Money Crashers: 2 new articles

Here's a quick update on my two latest articles for Money Crashers. The first is very much in an  ecofrugal vein: a list of ideas for eco-friendly small businesses. If you're thinking of starting a side business, making it a green business could help you stand out from the crowd. More than one-third of all consumers, especially younger ones, are willing to pay around 25% more for green products and services. So you can  both boost your profits and help the earth — a win-win.

20 Green Small Business Ideas for Eco-Friendly Entrepreneurs

The other is less ecofrugal, but still useful: a list of the most common credit card scams of 2022. To protect your money, learn to recognize these cons and stay one step ahead of the scammers.

9 Credit Card Scams and Frauds to Watch Out For

Yard-sale haul 2021

After being called off in 2020 on account of the pandemic, the annual Highland Park town-wide yard sale returned this year in all its glory. The planners even added a new twist: this year, people who for some reason couldn't host sales on their own property had the option of booking a space in the big downtown parking lot where our Friday farmers' market takes place in the summer. So Brian and I knew as we planned our weekend excursions that we could count on finding a good cluster of sales in one spot there.

Although we weren't hunting for any large items at this year's sales, there were a few smaller items I was on the lookout for. One was shoes of all kinds, since I currently have multiple pairs in my closet that are either due or seriously overdue for replacement (and as regular readers will know, finding shoes is always a struggle for me). And although I knew it was a long shot, I hoped I might chance on a copy of The Weekend Garden Guide for a friend who has recently acquired his first house and is planning to plant his first garden. Other than that, we were just keeping our eyes peeled for anything that looked like a good bargain, either for ourselves or as a holiday gift for anyone on our list.

And on this score, I'd say we did pretty well. On Saturday, we started out on the north side, working our way up one avenue and down another before crossing town to visit the market area and the cluster of sales that show up every year along Felton Avenue. We were out for about three hours all told and came home with the haul you see here:

• Two shirts for me. One is a practical plaid that can be worn as a layering piece; the other is a more fanciful lacy blouse that can be incorporated into period costumes.
• 
  One pair of hiking boots in a boys' size 5 1/2. That's actually a little big for me, but they're wearable and intact, and that's more than I can say for any of the three other pairs of winter boots I currently have at home. These can definitely take the place of my old Timberland hiking boots, which I was keeping around at this point solely for grubby outdoor jobs. And if I can't find a more appropriate pair of winter boots by December, they may end up becoming my everyday shoes this winter.
• Four books. One of them, a Ngaio Marsh mystery, is for our own enjoyment. The other three are fantasy novels we have already read and plan to present to one or more of our niblings.
• Two board games. Some of the sellers in the market area turned out to be not homeowners getting rid of stuff, but vendors who are normally there on Fridays. One of these stalls belonged to The Moonladies, two sisters who used to run a local gift and toy store. After losing their premises last year, they've been making do with a booth in the market, and they had taken advantage of yard-sale weekend to unload some clearance merchandise. The prices were much higher than you'd normally expect to pay at a yard sale, but still well below retail. Brian picked up one board game there, which we won't name since it's likely to be a gift for someone who reads this blog. We also found another small game — suitable for a stocking stuffer, perhaps — on a table full of items marked "free."
• Two bottles of masala sauce from the Moonladies booth. We usually make sauces from scratch, but Brian calculated that the marked-down price was approximately what we'd pay for the ingredients for a similar sauce. And anyway, it was a way to support a local business.
• A fold-up camping chair (the big blue thing in the background). We already had one of these that had come in handy at various outdoor events, and picking up this one gives us a matched pair.
  
• A bracelet (not visible in photo) that will make a nice gift for a niece.
• An alarm clock. This was another freebie. Brian grabbed it even though it was held together with a rubber band because he already had an identical clock that was broken, and he thought he might be able to scavenge the parts from it to repair the old one.
• A replacement seat for Brian's bike. He nearly didn't buy this, arguing that he didn't really need it because the one he has now isn't falling apart that fast. But eventually he saw the logic of securing a replacement now for $3, rather than having to buy a brand-new one when this one finally gives up the ghost.
  

By the time we'd collected all this, we were feeling pretty footsore, so we decided not to go out again after lunch. Instead we spent the afternoon running errands at actual stores, picking up food for ourselves and the kitties.

