Gratuitous upgrades

As I've held forth about since forever on this blog, I don't much believe in 'quality' when it comes to everyday clothes. They pretty much last till they don't, with many factors (stains, trends, weight fluctuations) affecting clothes' longevity far more than the hand-stitching or lack thereof. I own two pairs of jeans, each of which cost precisely $29.50 (do Uniqlo and Levi's have some kind of arrangement? I kid...), and honestly cannot see how any aspect of my life, including the all-important happiness-with-jeans aspect, would improve had I gone with a $150 alternative.

But! I do, unfortunately, believe that there are other arenas where quality is perceptible. Shoes are an ambiguous case - pay a bit more for certain types, and comfort improves, immediate deterioration becomes less likely; pay a ton, and there's a good chance you're hobbling around in heel-less eight-inch platforms. Food, cosmetics (except for nail polish, which need never exceed $8), shampoo, conditioner... These are tough. The trick is basically not to know that better is out there, because once you do, getting the cheap version will feel like a sacrifice.

Two examples, both of which are goopy and ridiculous:

$30 Japanese conditioner.

$2.60 Icelandic (but, oddly enough, locally produced - way to market to everyone!) vanilla yogurt cups.

I ought to have tried neither. Alas, too late. Both are so definitively superior to their reasonably-priced equivalents that it's impossible to claim no difference exist. The only answer - and perhaps the best cheapness advice I'm capable of providing, period - is that if a more expensive version exists of something you buy regularly, accept that it might be better, much better, but don't buy it in the first place.

Getting it for less

Nothing shocking here, but still something to address in the cheapness and clothing discussion. (Via.)

A limited defense of slow fashion

This is really Phoebe's topic on which I am basically unqualified to opine since I've never even read anything that used the term "slow fashion" that wasn't written by Phoebe, and my main guide to fashion at the moment is what the undergrads wear to the library. (I've been noticing a lot of sweatpants sloppily tucked into Uggs--this may be worse even than mom jeans.) HOWEVER. Last week, I had an eye-opening conversion experience to (what I think, based on Phoebe's descriptions is) slow fashion.

What happened was that I tried to consign my old clothes. This involved schlepping two huge shopping bags of stuff on the subway. Not only did I look like a homeless person en route, I was subsequently subjected to a 20-minute scrutiny of all my garments which felt distinctly like an intense personal scrutiny of my taste and judgment. Probably two-thirds of my stuff got rejected, but I did learn a very important lesson, and it is this: buying expensive clothes pays, at least when it comes time to consign them. Every single item with a J.Crew or Banana Republic label was accepted, and almost everything from H&M and Old Navy was denied (and that was, sadly, the majority of my offering). (Additional question: Who actually buys H&M from consignment stores?)

Moreover, even the deformed pricey clothes made the cut, including a J.Crew sweater I tragically ruined through machine washing (back before I discovered thrifty home dry-cleaning), rendering it at least two sizes smaller than the original and not quite proportional. And while this did give the saleswoman momentary pause, it did not ultimately lead to item rejection, whereas several mint-condition (on account of my having immediately reconsidered the error of my choice) H&M items did not get a second look.

The obvious conclusion of the day's adventure was that, if I want my clothes to have any resale value, I should henceforth shop exclusively at J.Crew, a view to which, like the many women who use "slow fashion" as a post-facto justification of their preference for expensive clothes, I can be quite amenable. Now, I understand that this logic is subject to some exceptions. For one thing, not every garment can have resale value. Underwear, exercise clothes, tights and leggings--basically anything that goes unnoticed or unseen by the general public will continue to be purchased at purveyors of fast fashion. Another problem is that the math doesn't strictly support the theory of recouping initial outlay on expensive clothes by consigning them. If I buy a $70 sweater at J.Crew and consign it two years later, I'll only get about $15 for it. It requires quite a bit of cost-per-wear imagination to believe that I wore the heck out of the remaining $55 in the intervening two years, though it's quite possible that, being a vain person, I would enjoy it more than a $25 sweater. But again, what would it mean to say my pleasure is worth exactly $55? And it's not as though J.Crew is the cost ceiling for slow fashion--the gulf between purchase price and resale value only widens from there. Finally, I suppose frequent consignment undermines the purpose of slow fashion, which seems to consist in wearing every $200 blouse for the at least 30 years.

