nyj60: life on the cheap


It's really crazy sometimes to stop and realize I'm heading into nearly a full year without permanent work, without health insurance, and without the ease of consumption that once my pocketbook exuded. No more. In fact it was a big deal this week when I went to the Gap not to merely feast my eyes with no thought of wardrobe expansion ... but to actually shop.

You see, I'd recently found a $20 gift card from my 25th birthday (yes, that's 18-some months ago). And seeing as how my two main pairs of jeans get hole-ier by the day, it seemed wise to scan the clearance racks. The first store I went to had only a small sale section, and crap jeans. I may be frugal, but I'm not that desperate. So I asked a friendly sales guy which stores got the most clearance items, or otherwise had ample sale sections.

Untroubled by this frank demonstration of near-stinginess, he recommended the Times Square store on Broadway. Though I hate that general area, I was more loath to waste my gift card on something I wouldn't use or something not steeply marked-down in price. It was only a few blocks over, anyway, and a relatively warm night for winter in New York.

Over I trotted, and climbed the stairs to the second-floor women's section. It was indeed a bigger store. The sale section was not particularly ample, but did have a few nice-looking jeans, including a pink-trimmed pair I instantly fell in love with. They looked so nice, though (Gap's high-end 1969 line), I worried they'd been misplaced. "Are these really on sale?" I asked a clerk. Miraculously the jeans were size 4. Once was the day I never would have thought I'd wear a pair that size, but I had walked there in "size 2" jeans from Abercrombie. Clearly the size definitions for chain stores have been expanding just as much as I've been shrinking.

The jeans — as were another cute pair on the rack, also size 4 — were $29.97. Originally, though, I learned (from store staff nearly as impressed as I that such jeans were still in their store, and on sale), these jeans went for $88. This met my "at least 50 percent off" sale criteria. With the gift card and no-tax week in effect, it could mean a $10 out-of-pocket splurge for new jeans. Off I headed to the changing room. Both fit, but quite differently, so I deliberated a while, finally settling on the pink-piped pair I'd liked more all along. Besides, though it didn't cross my mind at the time, I was probably somewhat indulging in the luxury of changing-room uncertainty. How long since I'd actually tried on clothes I thought I might buy!

It may seem childish, it may be trivial ... but I can't help feeling the kindness of God was in that shopping errand. And that's largely what I'm surviving on these days. Unemployment benefits ran out, so God knows how I'm really surviving right now. I had two weeks of reasonably well-paying freelance work, but that job was oppressive so I quit. This week I haven't temped at all.

But money keeps coming in. Wednesday I randomly got selected for a focus group on alcohol-alternative beverages: $100 cash for two hours to sit and yak. And other friends and family have been moved to give generously. It's crazy and I don't want to be unwise in using these gifts, or lazy about my job-search ... but I'm grateful to have had my sense of true need so radically redefined. Life is really much simpler this way. And I enjoy things like the purchase of new jeans in ways I might have never done before.

posted @ 01:54 PM on Fri - February 4, 2005 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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