valentine's day plans or lack thereof

Some thoughts regarding the upcoming Valentine's Day:

1. I used to REALLY like Valentine's Day. Strangely, I think all the years I really liked Valentine's Day happened while I was single. To me, then, Valentine's Day was about expressing love to everyone, friends and family. Valentine's Day was not about romance but appreciation and gratitude. I took the opportunity to be a reminder to myself to love others. What happened?

2. I guess that happened was that I succumbed to all of the socio-cultural hype. The norms inculcated into me by popular media and, perhaps more disappointingly, my social network and/or friends. When people start asking whether or not you have Valentine's Day plans, you start thinking that you should, and if you don't, there's obviously something wrong with you or your relationship.

3. But I didn't buy into all of the social norms, particularly, the one that says that the entire burden of responsibility falls on the man (in a heterosexual relationship). I also don't think the proper way to celebrate or acknowledge Valentine's Day necessarily includes chocolates, candy, and flowers. Although having a more restricted sense of what the holiday entails would be so much easier.

4. Instead, there is now lots of ambiguity. Nobody is really in charge (unlike birthdays, in which case the non-birthday-haver should take more responsibility for planning). There's no specific script to follow -- buy a gift, buy no gift, go out, stay in. And if there is anything I have discovered about myself (or that has been discovered onto me) in the last few years of living, it's that I deal with uncertainty very poorly.

5. So all in all, my feelings about Valentine's Day are mixed. Even more so because of all the newspaper, magazine, and blog articles about how to celebrate Valentine's Day without breaking the bank (given the economic crisis and all) suggesting that a really great way to celebrate Valentine's Day on a budget is to "Make your partner a home-cooked dinner." Because it'll be really special and all. Maybe it would be more special if I didn't already do that five times a week.

I think I would be much happier back at one.

$2 coin-operated car wash.

I finally washed my car today, after several months of neglecting to do so. The accumulation of filth upon my car had seemed gradual, but I think it had lately reached a level where the amount of additional dirtiness necessary for me to perceive that it was actually becoming more dirty was severe.

I learned something about this fact of human perception, perhaps in my high school psychology class. When a stimulus is rather strong, the amount of increase necessary for humans to perceive the change becomes greater. I think the example I learned from back then was sugar in iced tea. If you have no sugar in the iced tea, after you add a heaping tablespoon you can notice the change. But once you've dumped half a cup of sugar into your iced tea, the addition of a tablespoon will not taste like much. Unfortunately I don't know what this phenomenon is called, so I cannot cite it here.

So anyway, my car had reached a level of dirtiness that caused additional dirtiness to be imperceptible. I started to feel embarrassed about the uncleanliness of my car. And in a series of events over the last several days, which included 1) dreading that my mother would see my dirty car when my parents came to attend my thesis defense, 2) attending a friend's wedding at a fancy house in the hills and having to hand my car over to (and pick it up from) valet attendants, and 3) deciding to park around the corner from my parents' place, so as not to smear our mothers day visit with dirt from my car. So this morning I knew what had to be done.

I pondered the manner in which I should wash my car. The first option was to wash it in our apartment's tiny parking lot -- once when I had talked to my neighbor about my dirty car with chagrin, he offered the hose he had for the water spout out back. Also I could take it to one of these hand car was places (although maybe they are a combination of machine and hand car wash) all over Los Angeles. But an investigative report that the Los Angeles Times printed a couple of months ago made me feel like these are shady operations. I didn't really want to get involved. Finally, I could take it to a coin-operated car wash and spraying it clean myself. There are also quite a few of these places around L.A. And option #3 is what I chose.

