When a bargain is not a bargain

I promised to post a bargain-hunting-theory post and so here it is.

I think it's in our nature to love a bargain. We feel like we're getting a deal! The problem is, changing attitudes about saving, debt, spending, ownership, etc. have turned bargains into something of a burden.

Back in the "good old days" when you needed a new dress (meaning the old one wore out, not just that you felt like a new one) you went to the store to look for one. You were limited to the stores in your immediate area, because there was no good old internet so you could instantly price-compare across the globe. If a dress you liked happened to be on sale, so much the better. That was a bargain. Unless they were REALLY on sale, you couldn't afford to buy two, just because they were cheaper. You still bought one, but you just spent a little less. Or maybe you spent a little more and got a nicer dress. At any rate, you paid for your dress with money you already had and left with one new dress.

Now a million factors make this nice, sane scenario really uncommon, almost humorous.

No matter what point I'm at, if I have a bunch of money in my account or I'm scraping change off the floor of the car, I can almost always afford a new dress at, say, Target. Probably the most expensive dress I've seen there was $50. And there are plenty for $25 & under. Although there are certainly people who cannot afford that, the percentage of those who can is much much higher. And so the price of a dress is not prohibitive. It's not a deterrent. It doesn't give you much incentive to wear one dress over and over when you could buy a new one for each event.

Another factor is that stores turn over their merchandise so quickly that you really have to buy things right away if you want them. This creates a sense of urgency: "I like this dress, I don't get paid until next week but it might be gone by then." It makes it more likely that you'll find some way to acquire the dress, regardless of whether or not you really and truly need it.

And now you don't even need the actual money in hand, of course. Most people, regardless of income status, have a credit card or two. And while being "in debt" used to be a cause for shame and anxiety, now it's just business as usual. People brag and joke about their credit card balances. They rail against the card companies for "ripping them off" and raising interest rates, etc. The fact that people made all those purchases themselves gets lost in the shuffle, because carrying around debt is considered normal; something everyone does, so the credit card companies should make it easier on everyone, right?

Of course there's an attitude shift that has changed our view of clothes. Clothes used to be something you wore, to keep you from running around naked. You wanted to look nice, of course, but clothes were not surrounded by the aura of entitlement, personal worth, and your projected image. Now that clothes ARE symbolic of that, that having a stuffed closet means you are doing all right, having the best brands means you are really cool, and darn it you DESERVE to feel good nobody thinks twice about buying lots of clothes.

So, easy availability, easy money, and a sense of entitlement. Suddenly the closet is full and the credit card is burning.

But I haven't even gotten to the internet! The internet is full of ways to make us spend without thinking. First off, it's easy. I'm bored at work and can hop on the net and look for some stuff, without ever hopping in my car and actually physically driving to the store. Second, the buying is easy. You can't really use cash, so you can just type in a few numbers and the stuff arrives in the mail. Even easier is that you can save a credit card to a site so all you need to do is click a button, not even type in the number! And all these sites like Overstock and Zappos and Ebay are full of "deals". Who hasn't seen an expensive handbag originally $269 with the price crossed out and a big red price next to it *now only $29.99!!!* Who can resist? Kate Spade for the price of Jaclyn Smith!!

And so then we lose sight of whether we actually WANTED the bag in the first place, but it's cheap, and we might not find a good deal like that again, so really we SHOULD buy it just in case we want it someday! I almost did this myself last night, holding a $6 Kate Spade handbag in the thrift shop. Did I need it? No. Fortunately sanity prevailed and I put it back down, but, dear readers, I was very close.

Sometimes our bargains become something to brag about in and of themselves. You like this tablecloth? I got it for only $10 at a clearance sale. Check out this chair. It was FREE. I garbage picked this, my friend sold me this, got this at a garage sale for only 75 cents!

The unfortunate part about all this is we feel like we're saving money. Most of us are trying to save, after all, in this economy. And so finding a dress for CHEAP makes us feel like we are "saving" the $30 markdown, rather than "spending" the $20 price tag. If we didn't buy the dress at all, we would actually "save" $20. But no store wants us to believe this!

An interesting comparison. I used to shop at a regular grocery store full of "DEALS" and "BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!!!!" and "WEEKLY SPECIAL!". I always, always walked out with more stuff than I needed. All those red signs! They caught my eye! They made me feel like I should buy another one because next week they won't be on sale! I usually spent over $100 in a trip. When I started shopping at Whole Foods, it was a different ball game. The stuff is a little more expensive, and very few items, if any, are ever on sale. So if lemons aren't on my list, they never even enter my radar, because there isn't a huge sign proclaiming "TEN FOR ONE DOLLAR!" over the display, coercing me to buy pounds and pounds of lemons I don't need. I typically spent LESS at the Whole Foods, because I was only buying what I needed. I could make the decision to buy lemons or not, free of the siren song of the sale.

And so this has made me more likely to actually save more money by NOT buying things on sale. After all, if you wouldn't buy it for full price, you shouldn't buy it at all. I tend to patronize stores that don't have bouncy happy cheapy SALES everywhere because I fall victim to those signs every time. If something I want IS on sale, so much the better, but I have to want that item at full price first. And frequently I've turned to using something I have, borrowing from someone else, or some other method of actually saving, which means less stuff in my house, more money in my wallet, and more sanity in my head!