Still, I think there is something to be said for this plan. Usually, expensive stuff is nicer--it fits better and looks better. (How long it lasts is rarely relevant given that I don't wear anything for 20 years, and so don't work as hard as I could on making my clothes last.) Since I have a monthly shopping budget to which I mostly adhere, it is quite likely that I would buy less stuff if I bought more expensive things less often. Plus, I would really like an excuse to shop only at J.Crew at this point in my life while I am trying to fight the sweatpants-in-Uggs powers and hang on to what I can of my hard-won and now receding pre-grad school adulthood.

Shopping repression

When I lived in DC and had a real life, I shopped at least once a month. It was easy--I had lunch breaks, and DC had convenient retail. My shopping was not extravagant, in part because I had a lot of time to waste waiting for things I liked to go on sale. Now that has changed. Everything in Cambridge is inconvenient except the Gap, and I make no moneyz, so I rarely shop.

This is apparently only a good cheapness strategy until Black Friday. That's when free shipping starts. Also, free returns. And then, you know, what do you have to lose...?

The answer, as you might expect, is your money. I bought lots of barely justifiable stuff on Black Friday (it was cheaper then!), which arrived, turned out not to look that great, and had to be returned to the store (no free returns on this). It was almost like I had repented of this terrible sin. But, unfortunately, returns require a trip to the mall, where other stores also live, and the sinning began anew. It's just that it's been so long since I had been in an H&M... And then these pants were on sale in exactly my size for only $20...Besides, what if I don't get to shop again for another three months? It's all totally justifiable, bank account, I swear!

Anyway, the moral of this story is that the binge and purge method does not work in any realm of life. Indulge your shopping desires regularly in moderation.

Cheapism

FLG sent me this link a while back for a kind of CNET for not-just-electronics that suggests the cheaper version of stuff you want, but also warns against products whose cheapness is not worth it (a temptation to which I am regularly subject). The site is still a work in progress, but could be good for christmas shopping cheapsters.

Report on DIY dry-cleaning

In the comments of a previous post, I lamented the hidden costs of wool and cashmere sweaters buried in the maintenance problem. You can buy 'em for cheap, but then you have to dry-clean when they're dirty, which, within a couple of years, means about a 500% mark-up on the retail price. In response, one of the commenters helpfully directed my attention to DIY dry-cleaning.

This is not dry-cleaning per se, since it is largely based on soaking the sweaters in water and seems like it wouldn't do much for stains, but my sweaters weren't stained so much as just sweaty, so I figured this method was worth a shot. So I bought a mini bottle of baby shampoo, squeezed some into a huge salad bowl (my sink is too gross for any cleaning to conceivably take place in it), filled it with water, and let my sweaters stew in it like marinating steaks for an hour. Then I toweled them per these instructions, and although drying had to take place on a different towel and took somewhat longer than might be hoped given that my apartment is not only dirty but also freezing, the results look good. The sweaters retained their shape just fine, and no longer smell overworn. Total cost: $2.19, for the baby shampoo. Cheapness success!

My roommate did think this was weird though, so maybe this is one of those thrift achievements not worth bragging about socially.

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...

Craigslist: a study in the long-term effects of the cheapness/quality trade-off

Having just moved (again), I've spent the past two weeks browsing Craigslist in a concerted effort to furnish my entire apartment for no money, and this is my question: Does anyone actually buy stuff from Craigslist for more than $100, give or take?