The coin-operated car was is a pretty good deal. It cost me $3, or 12 quarters, which is a pretty good deal considering that I spent $1 somewhat frivolously on 4 minutes of car VAC, not that there was so much dirt inside my car. So the wash itself was two bucks. The nozzle sprays different liquids. I used the spot free stuff (a foamy blue cleaner) and HIGH PRESSURE RINSE. The hose really sprays water out in a high pressure way. I felt as though, if bad guys approached or something, I could turn the hose on them and blast them into oblivion, or at least knock them onto their behinds. There wasn't a really good way to dry the car off afterwards. They didn't have any blow dry equipment as far as I could tell, though a couple people were using rags to wipe their cars down.

All in all, the car is now clean and I am proud. Why didn't I think of doing this a long time ago?

$2 coin-operated car wash. Small price to pay for a bit of self worth, confidence, pride.

coupons and other costs

I am trying to blog regularly, so I decided to make this comment a trackback instead of a comment to the post.

Jerome was highlighting some of his recent triumphs with coupons.

Coupons can be pretty great, although the one time my 'no purchase necessary' coupon was rejected at Ralph's has left me with slight fear of coupon rejection. I had gotten this 'Free box of any Kashi product under $4.50' for filling out an online questionnaire and sharing my very valuable opinions about whether I thought 'cheese and pimento' crackers sounded more appealing that 'sun-dried tomato and pepper' (these flavors just now made up on the spot). Anyway, my checkout guy refused to take the coupon, perhaps because it looked as though I had printed it out from my computer, despite the fact that the coupon was supposed to have some sort of code thing to verify its value. Oh well.

Alex and I went bowling last night at AMF Mar Vista and for 2 - $4 games we got 2 buy-one-game-get-one-free coupons. This is awesome because I think it will help our goal to bowl more frequently. We also bought bowling shoes to help with the process. Neither of us have ever owned bowling shoes. At $50 each (Zappos.com, price includes shipping) it will take us slightly over 11x bowling to recoup the cost. Barring traumatic injury or early death, I think it's doable. If we expect to live 60 more years, that would mean bowling at least once every 5.4 years. Although this is assuming that we'll both be able to bowl in our 80s. Maybe by then we'll break 100 regularly.

Finally, the other thing that is coupon-like but not exactly a coupon -- rebates. Rebates can seem like a good deal, but these days I'll only buy something w/a rebate if I would be willing to buy it anyway (w/o rebate), since the money often doesn't come back. I've never tried to hunt unreturned rebates down, but I've been burned too many times.

cheap stuff

Most recent Craigslist exchange was my $10 for someone's ikea coffee table. Super cheap, but I think this is the second time I've bought this exact same model of table for $10 off of someone from Craigslist. I don't think it's the same one, because last time I bought it in the Bay Area for temporary summer furniture, and this time I'm in L.A. But I like the possibility.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. Having things below eye level increases the likelihood that I will bruise my knees or shins, but I figure I can recoup my ten by resale if needed.

20 dates for under 20 dollars

20 dates for under 20 dollars. In case anyone was wondering, I came across these via Digg, not browsing Yahoo Personals. I was pretty excited when I saw the title because I thought all 20 dates would come out to a total of under $20, or an average of $1 each! Alas, I think they mean each date is under $20.

In any case, we have done the following in the Los Angeles area:

2. Go to a museum -- The Getty, where we actually joined up one night that they had a free lesson in figure drawing and we practiced on sculptures

4. Go on a romantic hike -- Well, we may not have been on a romantic hike, per se, but we have been hiking and we go for evening walks around the neighborhood.

6. Beat the heat with an ice cream date -- Yes, we do eat ice cream.

11. Stroll through the botanical garden -- Huntington Library has beautiful gardens, and Alex particularly likes succulents. (Free to visitors the first Thursday of every month.)

13. Build a bonfire -- We used to do fires in the fireplace when Alex lived with one, but I expect it would be nice to do an evening bonfire at the beach. It probably wouldn't be worth it unless we had a bigger group though.

We could but haven't really:

12. been bowling -- Since there's a bowling alley down the street from where we live, there's not really a good excuse (besides Wii Sports bowling).

