MLK Jr Way, which put it in wealthy Leschi. That doesn’t stop Mike from second-guessing the legitimacy of the deal I’ve arranged.

“This is the house? The orange one with the porch falling off the front?” he asks me, incredulous.

“Yes, that’s the address,” I reply.

“Seriously?” he answers. “This whole situation looks like an invitation to get robbed. Didn’t you say she doesn’t live here and she wants us to pick something up in the backyard behind a fence? Seriously?”

After a bit of back and forth, Mike decides to go look in the backyard and see if there is actually a bookshelf to be had.

There isn’t.

He comes back to the car with the biggest I-told-you-so face he’s ever sported. I immediately call the owner.

“Oh, it’s not?” she asks. “Did you check on the deck? I bet she put it on the deck. Call me back if it’s not there.”

“Did you look on the deck?” I ask Mike. He stares at me with a less-than-enthusiastic expression.

I put his wallet and cellphone in my purse so there is nothing of value in the car (oh wait, I see his brand new golf clubs in the back…best not to mention). We both approach the fence and push the door to the side to reveal piles upon piles of garbage. There are boxes everywhere, sacks of trash, an old couch, several discarded chairs…but no bookshelf.

After wading through the garbage, we get to the backyard and look up at the deck; it’s on the third floor.

“You have to be KIDDING me,” Mike says as he stares up the three flights of rickety wooden stairs.

We walk to the top of the deck where, both a blessing and a curse, we find the bookshelf. It’s in fine condition and it’s exactly what I wanted, so as if I had found a mangy dog that needed a home, I daintily ask, “Can we keep it?”

Mike rolls his eyes and tells me to grab one side of the shelf. We hoist it up and begin the arduous climb down three flights of stairs — beginning with Mike almost falling through the first one because it was rotted.

We huff and puff our way to the car and I have to laugh at what I am willing to put us through for a $20 bookcase. I have no doubt that my husband is silently cursing my thrifty ways.

The miracle of the situation is that it fits in the back of our SUV without any need for my Heavy Duty Jute twine. Nevermind that we have to move my seat so far forward that if we have a collision the air bag will kill me. I don’t care; I have my $20 bookcase.

I read plenty of design and Do-it-Yourself blogs where the authors tout their garage-sale/thrift store/Craigslist victories as though the money saved came without a real cost. Nobody ever mentions the backyard transactions or three flights of stairs.

Nobody until now, that is.

8 Comments

Filed under AwkWORD (Humor)

Tagged as car, Craigslist, design, house, money

March 31, 2010 · 3:00 AM

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Breakfast

We were like innocent lambs being lead to slaughter — except we have to take full responsibility for being slaughtered, since the man with the ax said, “Would you like to be slaughtered? I’ll give you a cookie!” and we said, “A cookie? Why, yes! Sharpen the ax!”

What did we know? All were heard was “cookie.”

Two weeks ago, while checking into my in-love’s (code word for in-laws, in our family) condo in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, the nice lady at the front desk tells us she would be happy to invite us to a free private breakfast on Monday that would only last 75 minutes and include 60% off all of our activities for the week. She said it like that, in a run-on sentence.

I turned to Mike and our guests, the fabulous Casey and Sarah Bueller (you may remember Sarah from her guest post) and said, “I know it’s a timeshare presentation, but all I heard was free breakfast and 60% off. What did you hear?”

“Same,” they all replied, eager to rip these foolish salesmen off. If they want to buy us breakfast and activities, they’re the suckers, after all.

“Besides,” I said. “It’s only 75 minutes. Just over an hour of semi-torture, but then we have major discounts.”

Oh how I want to go back in time and poison myself so I could never have uttered those words.

Monday Morning: Free Breakfast

“Please fill out these brief forms and then you can head inside for breakfast,” the lady announces to us. We dutifully began filling out our forms, until we reached a very personal question: What is your annual income?

Sarah and I look at each other, indignant, and refuse to answer the question. We turn our forms in and not 10 seconds later the woman turns to us.

“You didn’t fill in your income,” she says tartly.

“That’s right,” I reply. “It’s none of your business.”

“It is if you want to attend this presentation,” she says. “Why would we allow people with low incomes to get the incentives if we know they can’t afford the items for sale?”

