Cool and clear after the crashing rain and hail that started off yesterday. It even got into the high 70s and was sunny and blue sky by noon… and I feel like I could use some more of that.
Did my errands. Got lucky at a Goodwill on the east side of town, and got 3 shirts and a pair of pants, all like new, and priced like rags. One of the peculiarities of shopping thrifts is that they don’t usually differentiate between brands when pricing. So UnderArmor, Nike, Mammut, North Face, etc are all priced the same as Old Navy, or Abercrombie and Fitch, or the chain store ‘house brands’. So why buy the cheap clothes when you can buy the expensive well made clothes for the same money?
Had a chat with one of my auctioneers about the secondary economy and buying at outlets, resellers, and auctions. He sells $1200 sheet sets (yes bedsheets) at auction for 30-100$. Who has money to spend at Macy’s on a $1200 set of sheets? And how many of those people will there be when things go pear shaped? (just an example) He sees the number of people logging into his auctions dramatically increasing every week lately (which I hate because his prices won’t be so low anymore). It tells me that people are finding the lower cost ways to get what they want and need. Eventually, there won’t be a surplus of expensive stuff to sell cheaply, but those days are in the future yet.
If you haven’t checked out alternative ways to buy what you need, like ‘casual sales’ at yard or garage sales, ‘person to person sales’ either mediated by an app, or in a more traditional venue like a swap meet, or things like estate sales and thrift shops, or the online versions of any of the above, you need to. It takes a bit more time, and what you need or want may not be immediately available (but it may not be in traditional retail either), but prices are better. Remember the quality triangle, good, fast, or cheap, – pick any two… It applies to retail too.
However you do it, stack it up. The worse it gets, the harder it will be to catch up. And it sure looks like it’s getting worse.
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