If You Want To Save Money, Don't Spend Money....

I was reading an article today on CNN Money's page about three ways you can save money. The link to the article was "Save Money Now! Three Great Deals!"

Let's examine the three deals first and then I'd like to make a small comment.

1. Fly At A Deep Discount
2. Get Cash For Appliance Clunkers
3. Tee Off For Less

Okay, the first one says that you can save money by using special promotion codes to book air travel. Um, okay. That's nothing new. And the deals aren't always THAT great, even though they want to hype the thought they might be BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO FLY ON LOUSY AIRLINES THAT ARE NOW CHARGING YOU FOR CHECKED LUGGAGE.

The second one says you can save money by using promotions for appliances to replace your older equipment. Now, this could be a good thing if the incentive was to get rid of resource using clunkers, but not everyone really has that need, and you kind of have to decide if the price you're going to be paying overall is really going to garner a savings down the line, or just make back the money you spent buying the new appliance.

The third one is to save money on golf courses by calling and asking if there are any discounts available. Duh. Okay.

Having read that article, I'll put forth three alternative ways to save money:

1. Don't fly anywhere. Don't travel unless you absolutely have to.
2. Use the mediocre appliances you already have if they're not consuming more energy than necessary.
3. Don't golf. It's a stupid sport anyway, kind of like NASCAR is a sport. Whenever a sport involves people who can perform it while drinking beer, it's not really a sport. It's a diversion.

The point is: If you really are trying to save money, don't spend more money than you have to spend on entertainment. If you really like golfing, then make sure you allocate a certain amount of money to golf, and all will be fine. It's a luxury, so treat it as such. If you're having trouble paying the rent, golf needs to take a backburner to paying the rent, the car payment, the loan shark or whatever Maslowian need that needs to be fulfilled.

This goes back to one of my biggest pet peeves, and that's department stores where a clerk will ring me up and automatically say: "You saved $50 today by buying this coat" right after I just handed her $150 for a coat that was originally marked up for $200. No, I did NOT save $50; I lost $150 in the transaction. A savings means that I GAINED money, not spent it. Whenever I hear that statement, I want to pull out my glock (which I should point out that I saved $33 on by buying it on sale at Walmart) and open fire on every cash register in the joint. But instead, I smile, thank her, and go dump my head into a barrel of water.

Anyway, just saying....

Stumble It!

Today's work ethic and the retail industry

I almost didn't blog this because I couldn't see a way of doing it without sounding really aristocratic and condescending. You see, I was at Big 5 yesterday to buy a pair of walking shoes. My old shoes have practically ripped themselves to shreds, and I've been wearing them because I couldn't afford to wear anything else.

Well, this very young guy is there, and while I'm looking through different types of shoes, he starts on about how there's nothing better than sleep. He especially loves sleeping during the day, going home and sleeping for four hours during the day. He then continues to go on and on and on about the wonders of sleeping during the day.

Now, for those that know me, you also know that because of my frozen shoulder problem, I don't get a lot of sleep, even at night, and ever since leaving the Army, I've never really been able to sleep during the day. Last night, for example, I got about 4 hours of sleep before I finally gave up and realized my shoulder was hurting too much for me to get back to sleep again. My physical therapist suggests using an ice pack on my arm at night when it starts to hurt, but there lies the problem: Once I start using the ice pack, my system begins to believe that the night is over, and it doesn't allow me to go back to sleep.

Anyway, so I'm listening to this young guy go on and on about how wonderful sleep is, and it dawns on me that not once has he ever mentioned ANYTHING about shoes, Big 5, sporting goods, or anything that has to do with the job. It's been a conversation that I've not been contributing to about sleep during the afternoon.

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about the retail industry, and she was talking about how she gets irritated with staff that does all sorts of different things that retail staff tends to do. And I chimed in that if you put yourself in that person's shoes, chances are you wouldn't really think some of those things are all that bad. One of my pet peeves is an accepted practice at practically EVERY retail place I go to where I'm told that because something was discounted from its previous price that I "saved" a certain amount of dollars. No, I didn't save anything because money still moved from my wallet to their cash register. But that's just an indoctrination thing that retail has allowed to happen, so I don't actually get upset at the retailer in question, but just at the industry in general. People are trained to say certain things, and I have no desire to ridicule them for that.

But this was different. This was a retailer who was doing absolutely nothing that concerned any retailing. He and I had an agreement by the fact that he works in a store, and I entered his store. It was that he would help me find products of his to sell, and I would buy them. A friendly conversation is one thing, but this whole conversation that kept making me think: "You lazy bum, go get a job...even though I'm thinking of telling you this at your place of employment."

So, is this an isolated incident? Unimportant? Or is this more of a sign of the future of retailing in this country? I remember going on about how I went to an upscale retailer some years back and everyone in that place treated me like I crashed a party that I hadn't been invited to. I've been to some stores where a clerk rudely pays me some attention after I "interrupted" her conversation with one of her co-workers about a rave they attended the previous evening. I know how I talk about places like Best Buy where I sometimes feel I need to go in stealth mode in order to traverse the aisles without 50,000 extras from the movie 300 chasing me through the store in blue shirts asking if they can help me find something, only to discover that the first person I let catch me doesn't actually know where anything is, how anything in his/her section of the store operates, or just makes up crap because people don't want to admit they are not all knowing these days. When something has been released today, please don't tell me that one of your coworkers has been watching/viewing/playing that released product for months and LOVES IT.

Stumble It!