You know you're cheap when...

... you're at the store and you see that the canned tomatoes you usually buy are on sale, a dollar off the usual price, and - after deciding that you'll also need to call your boyfriend and alert him to this excitement so that he too can bring home many, many cans - proceed to bring to the register more cans than you know full well you could carry home (and you will be carrying them home, because you're too cheap to use that Metrocard)... only to get rung up and see that this sale was not entered into the system... only to stand your ground, while the cashier first attempts a price check and then just goes herself to check the price, only to tell you that it wasn't these cans that were on sale, but some other product. Boo.

Entertain me

My apartment, for reasons that are not worth going into here, lacks both TV (still) and Internet (once more). During the course of a cold that may or may not have come from swine, I got through nearly all the DVDs we own. Netflix offers some entertainment, but on the one-disk-at-a-time plan, this can mean entire weekends DVD-free. Yes, there are free movies at MOMA on Fridays (and brave are those who visit the restrooms once those end), and DVDs that can be borrowed from the public library, but these things require effort. Fixing the TV and Internet situation once and for all would - again, long story - cost an unacceptable $100/month. Going to the movies, however, means paying $12 or whatever ridiculous amount it now is for the privilege of sitting in a pile of foul-smelling artificial-butter popcorn. Reading books for entertainment - how quaint! - is never less appealing than two months before an oral exam. So what's left? Must I up the Netflix to two-at-a-time? Hire a court jester? Stare at walls and use my imagination to project onto them stock sitcom scenarios? Help!

The anti-frugality brigade: the food edition

The food movement can't seem to decide where it stands on frugality. On the one hand, we're told that cooking at home saves money, that we should be buying raw ingredients in bulk and eating virtuous 20-cent meals 'recession friendly' meals rather than the fried deliciousness we now consume. On the other, we're informed that we should shop only the fresh-produce-and-meat aisles of the supermarket, that is, if we absolutely must shop at a supermarket - we should really be setting aside a couple hours each day to farmers' markets, butcher shops, fishmongers, cheesemongers, and other quaintly-titled artisans - and that's before any cooking-time enters into it. We are told that we should - if we care about health, taste, and the environment - spend a larger proportion of our incomes on groceries. Which is it?

What seems like contradictory advice is just lecturing directed at different audiences. The grains-and-lentils bit is meant to argue against the notion that anyone's so poor as to have to eat at McDonalds, while the 'mongers suggestion is aimed at those of us who, the movement wants us to believe, could eat well if only we stopped being so damn cheap.

So, a couple things. Is price even a proxy for health-promotion when it comes to groceries? With restaurant food, it certainly is not - most of what a fancier place serves resembles fast food grease-wise but comes in larger portions. For better taste, to an extent, although attempts to gussy up basic foods - English muffins, potato chips, candy bars - tend to produce inferior results to the low-end brands. What about for sustainability? Shouldn't local foods that are in season - and, in theory, that taste best - be the ones that cost less? I can see how, as it stands, some better food choices cost more than some worse ones. But shouldn't we be striving for a situation in which good foods cost less? Isn't asking the middle-class-and-up consumer to spend a greater proportion of his income on groceries - 'like they do in France' - asking not only something unrealistic, but also something that will make those same groceries a major burden on the less wealthy?

But more to the point: is denouncing consumer frugality really the best road to go down? The food movement has come under so much criticism for ignorance of the poor that, to its credit, it has, I think, become a bit more self-aware when it comes to those for whom 'where does each ingredient come from?' artisinal grocery shopping is logistically inconceivable. But consumers with somewhat more choice in the matter are blamed for wanting to keep costs low, as though thrift is in itself suspect, at least when it comes to food. Which it is, if we're looking at all who sell food-movement-approved establishments as particularly worthy charities, not as places where consumers, you know, consume.

If you have to ask

Everyone knows that baked goods are cheaper to make at home than to purchase on the outside, that the markup on a brownie is far greater than that on, say, steak. But baking takes time, and sometimes you're outside and want a cookie or whatever, and you must make peace with the fact that you're paying vastly more than the ingredients and labor seem they could possibly add up to. This much I can accept.