My mentality--and I assume that of most other people my age--when furnishing a place through Craigslist is that the whole setup will be temporary, hence my disinclination to purchase "real" (read: expensive, solid) furniture and my resorting to Craigslist in the first place. I want to buy the cheapest, lightest, easiest-to-transport version of the thing I'm looking for--$25 collapsible bookshelves, $20 laminate desks, etc. The goal is to furnish on the cheap, then re-sell for even cheaper when I move out, and repeat the process in the new place (until at some point in the extremely distant future, I finally settle down somewhere for good, and the first thing I will do then is have a bed built out of living trees so it can never be moved again). By buying cheap and selling slightly cheaper instead of buying at retail and selling for way less to compete with the even cheaper resold stuff on Craigslist, I lose the least amount of money in the process of moving.

So, when I'm browsing the options on Craigslist and come across such things as $300 solid oak dressers or $700 mahogany dining room sets, I ignore them entirely even though 1) the discount on these items is substantially bigger than the discount on the recycled Target and Ikea junk I actually buy, and 2) they're obviously way better quality. The reason I don't buy a $300 dresser is pretty obvious, but I do note that this dresser probably cost over $600 originally, whereas the ubiquitous Ikea "Malm" dresser made of pressed sawdust and cardboard(!) that I buy instead for $60 only cost $100 originally and is, obviously, a piece of crap. The solid oak dresser is by far the thriftier buy, if thrift is taken to mean quality+price and not just pennies saved.

So I wonder, what becomes of the $300 solid oak dressers when everyone my age adopts my version of home economics? I assume that old rich people are still buying new, expensive, solid furniture, so there remains a market for producing it. But I doubt they're buying it on Craigslist for $300, because people who think in terms of solid oak probably don't overlap much with people who think in terms of Craigslist and driving around town sticking mismatched used things in the backs of their Toyotas. As a result, the people who would otherwise buy expensive furniture with the thought of reselling at a reasonable discount later are doomed in their efforts, and thus is the market for cheap crap from Ikea enlarged. And for places like Target and Ikea, which are in effect competing with Craigslist for the same cheapo furniture buyers, does this pressure drive down their quality even farther so that they can beat the $25 resale price tag on their own merchandise?

Basically, what I'm asking is: will my cheapness result in a massive furniture apocalypse in which the Malm dressers and custom-made, hand-crafted teak dressers are the only two options left?

Brooklyn: no cheaper to live in than Manhattan?

Pardon the NYC-specificity of this question (although there are surely analogous questions for other cities re: charming outskirts versus aseptic downtowns), but I'm feeling not so bloggy at the moment. When I am, there will be a longer post in which I answer my own question, but till then, readers (reader? anyone?), comment away.

The thought of the money I'm saving cools me off

Since this article captures a practice I have been implementing for two years already without the impetus of recession, I enjoyed it as a means of self-vindication against my (many) detractors. Surprisingly, very few people are able to see the virtues of life without air-conditioning. I'd think it would be obvious.

First, you can save fully hundreds of dollars a summer. The people in this article claim to have saved thousands, but either their house is massive or their local energy costs tremendous, because my poorly-insulated five-BR house never costs anywhere near that much to cool. So let's put the savings at hundreds. HUNDREDS of dollars. That is a lot of money. Think of how many cups of work-escape coffee that will buy you.

Second, there is no second. This is a blog about saving money, and not using air-conditioning pretty much only saves money, but A LOT of money. Maybe it will bring your family closer together or help you lose weight as the interviewees claim, but I have not tested either of these assertions, so I can't say. It will sort of get you more in touch with nature, if only to the extent that it will familiarize you with the actual temperature outside, which it's possible you haven't had many opportunities to know. Then, after a particularly hot day, your un-cooled home will have retained all the heat of the afternoon, likely forcing you outdoors into the waiting arms of Nature (and her insect friends) in the evening. However, I bet the Pennsylvanian quoted in the article as an advocate of "rolling with nature" would not also endorse spending a winter without heat, so I suspect that this non-cooling for the sake of natural living platform is a limited one.