Sunday morning we ventured out again, heading up to the far north edge of the town to take in a different set of sales. As usual, the sales weren't nearly as thick on the ground on Sunday as they had been on Saturday. Some sellers who had signed up for both days had packed it in after Saturday, and even some who had signed up for Sunday only apparently decided not to bother setting up shop at all. So after about two and a half hours, we came home with only three items:

• A bag full of apples. We didn't buy these, but scavenged them near the home of a neighbor with several large apple trees. The trees had been picked clean to about the height that could be reached with a standard ladder, but a lot of the fruit on the higher branches had fallen off onto the ground and had been left to rot. Most of the apples were too damaged to eat, but we gleaned enough intact ones to fill up one of our reusable produce bags. And, as we discovered later when we cut one up to eat with our lunch, they're very good apples. (Maybe next year we can work out a deal with this neighbor to swap some of them for some of our plums.)
  
  
• A board game called "Fog of Love," which looked amusing enough to risk a dollar on.
• A book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber. Books about money are an interest of mine, and I read enough of this one to confirm that it looked both interesting and intelligible to an ordinary reader.
  
• Yet another alarm clock identical to the one we got on Saturday, except that this one was clearly in working condition. Brian felt a bit silly picking up the same clock again, but it was exactly what he wanted and it was only a dollar, so he decided it would be even more silly to pass it over.
  

The total amount we spent across both days of sales was $53.87, with most of that going to the Moonladies. It's more than we usually spend at these sales, but it enabled us to check at least three people off our holiday gift list, as well as providing several handy and/or amusing items for our own use. And since at least one of those items (the boots) was something that I absolutely needed, and that probably would have cost at least $53.87 to buy new, I consider everything else we bagged over the course of the weekend to be pure gravy.

Thrift Week 2021, Day 7: Puzzles

It was below freezing this morning, with a stiff wind, but Brian and I made a point of leaving the house right after breakfast anyway and heading out into the cold on foot. With our neighborhood thrift shop now open only in the mornings, except on Sunday, it was our only chance to include it in my local shopping challenge before Thrift Week comes to an end tonight. And it would certainly have made a great dramatic finale if I had scored some amazing find there, like a warm and cozy cardigan or a colorful pullover, for only a buck.

Sadly, that did not happen. I did try on one little jacket that seemed to fit fairly well, but the mirror — once I managed to locate it — told me that it was bunching up in a very unflattering way. And I found a pair of corduroy pants that might have been worth trying on, except the girls' bathroom that passes for a dressing room was completely blocked with boxes. So, alas, no thrift shop bonanza for me.

However, we did not leave empty-handed. While I was looking at clothes, Brian was examining the toy and game shelf, and he emerged with four, count 'em, four 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzles. Well, I did promise him that he could have anything he wanted when his grant application was done, and apparently, what he really wants is to spend some time working on puzzles. (Plus his parents gave us a fancy puzzle mat for Christmas, which makes jigsaw puzzles and cats compatible.) And, once we were able to track someone down to take our money, it was only three bucks for the lot. New, they'd probably have cost at least $10 each.

This experience sort of highlighted the best and worst aspects of this particular thrift shop. You can find occasional gems there at truly amazing prices, but they sure don't make it easy for you. There's been a sort of halfhearted attempt to sort clothes by type and size, but the volunteers clearly can't maintain the organization, so clothes end up in random piles on the table, the rack, even the floor. The one mirror is way in the back where you can't easily find it. There's no proper dressing room, and the space that passes for one isn't always accessible. And you often have to hunt all over the shop looking for someone to take your money.

All of which would seem to be an argument against shopping locally, were it not for one problem: other thrift shops within driving distance aren't really better. There was one really good thrift shop in Pennington five years ago, but it's closed down. And while there are several left that have larger selections, they also have higher prices, and I still can't usually find anything there that looks good on me. And if I'm going to visit a thrift shop and almost certainly walk out with nothing, I might as well do it in town and save gas.

