Savvy Saving Bytes

Need a new laptop? Getting low on file folders, pens, paper clips or pads, etc? If the answer is yes, now is the perfect time to buy. Stores big and small are revving up their back to school ads and promotions, offering tons of money-saving items to tempt students into their stores. And riding those kids’ T-shirt tails, we can save along with them, whether we’re shopping for offices at home or at spiffy corporate addresses.

And not only are office supplies and equipment at their cheapest now, but sharp competition insures that product selections are also at their most appealing. A few years ago at Staples I was visually charmed into buying some miniature, pastel colored, transparent calculators on key chains. Finally, I thought, a calculator small enough to carry everywhere. Except later I kept forgetting I was actually carrying one. The Result? The Tinkerbell batteries wore out before I could get much use from the wee contraptions.

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If there was one thing I did not want (and my tiny bathroom certainly did not want) it was a squat, fat, pump dispenser of body lotion. Having lately taken to purchasing super duper, economy sizes of lotion not equipped with such dispensers, I needed one. But with only miniscule bathroom shelf space available, the dispenser had to be tall and skinny to squeeze itself into the tiny, allotted space.

Bath shop stores exhibited zero concern for my requirements. There wasn’t a single dispenser that could be called either skinny or tall, let alone both at the same time.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t live without such an object.’ My current gargantuan lotion bottle did afterall come with a dispenser that flipped up. But the bottle was heavy and unwieldy. And the plastic was too rigid to effectively control the lotion flow. Compressing it so the right amount of lotion poured out was always an awkward proposition.

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Mostly everyone in our family has inherited the savvy saving gene.

A jack of all trades who could fix anything, my father was a world class scrounger. From his travels in home construction, he carted home bicycles, games, a truck full of evergreen trees, mosaic art panels, ice skates, puppies, sleds, and a finely detailed statue of Henry VIII with a broken leg that was soon re-attached. And my mother, whose creativity with a needle would have shone in Parisiene ateliers, created all our clothes in addition to amazing miniature dolls out of clothespins and scraps of material. Plus she could stretch a food dollar from here to Moscow. Working at moderate paying jobs, these master savers were able to move their young family from a cramped industrial city flat to a new home bordering woods and a river in a lovely country town.

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Ever get the feeling that some sales clerks consider questions from customers to be major intrusions into their real job–which is to take our cash at top speed and shove us out of the way for the next customer’s money.

Recently I came across such a clerk when I decided to buy a digital camera. My research had indicated my computer operating system wasn’t compatible with the camera’s software so I needed a memory card reader (a small drive to get the digital photos into the computer). When I telephoned the store with the best camera deal, I asked if they could recommend a reader in the lower price range, but not the lowest. According to camera forums, a few very cheapo readers had a dramatic tendency to emit burning smells and melt.

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I didn’t want to be a blimp. Or a semi-blimp…or anything in the blimp family.

Blimpdom doesn’t happen overnight. It starts with a pressing, sudden need for clothing in a larger size. And then one day that larger size is squeezed to the limit and a still larger size is required. And on and on it goes…till Scareyland. So when I had gone up two full dress sizes from the dress size of my slender youth, and a third still larger size was–yike!–all too clearly and perilously in the cards, I finally stopped fooling around and made out a hit list.

Goodbye to all my lovely chocolates (groan): brownies and chocolate chip cookies and (sigh) Cadbury dark chocolate candy bars. Goodbye to ice cream (say it ain’t so). Goodbye to king-size, midmorning snacks and tea time binges of English muffins or toast slathered in butter and marmalade. And adios to corn chips and potato chips and all those other great narcotic nibbles.

Essentially My new diet killed off dessert sweets and around the clock snacks, which were replaced with fruit and yogurt.

For years I had been leaning toward a Mediterranean diet with little meat and lots of fresh veggies, so the rest of my meals remained essentially the same, minus the sweets, junk food and overeating.