What I can't accept are baked goods that are price upon request. Many, many New York bakeries and coffee bars decline to affix prices to individual items, or to list prices on a menu of some sort. The idea here is that baked goods are, even if being sold for exorbitant amounts, inherently 'from the heart', and that the homey experience of a pastry would lose something if crude and cold numbers entered one's line of sight. Such establishments assume most people will be too ashamed to ask, because to ask is to admit that you're the sort of person who'd get that muffin if it were $1.75, but that $2.25 isn't going to work for you.

Well, I am that sort of person, so today, at a bakery in Tribeca, I asked the man behind the mini-cake counter how much the cake I was interested in cost. I also asked what it was, because the display lacked labels altogether, not just those involving price. I learned that what I wanted was an opera cake, and that it cost somewhere between $4 and $5.25 - the guy didn't know for sure and apologized for having not put up labels, but did not offer to find out where on the spectrum this particular cake fell. He was, however, quite confident that $5-ish was the most a cake could possibly cost.

Now, normally this would send me running in the opposite direction, but a) the cake was to be split, so I could think of the price as half whichever amount, and b) more to the point, we were at this bakery in the first place because we'd just gone to a brunch place, seen that French toast there cost $11.50, and, disappointed, decided to just buy some bread and stuff and have lunch at home. The cake was meant to compensate, and even $5.25 for two seemed less ridiculous than $23 plus tax, tip, overpriced restaurant coffee...

So we're at the register, and the woman ringing me up enters the amount for the cake: $6. I started to try to correct her, but realized I didn't know how much the cake cost, and she looked at me like I was insane when I started telling her about how we'd received an estimate on the cake from the man behind the cake counter, and that $6 fell above our estimate. Who gets an estimate on a pastry? The cashier then told me that the man I'd asked didn't know what he was talking about, in a tone that implied that I'd been quite foolish to look to that guy - that is, the guy working in the pastry area - for such information. Yes, what was I thinking?

This is where I should have said forget it. But a momentary lapse of judgment later, there I was with a baguette and a $6 cake, both of which we proceeded to take with us grocery shopping. During which I mentioned to my boyfriend, oh, maybe 20 times (his estimate - accurate, I think) that I could not believe I'd bought this cake, and that now we couldn't even enjoy the cake, given the circumstances under which it was purchased, not to mention the price.

(I realize, given the experience, that although I'm unlikely to return to said bakery after this incident, I have not given its name, an omission that normally comes when I think there's a good chance I will want to return somewhere and do not want to burn the bridge entirely. I mean, they have really good croissants, and until I find an alternate source...)

It's moments like this that I think about that time in class when my students and I all discuss our weekend plans, so as to facilitate use of the future tense. And I think, trust me, kids, you don't want to know.

There's no such thing as a brought lunch

Well-meaning advice-givers will tell you that if you want to save money and eat right, you should bring lunch. Well-intentioned grad students named Phoebe have tried this approach, but found it lacking.

For one thing, bringing lunch means, if not an extra trip to the store, an extra bag to carry to campus, given that The Backpack is permanently at-capacity as is. The 'bring dinner leftovers' approach sounds so efficient, but if I make too much of a dinner I like, I just finish all I made right away, such that if there are leftovers, it's because whatever it was was so-so to begin with. And with lunches prepared specially bread's always stale by the time it comes out of the bag, plus add up the price of all the ingredients - purchased, inevitably, at various NYC establishments - and the difference is hardly that of making coffee or pasta at home.

But I just spent $8.17 (with tax) on a sandwich, and I'm ashamed. (I'm not counting the $1.75 on tea - the second of the day - because this is an investment in my not coughing for the whole duration of the class I'm about to teach, as I so charmingly did on Monday.) This can't be right!

Cheapness success!

Near the end of my first month of grad school, my monthly credit card statement is the lowest it's been since I first got a credit card (the years I had one in my name but attached to my parents' account in college to "build credit" but not actually use not counting). This is extremely surprising to me, since I didn't make any kind of extra effort not to spend money this month, and indeed, even went a little overboard on used book purchases. But, the only thing I've spent more than $100 on this month has been books, and, to be fair, it is the beginning of the semester. What I did not spend on was going out because I have no friends and no time, happy hour because it's illegal(!!) in this state, and transportation because I have nowhere to go. Apparently, grad school is habitual cheapness utopia! All you need to do is move somewhere near a school where all the shopping is unaffordable and where you don't know anyone and have no time to do anything but read, which will require only minimal monetary investments in the form of books, coffee, and sandwiches. If this trend holds for the rest of my time here, I may well become not only happy with grad school, but extremely reluctant to leave.