15. paint pottery together -- This is pretty specific, but I think the idea of making stuff together more generally would be nice.

Do gift cards make good gifts? Selling gift cards

There's the other side to that great thing about gift cards coin. We were given a bunch of gift cards about eight months ago and still have not managed to use them yet. A couple of them were sold on eBay, and the others we figured we would be able to use. Unfortunately this has not yet been the case.

First example: $100 gift card to Circuit City. We do electronics, computing, video games, so it seemed plausible that we would be able to find a good use for the card. But we are always looking for a good bargain, we prefer to buy things used, or we will only buy something new if it is offered on sale at a reasonable discount. We rarely have retail store loyalty.

Another example: $20 Barnes and Noble gift card that I've had since Christmas. Definitely an appropriate gift because I regularly purchase books. But I buy them new in stores because used books are just as good. I've been to the bookstore with gift card in hand many times, but have been unable to buy anything at retail price knowing that it's much cheaper (and recycled) online.

Luckily, existence of a market for gift cards and certificates makes it so that if I ultimately decide that I'd rather have slightly less cash, I can part with the gift card online. Similarly, if your niece/nephew is that that into the Radio Shack gift card you got them for Christmas, they can barter for a different sort of gift card or trade it for universally-accepted cash.

Note the following restrictions for selling gift cards on eBay:
* The value of the gift card may not exceed $500.
* You must have the gift card
* You can only list one card per week

Also, you are likely to lose 10% of the card's face value + your eBay listing fee.

Bankrate.com provides more info about the secondary market for gift cards, including various other venues for swapping and sales.

The great thing about gift cards...

Time to go shopping
Originally uploaded by tomeppy.

... is that you can buy them on eBay.

A number of guests at our wedding last October gave us gift cards of varying increments to some restaurants and shops. We have wanted to use them, but because we prefer to buy things used whenever we can, it has been hard to actually consume the gift cards. The other problem is that I've sometimes gone to the store to get something, and realized upon arriving that I should have brought the gift card currently sitting at home. One gift card, the one for The Cheesecake Factory, we knew rightaway that we would not be interested in using. So we looked to see whether it would be feasible to sell them on eBay. Indeed, a massive market of buying and selling gift cards and certificates exists.

How can the gift card market help you in your frugality?
Buyers -- if you know what store currency you are looking for, you can get the gift card on eBay for up to 20% off face value (10-15% is the norm). Gift cards are most beneficial if you (1) already know the store or restaurant where you will spend money and (2) have the ability to postpone your purchase by a few days or a week. (3) Gift cards may also be beneficial if you shop the same store(s) regularly, i.e., you don't have to worry whether or not you will make future purchases there.

For example: I decided that I wanted to purchase several episodes the Bravo show Work Out off of iTunes at $1.99 each. Granted, the truly frugal thing would be to watch it for free or not at all, but we don't have broadcast or cable, and I decided it would be worth the money to me. Instead of immediately purchasing the episodes at full price, I found an iTunes gift card auction on eBay that was about to end. The $15 gift card (which fit the number of episodes I was planning to buy) cost me $13.26 (free electronic shipping), giving me an 11.6% saving for very little of my time, not to mention +1 to my eBay reputation.

Another example: Those past a beginner stage of frugal living probably brew their own coffee. Or quit the caffeine habit. But those who have decided that the value of their daily cup of Starbucks is worth more than the monetary cost can purchase a $50 gift card on eBay for $45 and get their month's caffeine at 10% off. Find a better priced auction and increase your savings, but already that's $200 in your pocket if you spend $2000 on coffee a year.

Finally: Have a friend whose birthday is coming up in a few weeks? They are into electronics and other stuff, so you figure you will get them a Best Buy gift card (Whether or not gift cards make good gifts is debate that will be left for another day -- I come from a Chinese cultural background and have no qualms giving cash). By buying the card on eBay, you pay less for the gift card, and they can still purchase the same amount of stuff. If their birthday is tomorrow, or TODAY, this may limit your options somewhat. But fortune favors those who plan ahead.