But most of the complaints about life without air-conditioning are overblown (!). Sure, it's hot and that makes you sluggish and sleepy. But anything under 100 degrees is perfectly livable for most healthy people. If you don't know what to do with yourself in the heat, may I suggest a nap? Maybe a few hours with a book? Or, you could head over to those places whose air-conditioning you're subsidizing and get your money's worth (the library), or to those places whose air-conditioning is like a free gift to you (the mall). Perhaps what should be added to this article is that life without residential cooling builds community. How about that, yuppies?

The article also points out that keeping the air off can kill your cat. This may be true. My cat becomes sluggish in the heat, but I hope that putting out extra water dishes around the house will keep him hydrated so that I will not have to abandon this great money-saving tradition for the comfort of an angry beast.

The real problem of life without air-conditioning is convincing other people that it's really not a problem. For example, my roommates, who ask, "Why is the air always getting turned off?" (Conveniently, the thermostat lives right outside my bedroom and I am the Supreme Controller of House Temperature.) They do not understand my logic, which I have articulated for them several times clearly enough, "The thought of the money I'm saving cools me off."

Bringing back the victory garden, indoors

I've been considering how I could go about growing my own herbs for some time now, even before FLG suggested it. It wouldn't really be a move towards actual cost savings in the way not washing my hair would, since I don't currently buy fresh herbs very often. It would a kind of hypothetical cheapness, since I could be paying more if I were paying anything. Plus, I like projects, and basil.

The problem is two-fold, however. First, the garden needs to be indoors so that I can eat basil all year. Second, it needs to be cat-proof. I've considered two options in this direction:
1. I could grow it under artificial lights in my closet. The downside of this is that the LED lamps cost at least $50 (not thrifty), and also that I couldn't use my closet for more useful ends, like clothing storage. Plus, I'd have to constantly explain to people about the "herbs" I'm growing in there.
2. A chicken-wire covering for the plants so that the sun can reach them, but the cat's teeth can't. Chicken wire is only a few bucks, so the cost wouldn't be a huge issue, but it's possible that space constraints in my new apartment will be. How can I convince my roommates that the best use of half our living room floor is for a chicken-wire domed indoor farm?

On a related note, I was recently hunting for Amazon cart filler to get my order up to $25 and qualify for free shipping, and I realized this is always a bad idea to do at the last minute when you just need to stick something--anything--in there to avoid a shipping charge. I typically select ridiculous things like cat toys and muffin pan liners because I don't have time to take stock of all the little things I actually do need. So, to remedy this problem, I started a shopping list on Amazon dedicated specifically to cart filler items that I need generally but not urgently. Now, whenever I think, "Oh, I could really use an X at times like these," I add it to the list. So that next time I need to add $4.70 to my cart, I will remember to buy a tape measure or a flashlight or, now, chicken wire for my basil farm.

Moving expenses

Right now, I have no profound theoretical things to say about thrift because I'm busy trying to figure out the very practical problem of transporting myself, Sebastian, our stuff, and my cat from our (more or less) happy homes in Washington to our new, chillier homes in Boston in the next month. This is proving to be incredibly expensive.

I managed to find what looks like a decent apartment through a friend, which has saved me the hypothetical money and stress involved in flying out to Boston and scrambling to find a place and sign a lease within a few days, then paying a broker's fee for it. Sebastian, however, has not found a place, so I'm still flying out to Boston next week to help him look for one. Money not saved.

Then there is the problem of schlepping our stuff. I've done a long-distance move once before, from Chicago to Washington the summer after I finished college. That one was somewhat less complicated though thanks to my lack of worldly possessions and angry feline companion. This time, we have probably a small apartment's worth of furniture between us, and the cat can't fly on planes (IMPORTANT THRIFT ADVICE: Pets use up valuable resources and cause endless headaches. Don't get them until you are established and can be reasonably certain that you'll never move anywhere again.) Hiring movers and driving ourselves and the cat is one option, but last time Seb hired movers to move his stuff, they were expensive and lost so much of it that it was impossible to re-assemble half the furniture on arrival.

