It’s almost 10 am and I’ve been at work for two and a half hours. No shopping for me today. Well, I bought bagels for those of us stuck in the office today, but I don’t know that those count.
Did you go shopping? I’ve got a number of coworkers who hit the mall at midnight or drove past the crazy stores this morning on their way into the office.
How about online shopping? I don’t know about you, but when I opened my e-mail this morning, it was filled with all sorts of Deals! Deals! Deals!
So I want to hear your shopping stories. Any great bargains? Horror stories? I did get free coffee from the (very bored) bagel shop employees this morning. Felt like a bargain to me!
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
Nope. The deals aren’t worth getting trampled by crazy ladies to me.
I wasn’t going to, but then around midafternoon, I noticed that my local yarn store was having a 25% off everything sale. I’ve been wanting some sock yarn from them for a long time, so we loaded up and drove the mile and a half to the store. It wasn’t as slammed as I feared–they said it had been steady, but not insane. And I got my gorgeous, gorgeous yarn at a fantastic discount, and feel like it was a good deal all around.
Part of that, though, is that I don’t think we’re really doing Christmas this year. Instead, we’re picking up small, random things for ourselves as we do Christmas shopping. Today we went to the Bazaar Bizarre and we each got new wallets (from this guy, who is totally awesome–my wallet has an octopus!), for example.
With all that said, you couldn’t pay me enough to go to WalMart or the like on Black Friday. Fuck that–I’d like to not be trampled to death.