However, I did decide to celebrate my savings by buying a dress, so maybe the savings engendered by the grad student lifestyle will only serve to fuel end-of-month online shopping splurges.

Where that money went

Do you ever find yourself looking at your bank account and thinking how much more would be there if only certain purchases hadn't been made? (Note the passive voice, absolving responsibility.)

Such blanket solutions as 'make coffee at home' get you nowhere, because you enjoy that mocha, and would notice if you gave it up. There's sometimes a perverse joy in eliminating something you'd miss, but let's assume non-perversion. What you should give up, then, are the purchases that add nothing to your life.

My own list would include: pants that fit properly that one day at the store and never again; certain books bought on a whim (although these were usually in the dollar range) or for classes I took freshman year of college prior to figuring out the library, grocery items or meals out that were sort of eh in the end, coffee that was hazelnut-flavored with no warning (ugh!) ... purchases that, in short, I could not have known would be mistakes.

With clothes, cost-per-wear is a fabulous idea in theory, but there's the slight matter of you don't know how long something will last, or how long you'll want it to last, until the time comes. I thought red Keds were a brilliant idea and at $35 so sensible a purchase, but morning after morning I wake up with no desire whatsoever to have red Keds on my feet. Looking back at apparel purchases generally, I find no patterns - according to practicality, price, or any other quantifiable - leading me to which turned out worth it and which did not. And of course with food, until you taste it there's no way to know. Failure to stock up on staples means the dreaded eating out, but doing so means overestimating how many times any one person will actually want microwaved edamame in a given lease period.

So, is there any way to systematically isolate bad-idea purchases? Or is the answer to learn to like red Keds, hazelnut coffee...

How cheap is too cheap?

An important part of cheapness is the specific psychological reaction of the cheapster to a rare bargain find. The cheapster feels both that the hunt for cheap is a kind of epic adventure worth the perils and travails required, and a sense of gloating vindication when the cheap item is finally secured. At least I do. (And I am not alone: watch the Dupont Circle video in this segment and look for the Korean woman who recounts all her eBay finds.) I don't mind if I have to go to ridiculous lengths to get my cheap stuff, like wheeling my Craigslist desk more than a mile to my apartment because it doesn't fit in Seb's car. That is part of the experience, and it is a noble labor which I can then relay to other (entirely uninterested) people as part of my narrative of miserliness.

But how much should I be willing to undergo for the sake of a bargain? Seb, for example, thinks that I am willing to go so far to get a bargain that I am not thrifty at all--I am just a militant Scrooge with no sense of dignity or ability to appraise the value of my time. We've talked before about the slippery calculations involved in ascertaining opportunity cost of time, though that measure is what is supposed to stand between me and professional beach-combing for lost pennies. Otherwise, all that remains is my outsized sense of accomplishment at finding a discount.

So here is the dilemma: Massachusetts has a can and bottle deposit of five cents a container. So...? I mean, it only takes 20 empty Diet Coke cans to earn me a whole dollar. On the other hand, I think homeless people do this for a living.

On another spending on grad school stipend note, while certain expenditures have been restricted lately (shopping, haircuts, frilly things like that), my budget for books has simply faded into oblivion. Whereas I used to hate buying them because it would just mean more heavy boxes when I inevitably moved, I am now in the midst of an Amazon free-for-all. Why print out excerpts at 50% of readable size when they are just so cheap, and I may need them at some point, for papers, or generals, or things...

Cheapness podcasts and more

-The WNYC Leonard Lopate show has two recent podcasts all about our subject of interest. One's from the pro-cheap Lauren Weber, whose book I now have to read. The other, which I have yet to listen to, is an interview with Ellen Ruppel Shell, who (as I know from a previous podcast - jogging will do this) argues that bargain-hunting is sociopathic behavior, or some milder version thereof, and that because we are cheapskates unwilling to pay for quality the way our grandparents did, today, They Don't Make Things Like They Used To, and the market's divided between disposable crap and frou-frou designer goods. I was not sympathetic, but will save this podcast for the next run and see if I can be convinced to feel bad about paying $5.90 for Uniqlo tank tops.