I made one additional purchase to round out the trip: some more medicine from the Rite Aid. I didn't absolutely need to buy it now, but on my last trip there they gave me a $5-off-$20 coupon, and this seemed like a good chance to use it. The pills I needed were actually priced at $19.99 for the biggest bottle — one cent shy of the amount needed to use the coupon — so I added a bag of kale chips to my order to put myself over the limit. But, as it turned out, no dice: the pills were on sale for $17.99, a fact that wasn't advertised on the shelf, so even with the chips I was still under the limit. I could have gone back and looked for something that cost $2.01, but I decided to just cancel the chips, take my $2 savings, and leave. Which I did — with a second $5-off-$20 coupon for this purchase, which I almost certainly won't be able to use either. Oh well.

That wraps up my week of local shopping, so it's time for the final tally:

• Magnesium supplements (Rite Aid): $10 for two bottles. Minimum price elsewhere: $10 each, or $20 for two.
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $1.66. (I checked, and scallion prices at H-Mart were a little higher than I'd guessed. Though technically, those cheaper prices were at local stores too, so I'm not sure if this even counts.)
  
• Flowers (Robert's Florals): $15. Minimum price elsewhere: $10.
• Gin (Pino's): $10 for one liter. Minimum price elsewhere: $9.30 per liter (and again, that's technically local, since the cheaper price was at Rite Aid).
• Groceries (Stop & Shop): $11.03. Minimum price elsewhere: Probably around $11.03 also.
• Socks (dollar store): $8 for three pairs. Minimum price elsewhere: $8 for two pairs, or $12 for three.
  
• Olives (Ellin Kon): $5 for 13 ounces. Minimum price elsewhere: around $7 per pound, or $5.69 for 13 ounces.
• Hazelnut chocolate (Ellinikon): $0.94. Minimum price elsewhere: around $0.50.
• Calendar (local organization): $20. Minimum price elsewhere: around $8 (assuming you don't count the extra cost as a charitable donation).
  
• Groceries (H-Mart): $39. Minimum price elsewhere: the same, since H-Mart has the best prices on all the items we bought.
• Jigsaw puzzles (thrift shop): $3. Minimum price elsewhere: $40.
• Meds (Rite Aid): $17.99. Minimum price elsewhere: $19.99.

Total for everything we bought locally: $142.96. Minimum price to buy it all non-locally: $169.97. Amount we paid extra for shopping locally: negative $27.01. Yes, our local stores actually gave us better value than we could have found anywhere else.

So what's the takeaway here? Does it mean we're better off doing all our shopping locally from now on?

Well...no. It's true that, on the whole, I got better prices shopping in town on the stuff I was able to shop for in town. But there was lots of stuff I wasn't.

For instance, I got a gift certificate for Hanukkah to Better World Books, a site that's like the anti-Amazon. It serves as a platform for a huge network of local bookstores all over the country; when you buy books through the site, one of those local stores fills them. Buying through this site supports local businesses, but not our local businesses. Since there are no bookstores here in town, it's not even theoretically possible for any purchases I make with that gift certificate to benefit our local economy. But they're not taking business away from it, either, because buying the books in town isn't an option. It's just a purchase I have to make non-locally if I want to make it at all.

Similarly, my computer has been giving me some trouble lately. It just can't seem to handle the demands my work software puts on it, to the point that it takes two to three minutes to do something as simple as opening a file. Given that it's nearly ten years old, this is probably to be expected, but if I need to replace the thing, I can't do it locally. We have places in town that repair computers, but none that sell them.

And there are a few other things that are pretty much impossible to find locally. Shoes, for instance; I was lucky enough to be able to buy my last pair of winter boots in an actual store, but finding a pair that fits me at the thrift shop — the only store in town that sells footwear — would be too much to ask. Even finding clothing that fits me is a long shot.

So, no, I can't really start doing all my shopping in town. But what I can do, and probably should, is to shop in town first.

In other words, if there's something I need, or just want, I can make a point of trying the local businesses first. If I can't find it there, I can always go further afield. But if they do have it and it's just a bit more expensive, maybe I should just accept that as the price of doing business. Especially when I know there's a good chance that the next purchase I make locally will actually be cheaper here at home than anywhere else.

Can I actually pull this off? I don't know. But I think it's worth a try, at least.

Thrift Week 2021, Day 6: Gifts

Throughout most of my Thrift Week adventures, I've been shopping locally for myself — or, in the case of groceries, for me and Brian together. Today, I decided to shake things up a little bit and pick up a few treats specially for him.