The other option is renting a large-ish truck and driving it the eight hours ourselves. We lean in this direction. So here is my question: What is the thriftiest way to move? Which truck rentals are the cheapest? Where can I get cheap boxes (that will hold heavy things--not the liquor store boxes mentioned earlier)? What is the best way to find an apartment in three days? Which furniture should I keep and which should I sell? How can I make this process as smooth as possible so that Sebastian and I don't kill each other before we even arrive? Any ideas?

That which seems like it would be cheap, but isn't

Everyone (here, presumably) wants a formula to save money. If only it were always as easy as yesterday, when my boyfriend and I were about to spend $40 ordering moving boxes online, after an extensive search for cheaper options... only to get home to find that the store downstairs was throwing out more (clean, dry, what are the chances?) boxes than we knew what to do with. Yes, I'm pleased.

But it's rarely so straightforward. Just as the theoretically no-fail diet plan, 'don't eat as much', has yet to replace the more involved ones ('cut out carbs'), 'don't spend so much' fails to have the allure of the much catchier 'cut out lattes'. In my experience, however, the quick fixes... it's not necessarily that they don't work, but they still need to be applied with caution. 'Do X, not Y' is not, on its own, enough. For example:

-Cooking/bringing lunch: Usually true, but it depends what you're cooking/bringing and what you're eating out. Pizza and falafel (and vegetarian sushi, and soup, and bagels, and so on) are not necessarily unhealthy meals, and are typically cheaper options than cooking anything with special ingredients, anything that you haven't cooked before and thus may not turn out edible, etc. Cooking for one or two, unless it's something you know will keep and will turn out well enough for you to want to eat the thing again, is not always as efficient as getting something single-portioned on the outside.

-Dressing casually: To be low-maintenance is to be a jeans-and-t-shirt sort. But the arrival of chains like H&M and Forever 21, with cheap, fashionable dresses, coincided with the trend in pricey 'basics'. Assuming nothing's on sale, the frilly dress may be $30; the jeans $200, the t-shirt, made out of that ultrafine material that has made women's t-shirts in recent years less durable the higher the price, $40. (This is only true, however, for women: to my knowledge, men's suits remain the gargantuan expenditures they've always been.)

-Running: The only free sport. Kind of. To not injure yourself, you (allegedly, but I fell for it) need the special sneakers someone claiming running expertise recommends for someone with your exact foot-shape. But good news is, unless you run a whole lot, they will last forever, because your size won't change and they were never in style. The real issue is the increased food and shampoo consumption running requires. No, cost-wise, jogging is not skiing, but it's not free, either. Not if you make the mistake, as I have, of ending jogs at Whole Foods. (Which is, by the way, the most yuppie combination of activities known to man. There's nothing like waiting on that line in your gym clothes.)

-Making your own damn coffee: While this is drastically cheaper per cup than even Bouley Market's miraculous $1.35 cup in Tribeca, New York's priciest neighborhood, coffee out is often a substitute for more costly on-the-outside expenditures. Meeting friends for coffee is cheaper than getting drinks or a meal. Got an hour to kill in SoHo? Better to spend that time reading in Starbucks (where, granted, you don't really have to buy anything) than at the Banana Republic down the street.

-Brooklyn: Yes, this one's very NYC-specific. Contrary to what one might think after reading about the trustafarian Williamsbourgeoise, rents are often lower in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, or at least that's how I ended up in Park Slope and not somewhere less hippie-influenced and closer to school. But now, popping up everywhere are precious little gourmet shops promising sustainable, local, and artisinal, and these are the only places with good cheese for miles, and they know it, allowing them to charge far more than the Manhattan institutions - Fairway, Zabars, even Citarella. So, this one is not only NYC-specific, but also specific to those who buy a lot of cheese. That said, that still leaves, I'd imagine, close to a million people.