We look at her with disdain. I consider walking out. But then my stomach growls. I fill in the form, though purposely check the box two levels beneath our actual income, just to irritate her.

We sit down at the breakfast table and look around the dining room.

No. No, they didn’t. In the corner, tucked away, was a breakfast buffet.

“They don’t even serve us!?” I whisper to Siri, who is already irritated.

We fill our plates and then get a table…and the salesperson sits down at the fifth chair. Let me give you an image of this individual. She is wearing basic black and tan business casual slacks and a top, but has the makeup, cleavage and spike heels of a hooker on her first day.

After our breakfast, as we rise from the table, she rebukes us, “Please, leave a tip. For the waiters!” We all freeze in place as it occurs to us that not only were we her supposed guests, but we served ourselves at the buffet. You have to be kidding me.

I drop five dollars on the table.

She leads us outside to a veranda and proceeds to pepper us with questions about our lifestyle and vacationing preferences. We answer her canned questions until she lays it on the table: are you interested in purchasing a timeshare at this resort?

I see no need to make nice. This was already miserable and it would be better to save us both the time.

“No, we’re not,” I tell her. She stares at me, trying to remain calm.

“Then why are you here for this presentation?” she asks.

“For the incentives,” I reply, looking her in the eye.

“Well,” she said, after a moment, “that’s honest. I can appreciate that.”

I’m glad one of us can.

Monday Morning: Post-Grounds Tour, Final Stage of Sales Presentation — 2 Hours In

Enter Mel, the salesman.

“Howdy folks, how ya doin’ this mornin’?” Mel greets us. We stare in wonder at the figure before us. He’s 65, portly, wearing a Tommy Bahamas knockoff shirt and more gold chains and rings than anyone outside of the Mob has any business wearing.

We gather at a table overlooking the ocean, and Mel calls for mimosas. As the waiter pops the champagne bottle, everyone in the restaurant cheers. It takes all of my strength not to stand up and yell, “Don’t applaud this! Save us! Rescue us from this torture!”

Mel proceeds to pull out a yellow legal pad of paper. He begins explaining the premise of a timeshare, and uses the most unbelievable condensation any of us has ever experienced.

“When you buy a vacation space instead of renting one, you build something we call ‘equity,'” he explains. Mike glances at Casey with a look that says, “Is this a joke? I filled out on the form that I’m a BANKER.”

“You ever been deep-sea fishing, Siri?” Mel says, but he looks directly at Casey. Oh my word, he thinks Casey is Sarah.

“No,” Casey replied.

“Why not? You scared?” asks Mel.

I finally lose it and burst out laughing. Yes! He’s just insulted his potential clients! It can’t get worse!

“And uh, you, Casey,” he says, looking at Sarah. “You’re a lawyer, right? Are you still articling?”

“I’m sorry, ” Sarah replies. “Am I still what?”

“Articling. You know, where you write articles for the first two years after you pass the bar,” he explains. “I’m from Canada and that’s what we do. It’s called paying your dues.”

Sarah stares at him. No words come.

Mel goes back to his legal pad. He tells us that Cabo is the most desired vacation destination in the world, nothing is better — it’s a fact. I immediately think of three greater vacation destinations that I’ve been to, but say nothing.

We soon realize that Mel’s main thrill in life is to write down the nouns of every sentence he says, and then circle or underline them once or twice to really drive the point home. For instance, as he says, “You want to be an owner so you can build equity, and create memories with your families for a lifetime,” it ends up looking like:

owner equity memories families lifetime

I stare at the ocean trying to block out the insanity before me, and sip my mimosa. I think of puppies and balloons and ice cream cones…anything but Mel’s legal pad.

I think of lying on a beach somewhere, warm and tropical. That’s when it hits me that I am on a beach somewhere warm and tropical, but I am definitely not lying on it. I am wasting precious hours of a week in Mexico with Mel, his legal pad, and his poor people skills.

“So,” he concluded. “What do you think? Are you interested?”

We didn’t hesitate, but we weren’t rude either. “I don’t think so,” we each replied. “But thank you so much for your time.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “I didn’t think you could afford it anyway.”

That’s when I spotted a nearby bird and whistled it over in the hope that it would peck my eyes out.

Tuesday, Mid-Morning

The four of us sailed high above the water in a 60% off parasail ride, gleefully shouting, “Thanks, Mel!” into the warm ocean air.