Sale! Clearance! Close-out!
I am a sucker for a sale. Those close out stores with bins you have to dig through, sign me up. Outlets, semi-annual sales, flash sales, BOGO, resale shops – I love them all. All of my Hermes scarves are from Goodwill. It’s a form of hunting or finding buried treasure. The problem with bargain hunting is that your prey can set a trap for you. Retail is a beautiful thing but it’s driven by a selling strategy machine that will wreck your closet. Every time you walk into a store or shop online there are strategies in place to get you to spend money. If you have plenty to spend then this isn’t an issue, but, if you’re goal is to shop smart, stay on budget, get your best deal, or find a great bargain, then you want to watch out for shopping snares.
There are hundreds of blogs and websites designed to help you find coupons and save money (comment below and I’ll give you my favorite sites) so we won’t cover that in this blog post. Instead, let’s talk about avoiding the snares. All of us have things in our closet that we really don’t like but it was such a good deal we couldn’t pass it up. Throw all that stuff away. It’s an albatross around your neck and it’s choking your style. Keeping it around won’t make the mistake of that purchase any better. You can’t amortize a bad purchase by keeping it in your house.
There will always be a sale. I promise. There is no “once in a lifetime” sale. Clothing styles come and go and stores are in the business of moving merchandise quickly. Every season is a new style, a new look, a new color pallet. Stores buy merchandise in the hopes that it will be a selling success. This isn’t always the case and now you get to save some money. Keep in mind that the bulk of what’s on sale is their bad buying decision. The “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure” rule still applies, we just don’t want to get distracted by a store’s strategy. An ugly Gucci top is still a Gucci top, but it’s ugly. Shopping frenzies are real things and so is buyer’s remorse. Keep the receipt and take/ship it back.
When you’re shopping a sale ask yourself several questions: Where am I going to wear this? Do I see myself walking around in this garment? When someone pays me a compliment, am I more excited about the garment or the great deal? Where will this hang in my closet? Do I already have something in my closet that will go with it? If you can answer, yes, then grab that deal. If the answer is, no, then you might need to pass on this sale. Again, I promise there will be another one.