Some background: for the past several weeks, Brian has been wrestling with a grant proposal for work. Actually, I probably shouldn't say "wrestling," because that would be much less exhausting. It might be more demanding physically, but it wouldn't be anywhere near as emotionally draining. Picture a man walking around with a fifty-pound pack on his pack and another on his chest, 24/7, and you'll get an inkling of how much this has taken out of him.

As we came into the last week of the project, I promised him repeatedly that we could do absolutely anything he wanted (within current social distancing requirements) to celebrate when it was over. A special dinner? No problem — I'd even watch him eat steak, as long as I didn't have to join in. A dumb superhero movie? I would watch it without complaints. After what he'd been through, he deserved nothing but the best.

The problem was, Brian has made such a habit of self-denial that I feared he wouldn't take me up on it. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would go out for my walk today — by myself, while he was stuck at home laboring to push the grant proposal through its last few remaining steps — and pick up some special goodies that he likes and I don't. Then he'd have to eat them or let them go to waste.

I tried to find some marzipan, but the assortment of Valentine candy at Rite Aid didn't include any, and the little independent sweet shop on Raritan Avenue was closed. I also considered a bottle of amaretto, but since I'd bought him half a dozen bottles of his favorite tawny port for Christmas, I figured he wouldn't have that much use for any other drink for a while. So instead, I stopped into the little Greek grocery on Woodbridge avenue and got him a little jar of olives, which I loathe, and some hazelnut chocolate, which I'm fairly indifferent to. Total: $5.94 for both. 

Neither of these is something I normally buy, but I just checked the price of olives online and found they're around $7 for a one-pound jar. This was 13 ounces for $5, or about $6.15 per pound, so once again, the local store was actually cheaper in this case. The $1 chocolate-hazelnut bar would probably only have cost around 50 cents at Aldi, but that still puts me about 19 cents ahead. And in any case, it was a trivial price to pay to treat Brian after all he's been through.

I also made one other impulse purchase. As I was passing through town, I saw a guy recruiting volunteers for a workers' organization in New Brunswick. I knew I didn't have time for that in my schedule, but I had cash to spare, so I blew $20 on of the group's calendars. I'd been wanting a bigger calendar than the dinky one we got this year from the Nature Conservancy anyway, and this was a chance to help a good cause at the same time. I could have bought one on sale for around $8, so my local shopping premium in this case was $12 — the only significant cost I've had so far throughout the entire challenge. But it's not clear if it should even count, since it was really more of a donation than an expense.

As it happened, that wasn't my only shopping excursion today. Once Brian had finished slaying the grant, we made a jaunt out to the H-Mart to pick up some groceries, including the eggs we didn't buy at Stop & Shop earlier this week. But though we spent around $39 bucks on them all told, everything we bought was something we would normally buy at H-Mart anyway, so there's no question of paying anything extra for shopping local there.

So, total spending for today: around $65. Cost premium for shopping local: around $12 if you count the calendar, or negative 18 cents if you don't. One more day to go before we tally it all up.

Thrift Week 2021, Day 5: Socks

Today I discovered one of the biggest flaws in my plan to shop for a whole week at local businesses: Sometimes, they won't let you in.

Since there was nothing in particular I needed today, I decided to try for a purely frivolous purchase instead. I headed uptown to a local chocolatier, thinking I'd browse a bit and settle on something tasty. But when I got there, I found a big sign on the door informing me that the business was open for curbside pickup only. To make a purchase there, I'd have needed to order it online before setting out. I suppose in theory I could have whipped out my phone and placed an order then and there, but I didn't much feel like standing out in the freezing cold waiting for it.

So I headed back downtown along a route that I knew would take me past a bakery. If chocolates weren't on the menu, I figured I'd indulge myself with cookies instead. But that store wasn't just closed to walk-ins; it was closed entirely, dark and shuttered. A sign on the door said "We will be closing at 1:30 on Fridays," but since today is Thursday, that didn't explain why it was closed then and there.

Frustrated, I turned and headed back along Main Street, trying to figure out a fallback option. Brian, who was with me, suggested we just take the car out this evening and fill it up with gas, but that barely seemed to qualify as local shopping, and it certainly wouldn't make a good blog entry. So I decided on one last-ditch attempt: I turned in at the door of our local dollar store. Actually, it's not so much a dollar store anymore as a discount store, with some stuff priced up into the double digits, but the point is, there's a wide variety. This place carries all kinds of stuff, from cleaning products to costume jewelry, so I figured I should be able to find something.