-Storage spaces - worth it or evil? I get why in many cases they make no sense, but, as with credit cards, if used right, they can save tons. If you need storage for two months (of which one is free, thanks to a promotional offer) between apartments and are not paying rent in that time, you will be glad when you don't need to up and buy all new clothes, books, and furniture. If, however, you refuse to part with stacks of old newspapers and decide to rent them out their own studio apartment, perhaps self-storage is not your friend.

-Finally, shoe repair: the essence of frugality or a scam that preys on the thrifty? I just dropped off three boots (note: not three pairs of boots) in need of various rather desperate adjustments, and the total cost could, yes, buy another, if inferior, pair. But I did it anyway. Why?

So, read, listen and discuss!

The Brooklyn tax

After two years in a fourth-floor, absolutely-no-frills walk-up in Brooklyn, I've moved on up to a lower Manhattan elevator building, to an apartment of the same size as the old one, but with laundry on the same floor, and with a dishwasher. A dishwasher. I haven't used it yet, on account of still needing to unpack my dishes, but soon, soon.

How did this happen? Did I sell out, abandoning grad school for something sensible? Ha! Did the recession benefit sad little renters like myself after all? Not so much - in none of the many, many neighborhoods in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn I looked into did it appear that rents had gone down - if anything did change, it was the creativity of scammers, which has skyrocketed. Astoria remains a dishwasher-free zone, and the Village is still a place where the proximity of bars is supposed to make $20,000 a month seem reasonable for a hovel too small to fit more than a twin bed and a vial of whatever drug makes people think such apartments are a good idea.

Yet I'm paying neither more nor less than I was in Brooklyn. I attribute this to the fact that with my old place, around the corner from the Food Co-op and across from the most precious cheese shop known to man (albeit one I went to all the time, because, cheese), the money that might have gone to quality-of-life concerns such as dishwasher-laundry-proximity to school instead went to the Brooklundian Mystique. I have to face facts that I was paying for the privilege of living in an outer borough whose ethos perfectly matches that of our moment, a privilege I never saw as such, and consequently that I'm glad to be rid of.

I used to think Brooklynites who claim they wouldn't trade for Manhattan if given the chance were just being defensive, claiming to enjoy the slow pace and small scale and women in practical shoes while secretly pining to get back where the action was. With some, no doubt that's the case, but Brooklyn, hip since I don't know, the late 1990s? earlier still?, is today above all so very now. Brooklyn is helicopter parenting. Brooklyn is Obamania. Brooklyn is local-sustainable. Brooklyn is ostentatiously rejecting modernity while benefiting from whichever aspects of it you see fit. Brooklyn is wealth posing as poverty. New Yorkers often stand accused of thinking themselves at the center of the universe, but today's Brooklynites can't be faulted for seeing their own experience as basically the dominant culture of 2009 America but more so.

But which Brooklynites? Surely not all. The 'new' Brooklyn, the one of - pardon the clichés - recent elite-college grads; moms who couldn't imagine feeding their kids non-organic milk; artsy drifters with family money (trust-funds or otherwise), is often said to be just a tiny, if well-publicized, corridor in a huge and diverse borough unexplored by Corcoran and Western European tourists. The 'new', according to this understanding, is highly visible to NYT-reading, NPR-listening, Michael Pollan-worshiping white folk, while the 'old' or 'real', however, remain the borough's essential truth.

But if you count up the number of neighborhoods that have fully or partially 'switched' (setting aside Brooklyn Heights, which was posh in prehistoric times, and neighborhoods like Gravesend where wealthy and arguably white people are nevertheless separate culturally from new-Brooklyn mores), you get: Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Windsor Terrace, parts of Bushwick... I might be forgetting something, but this gives some sense of just how substantial a force new-Brooklyn has become. Again, these areas are not uniformly canvas-tote-bagified, but in all of them, that influence is felt.

Perhaps we're looking at a full-on transformation of the borough, starting with neighborhoods a quick subway trip to Manhattan, but one that will eventually extend so far out as to make a contiguous upper-crust paradise all the way to the Hamptons. Bensonhurst, beware.