Older fat doesn’t give up easily and it took what felt like a century to lose ten pounds. But in the process, I exchanged that loss for a couple of nice gains. The first, thanks to a leaner improved diet, was more energy. Second, more speed. Face it-carrying that extra fat was like carting a comatose ten-pound monkey around 24/7. Third was the satisfied feeling of being in control. When those little demons had demanded, “Gimmee some ice cream! Gimmee a chocolate bar-I’m dyin’ here! Gimmee a brownie-I want a brownie–I deserve a brownie–I need a brownie!” I brushed them off. “Buzz off Gang!”

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In a national AOL survey asking women if they would rather save $50 a week or have sex more often, the majority of women answered, “I’ll take the $50, thanks.”

Eight of nine New York women polled by the Daily News agreed. In these tough economic times, they said money was definitely a priority over sex. Having cut way down on eating out, drinking and shopping, they longed for security and stability more than any momentary pleasure. Burdened by bills and strapped for cash, they felt a compelling need for more money, not more sex.

Only the ninth woman’s sexual hankering was in a different ball game. Sex, she said, was worth more than $50. And since she didn’t plan on carting any cash with her to the happy hunting grounds, she preferred dying a happy woman.

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Here was my dilemma. I needed a napkin holder, but in stores all the napkin holders looked a little too hokey to me. So naturally, I was far from delighted at having to spend money for something I didn’t like in the first place.

I took a little cruise around the apartment. What could I possibly use for a napkin holder? This is one advantage of being a casual housekeeper: if, after using something, you don’t immediately put it back where it belongs, you can often spot an object that will solve a current problem in an unrelated area. In this case, however, nothing suitable was in plain view.

Opening a kitchen cabinet door, I spotted way in the back a few inherited, antique pink glasses I hadn’t used in a long time. They were long on rosy beauty and short on practicality. The bright pink surface glaze had a tendency to flake off. And if you were drinking from that glass while that glaze was flaking, you can imagine where those glazed flecks were going…but it was definitely better not to.

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I was surprised to hear Oprah Winfrey, who seems über-tuned in to just everything in this country, recently admit on her show that she was unaware libraries loaned out movie CDs for free.

For all those also not in the know, or who haven’t hit a library since their school days, these citizen friendly media centers currently offer a rich assortment of freebies. Depending on the location and branch, you can enjoy free newly published hard covers, free perusal of daily newspapers and magazines, free computer time (and sometimes even free computer instruction-which I myself utilized), free concerts, free lectures and free story hours for children. You can also cart home without charge piles of audio books, music and movie CDs. Impressed?

And that doesn’t include their glorious treasury of books, many out of print for decades and impossible to find outside library doors.

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In the next three months, three big holidays will come roaring down Commercial Avenue. Already, all the orange and black trappings of Halloween are flooding stores from coast to coast. And only minutes away, zillions of products with a Thanksgiving motif will start packing shelves in all their autumn colored splendor. Approximately a second after that, stores will be inundated with mountains of red, green, gold and silver Christmas glitter and glitz.

And where will consumers be during these holiday avalanches? If they are tuned in to the usual holiday sales gambits, they will be buying their heads off. If tuned out, they will be traveling their own road, buying only holiday items that touch personal chords.

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One of the simplest ways to save money is to ask yourself before each purchase (not including food and basic needs), do I need this or do I want it? If you reply, I need it – and can afford it – great. Buy it!

But if you reply, I want it, the next question becomes, Why?

Why are you buying your 6th pair of jeans if they are almost identical to pair four and five, which by the way have barely been worn?

Why, after your friend shows off a new giant-size TV, are you also buying a giant-size TV, if the television you own works perfectly fine and is a far more sensible size for your television room?

Why, after an unpleasant altercation with your spouse / employer / child are you buying that new item to cheer yourself up when you recognize the uplift may vanish all too quickly and possibly leave you feeling even more disheartened.

Why, if you’re down about your weight / job / life / etc., are you buying something to forget your depression when you know the problem will still be there big as a mountain after your purchase is forgotten?

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