I poked my way up the center aisle, past the makeup, the hair ties, the little kitchen gewgaws, and I found myself facing a display of socks. And I recalled that, while getting dressed that morning, I had noticed that I was running low on clean socks — or at least, the really good clean socks. I have a few pairs of nice, thick wool ones, and then a larger supply of somewhat wussy acrylic ones that don't fit as snugly and aren't as warm. So when I spotted a three-pack of wool-blend socks in assorted colors for $8, I thought, "Bingo!"

I haven't worn these properly yet, but I tried one of them on, and they seem — well, not too bad. Maybe not quite as nice as my top-tier socks, but better than the bottom-tier ones. They're reasonably warm, reasonably thick, and reasonably cushy. And there's even a nice burgundy red pair that matches one of my shirts and should be cheerier to wear than plain black or grey.

At $8 for three pairs, I'd say these were a pretty good value. I mean, heck, last month on a trip to a different discount store outside of town, I spent that same amount on just two pairs of wool socks and considered it a good deal. Granted, these aren't quite as high-quality, but I'd say they're at least two-thirds as good, and they were something I actually needed.

So, once again, local shopping for the win. Can I keep it up for two more days?

Thrift Week 2021, Day 4: Groceries

Today's Thrift Week excursion was more utilitarian than indulgent: just a quick jaunt out to the Stop & Shop to pick up a few necessities. Here's our haul: a bunch of parsley, a head of green leaf lettuce, one cucumber, one plum tomato, two cans of tomato paste, and a bag of coffee. Total cost: $11.03.

Could we have bought any of this stuff cheaper somewhere else? Well, I honestly don't know. Although I keep a price book to track the prices of various food items we buy regularly, most of the items shown here aren't in it. All the fresh produce items fluctuate so much in price that tracking them is more or less pointless, and a single can of tomato paste lasts us so long that it doesn't really qualify as a staple item. (The only reason we bought two this time is that Brian always assumes we have a can to spare, and when he unexpectedly discovered yesterday that we were clean out, he figured he'd better buy an extra. Of course, after we got them home, he discovered that he did in fact have a can in the pantry; it was just in the wrong place. But oh well, it's not like the stuff goes bad, and an extra 79 cents is hardly going to break our budget.)

The only item in this assortment that qualifies as a staple is the coffee. This is one particular item I've had a lot of struggles over in the past, trying to find a brand that meets my ethical and environmental standards at a price that isn't too ridiculous. I used to buy five pounds at a time from Dean's Beans; with shipping, this came to just under $10 a pound, which was a lot, but less than I could find anywhere else. I tried a house brand from Costco that was cheaper, but the flavor was awful, and it's no longer available anyway; for a while I was buying the stuff from IKEA, until they switched to a new brand that doesn't have a decaf option. Even Trader Joe's doesn't offer a decaf that bears any sort of sustainable certification.

However, just as I was about to switch back to buying in bulk online, I made a discovery: The store brand at Stop & Shop, my trusty neighborhood supermarket, is in fact UTZ-certified. And this isn't the fancy, high-end Nature's Promise brand, either; it's just the plain old house brand. The Nature's Promise coffee, which costs a bit more, is organic and Fair Trade certified, but as I discovered five years ago, that's not necessarily better. 

So now, Stop & Shop's modest medium-roast decaf is my go-to coffee. And at $4.79 for a 12-ounce bag, or $6.38 per pound, it's about as cheap as the stuff I used to get from IKEA — for which I had to drive 45 minutes and pay four bucks in tolls each way — and significantly cheaper than any other brand I've ever favored. And I only have to travel ten minutes to get it — on foot.

So, basically, I know for a fact that I could not buy coffee, or at least coffee that's acceptable to me, at any other store for less than I pay at Stop & Shop. And as for the other things we bought, while some of them might in fact be cheaper somewhere else, they would also have required a separate trip that would almost certainly cancel out all of the savings.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll reveal that we deliberately skipped one item on our shopping list during this trip: eggs. We're currently down to our last two eggs, but the only eggs at Stop & Shop that are Certified Humane cost $5.70 per dozen, and that's more than we're prepared to pay. But even those could still be available locally at a more reasonable price; H-Mart, which is within my local shopping radius, carries several brands that are Certified Humane, and usually at least one of them is on sale. So we can typically find them there for no more than $3 per dozen.

