Amazon has some great deals and I’m a bargain shopper

by Jillian @ http://blueshelled.com . June 10, 2009 . 1:02PM

For someone that has expensive taste, it can be a real bummer to also have a cheapskate personality. It’s true. I have a lot of cognitive dissonance where the two conflict. For those who are not psych junkies like me, that means that I have a lot of internal warring; I want to buy nice fancy things, but it bothers me to do so and creates anxiety. Generally, it’s better for me to not do it. Then I don’t have to justify it to myself and, every now and then, someone buys the expensive thing for me for a gift and I don’t have to worry about it. Everyone wins.

That doesn’t mean I don’t love a good bargain. I love goodwill, garage sales and places like Ebay and TJMaxx that give me cool, designer type goods for cheaper prices. Half.com and Chegg.com have been lifesavers when book buying time rolls around each semester. I have a list of places in my head that I go for a great bargain, and, when I’m shopping, I will often run the list before buying.

Tuesday, I was looking online to find A.J. some new books. Over the summer, we have run through The New Captain Underpants Collection: Box Set (Books 1-5), Diary of a Wimpy Kid, as well as Stink: The Super-Incredible Collection: Books 1-3 and other various single books.

It was time for another series, if I could find one. I was lucky enough to stumble upon My Weird School #1: Miss Daisy Is Crazy! and I was sold! There are a TON of books in this series, as well as a secondary series! We may be set for the summer.

And, best of all? Amazon gives you free shipping at $25, so I bought 8 books. They also give you buy 4-for-3, so I got 8 books (2 totally free!) for a total of $23. Not bad, not bad at all. I couldn’t have bought them used for that! Oh, and Amazon isn’t paying me to say that they have these deals. I just wanted to rub my bargain in your face. Isn’t that the best part of bargain shopping? It’s not nice? What? Oh. Sorry. My bad.

It was a bargain. And I love a good bargain. I’ll let you know what A.J. thinks of the series. He loved the first 3 series I was able to find.

Where does my love of the bargain stem? Let me quote my mother: “Don’t you dare buy anything unless it’s on sale. If it’s not on sale now, it will eventually be on sale and if it’s sold out before then, you’ll find something else.” Which of course is a total lie, but something in that idea has stuck with me, otherwise I wouldn’t be so reluctant to spend money on things that I consider to be too expensive.

She was here, recently, and found a shirt at Macys that was originally $48 and had been marked down to $13. She considered it a good shopping day. I would have, too, but she was also bummed that she “couldn’t find anything else” and that the “selection was so dismal.” Let’s be clear: selection here is fine–sales weren’t going on because it was the week before memorial day and everyone knows that the sales really happen that weekend.

I don’t take my love of a bargain to that extent. If something looks amazing, my vanity will force me to buy something that looks nice. However, I won’t go into stores that charge a lot for clothes in the first place. I don’t care if they have great sales, I won’t step foot in there.

She planted the neurotic apple and I fell from the tree.