HomeNewsSetting sale: Always on the lookout for the next big bargain

Setting sale: Always on the lookout for the next big bargain

I’m thrifty. There, I’ve gone public!

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I come by it honestly, right through the gene pool. Both my grandmothers were cautious about spending. So was my mother, who was a casualty of the Great Depression, a chapter of history she never forgot.

So I’ve inherited that legacy. I adore a bargain.

Stand me in front of a sale rack, and I’m a happy woman. Let me loose in a dollar store and I’m in heaven, not because I need any of the trifles displayed so seductively, but because I perceive them as great and terrific bargains.

But given all that, I’m still a very frustrated lady. That’s because no matter how cautiously I budget — no matter how many moments of triumph I have in finding the world’s greatest buys — I’m foiled by life’s little “gotchas.”

It never fails that just when I’m celebrating some great bargain coup – — — just when the self-congratulatory mood is in full gear — — — the car decides that it’s time for a crisis. Nothing minor, of course.

The most exotic, most daunting, most devilishly tricky carburetor problem – — — the one that costs $560 even to approach – — is upon us.

Goodbye, wonderful new wardrobe, terrific desk chair, runaway weekend. Hello, greasy carburetor part.

I feel jinxed, too, when I swoop down on those vast warehouse bargain Meccas where the paper toweling is at least nine miles from the tuna, and you can’t buy just a few apples.

So I get into the spirit of more, more, more, presumably for less, less, less. I scoop up produce by the bushel and carry it off forgetting that the refrigerator is already bursting at the seams.

Then I watch our seemingly endless supplies of cucumbers, lemons and red peppers grow fuzzy little coats, until they deserve a decent burial and get one. So much for the thrifty bulk cooking…

And that incredible buy on laundry detergent? That colossal bargain on the super-jumbo vessel? I can’t seem to lift it without risking serious spinal injury.

I’m a slow study when it comes to precisely what is a bargain, and what isn’t. Case in point: If the item in question is on the sale rack, and is boldly marked 50 percent off, and if it seems remotely useful or pretty or — — — best of all, worth far more than the ticketed price — — — I must have it. The problem is, that actual need may be overlooked.

The iron I bought at a drop-dead sale price? It dropped dead on the very night I was 10 minutes late for a party and frantically pressing out the wrinkles in my pale blue shirt.

My “bargain” turned out to be out of steam. And my husband, he of the “you get what you pay for” marketplace philosophy, couldn’t help reminding me of that wisdom.

Speaking of that husband, this is a man who pulls into parking lots as a matter of course because of concerns about being ticketed on city streets. Some of our fiercest arguments have been about that “surrender,” as I think of it.

So imagine my delight when, on a recent afternoon, I spotted a perfect parking place practically outside the restaurant where we were having lunch. “Check the time,” my husband cautioned as I proudly fed the meter with quarters. And I did it because his fancy watch was in the shop for repairs, while my cheapie was on my wrist.

We had a long, wonderful lunch. And based on my careful calculations, we arrived back at our parking spot with minutes to spare. Except there, plastered across the windshield, was a parking ticket for $25.

Impossible, I fumed…until I realized that my bargain watch was running 15 minutes slow – — one of its chronic problems.

My husband had the incredible grace not to remind me that you get what you pay for.

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