In short, I'm now halfway through my local shopping experiment, and so far, I have only spent a total of $7 more than I would have shopping as cheaply as possible. In fact, if you count my BOGO bargain on Day One, I'm actually ahead for the week. Could it be that sticking to local businesses is actually, on the whole, the most frugal way to shop?

Thrift Week 2021, Day 2: Flowers

By now, I have my ecofrugal holiday decorating routine pretty much down to a science. I just trim off some branches from all the evergreen trees in (and overhanging) our yard, fill up all the vases in the house with them, bind some onto the front porch railings, and eke it all out with curls of red ribbon and strings of little white lights. I've been using the same lights and ribbons for years, so I can make the house look appropriately festive without spending any money at all.

The problem comes when the holidays are over and it's time to take those decorations down. Refilling the vases with more evergreens doesn't feel right, because I associate those with Christmas time — but there's nothing else in the garden to fill them with, and even the earliest spring flowers are still months away. And simply leaving the vases empty makes the room feel sort of bare and bleak, right at the very time when the world outside is barest and bleakest and the indoors could really use something to brighten it up.

So when I decided to do this local shopping challenge for Thrift Week, I figured it would be a perfect occasion to throw a little business to an establishment I rarely patronize: our local florist. I usually avoid buying cut flowers, not just because of the price but also the pesticides and carbon footprint — but since I'm trying to help local businesses here, I decided that would take the curse off it some. And I hoped that perhaps the florist could recommend something that was sort of winter-appropriate — maybe grown in a local greenhouse rather than shipped from Argentina.

And that's what I got, more or less. He initially pointed me at some mixed bouquets in the front of the shop, but they looked a little too bright and summery, so I inquired about some white flowers in a bucket, which turned out to be freesias sold by the stem. Not wanting to go too overboard, I just bought five of them. When I got home, I clipped some sage off our not-quite-dormant plant to fill out the vase, and now I have a nice, not too un-seasonal display of flowers and greenery to brighten up our living room. (I guess if I'd been thinking, I'd have accepted the florist's offer of some greens to go with the flowers, since the whole point of the exercise was to give them some business. But my frugal habits were kind of working on autopilot, so I said no to this "extra" expense without thinking about it.)

Now, since this purchase is one I normally wouldn't make at all, I could say the entire $15 that I spent on it is a cost incurred by shopping locally. But on the other hand, I had more or less decided already to splurge on some cut flowers to brighten up the bleak midwinter, so if I hadn't bought them here I would probably have picked up a bunch at Trader Joe's or someplace. On our last trip there, the closest thing I saw to a seasonal bunch of blooms was tulips at $10 a bunch, so my decision to shop local only cost me an extra $5. So far, I'm actually ahead for the week.

Thrift Week 2021: The local edition

The COVID pandemic has been particularly hard on small, local businesses. Since it started, roughly ten stores in our town have closed their doors for good, including our beloved local toy store, our real live record shop, a jewelry store, a vintage clothing store, and a Greek cafe. And while, surprisingly, some new businesses have actually opened, I still feel like I should have done more to help the ones we lost. I did my best to throw a little business their way during the shutdown, but it was only a drop in the bucket.

So I decided that Thrift Week 2021 is going to be my most ambitious Local Shopping Challenge yet: for this entire week, I will buy everything locally.

For purposes of this challenge, I'm defining "local" to mean within walking distance, rather than just within the boundaries of Highland Park. That means I can still go to the nearest Starbucks (in New Brunswick), and we can go to the nearest hardware store (in Edison) if we need to fix something in an emergency. But we have to go to that nearby place, even if Home Depot is cheaper and has a bigger selection. We can buy our groceries from the local Stop & Shop, the H-Mart in Edison, or the George St. Co-Op in New Brunswick, but we can't go to Shop Rite, Coscto, or Trader Joe's for the things that are cheaper there. If we want a book we can't find at the library, we can try the local thrift shop or the small Barnes & Noble in New Brunswick, but we can't just order it online. (Locally owned businesses that no longer have a storefront but still have an online presence, such as Raritan Market, will also count.)