N.B. As with all eBay transactions, use good sense before you bid. Check out the seller's reputation, types of goods they typically sell, and feedback comments from buyers. If you have any questions about the items, definitely ask.

Happy bidding.

*Photo by tomeppy

Save money, get rich -- Part 1: Be a cheap date

Several months back, Arex (not to be confused with Alex) sought advice on saving money, or how to get rich. I prepared a lengthy and obviously insightful response, but something broke down and my comment didn't go through. Although I don't remember what I had written at the time, my guess is that the basic points were to avoid doing too much of #1 and #2 (below) and how. Nevertheless, I think most of our recent expenses fall under one of the following categories:

1. Social/leisure: eating out and going out
2. Goods: buying and having stuff
3. Living: overhead (food + utilities + rent)
4. Travel: going places and transportation
5. Getting married: paying for a wedding

We are more frugal in some of these categories than in others. It's rare that we eat out, but we sprung for a Nintendo Wii at above-market price. The general philosophy that we live by very compatibly includes that a) we have money in order to use it, and b) money should not be needlessly used, so when reasonable, save.

Today I will share my thoughts on sector 1 : eating out and going out.

Eating out (decrease). Granted, if you happen to live in an area abundant in Chinese food (countries with a Chinese cultural history, or Arcadia or the San Gabriel Valley), eating out can be very, very cheap. But it is SO, so easy to go to the Cheesecake Factory with friends and drop $20 for dinner after tax and tip. And you might not even be getting any cheesecake. Friend's birthday dinner? Now you can include part of their meal (you can't let someone pay on their own birthday). Also please include miscellaneous drinks, appetizers, and desserts that other people have gotten but you are now paying for because someone suggested an equal split for the tab. $25.

This is not to say that we never eat out, but the less often you do, the more you will save. It is often appropriate to eat out if it is the most convenient way to dine with friends, or when celebrating a special occasion. But since one of us is vegetarian, it's usually easier to eat in than to eat out. Not eating out will be more difficult to accomplish for the foodie or if you are employed as a professional food blogger.

Compared to my first year in grad school, I've also improved a whole lot as far as packing my own lunch to bring. Via lifehacker, save $988 a year by packing your own lunch. I've also cut back substantially on the money I pay Starbucks for coffee by brewing my own. Savings: $300-$800 per year, depending on your coffee drink of choice.

Finally, the added bonus of making your own food instead of eating out is that it is bound to be healthier 9 times out of 10. I totally just made that statistic up.

Going out, like, to play (decrease or cheapen). Much to the disappointment of my former roommate, we don't go out very often, and when we do, we tend not to spend much money being out. I suppose this means we are either Very Boring or Easily Satisfied. I prefer to think of this characteristic as "low-maintenance." It doesn't mean that all we do is stay in and watch TV. We don't actually have a TV (we watch shows via the Internet), so that would be hard. But we do go out for walks in the neighborhood (cheap and good for your health), going grocery shopping (cheap and functional), sailing at the UCLA MAC (free because Alex is a volunteer TA for their classes), reading together or apart at the bookstore, seeing a movie (usually for free with movie passes either of us have gotten from donating blood).

Staying in (increase). Staying in is usually cheaper than going out, unless the main activity is buying things online, or something like that. If you are willing to put in some effort of preparing food and cleaning up, inviting people over to your home for dinner should turn out to be cheaper eats. Especially if people take turns hosting in. We also like to have people over for board or video games (we have spent money buying these), which are more socially interactive than going out to see a movie.

Some links on fun things to do on the cheap:

• 33 ideas for dating frugally
• Fifteen things to do on a money-free weekend
  
• Top 10 cheap date ideas
• Cheap dates and family activities

And, because it's a good article:

• Is eating out cheaper than eating in?

piggy bank photo by: kiss kiss bang bang