Of course, I could just get around this by putting off any non-essential purchases until the week is over, which wouldn't exactly do our local businesses any good. So to ensure that my local shopping challenge actually involves shopping local, I'm adding another requirement: I must make at least one purchase from a local business each day of the challenge. Yes, even if that means buying things I don't actually need. Brian and I are among the lucky ones who are doing just fine in the middle of this economic crisis, so we can certainly afford to spend a little extra money helping out those who are struggling.

Each day, I'll log in to share what I purchased, how much it cost, and how much (if any) extra I spent to buy it locally as opposed to shopping at my usual venues. At the end of the week, I'll tot it all up, calculate how much my week of local shopping cost in total, and extrapolate to figure out how much it might cost to shop this way all the time — or at least until the pandemic is over — and whether it's worthwhile.

Here's my haul for today:

1. Two bottles of "super magnesium" tablets from the local Rite Aid. This is something I actually needed, and something I would normally buy there, but I was lucky enough to find them on sale today: buy one, get one free. So both bottles together cost me $10, which is half what I'd normally pay.

2. A bunch of organic scallions from Stop&Shop for $1. This is more than we'd normally pay, but we needed the scallions right away and didn't want to make a separate trip to H-Mart just to save 70 cents. 

3. A package of cupcake wrappers, also from Stop&Shop, for $2. Brian told me I could have any kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, and I chose the chocolate angel cupcakes from our "Delicious Desserts" cookbook, so we needed some cupcake liners. This is something we don't normally buy, so I don't know whether $2 for 75 of them (which should be something like a ten-year supply at the rate we use them) is a good price, but again, even if we could have saved a buck somewhere else, it wasn't worth the extra trip.

So my first day of local shopping was pretty successful. We found everything we needed, and we actually spent around $8.30 less in total than we normally would. On the other hand, these purchases were pretty utilitarian, rather than fun or special. But I'm sure that will change as the week goes on.

Local Shopping Challenge: Supporting shuttered local businesses

In the past week or two, I've been seeing lots of messages about how to support local businesses during the Covid outbreak. A local business organization, Main Street Highland Park, went so far as to send out a list of all the local businesses operating within Highland Park, with information about their status (closed, limited operation, open) and how to contact them. The message urged residents to continue supporting local businesses by buying gift cards (which, as my Planet Money podcast explained last week, is basically like giving them an interest-free loan) or placing online and phone orders with companies that are able to fulfill them.

But, as it turns out, that's not so easy to do. When I looked at the list of businesses, many of them didn't even have websites. Of the ones that did, most didn't have any products for sale online or any information about how to purchase gift cards. And some are businesses we wouldn't even be able to redeem a gift card for if we were to buy one, like real estate agents or auto body shops. (We will certainly take our car to a local shop if it's damaged, but damaging it on purpose just to give them the business seems like going too far.)

So I decided to set myself a local shopping challenge for this week. The goal was simple: to buy something, anything, from as many different local businesses as I could. I wouldn't worry about the stores that are still operating normally (grocery stores, drugstores, gas stations), but would focus on those that have either closed their doors or severely curtailed their business as a result of the pandemic. And, since I also wanted my purchases to be ecofrugal, I would only buy things that either I or someone else could actually use. But within those parameters, anything was allowed. I wouldn't even worry about the prices.

I started with one local business that Brian and I have tried to give some business to in the past: The Moonladies, a joint venture operated by two sisters as Through the Moongate (gifts and knickknacks) and Over the Moon Toys. We'd actually made a point of stopping by there a couple of weeks ago, before the shutdown of all nonessential businesses, and buying ourselves a small board game called Joe Name It. Because the game is so simple, it ended up making a good test of whether it's possible to play a board game over Skype, with one physical copy of the game and everyone else just looking on over the interwebs. (Answer: It works sort of okay.) But we wanted to throw them some more business if we can.

So I started browsing through their game collection and found that they had several jigsaw puzzles, which I recalled had been a nice diversion for us during a period of repeated power outages. However, that wasn't really something we needed right now, with the power and Internet still working, and it would be a bit hard to work on one now anyway, with our two cats sure to jump up on the table and "help" all the time. So instead, I chose a bird-themed puzzle that I thought my sister's family would enjoy and sent it to them as a gift. She sent me back an email yesterday saying, "This was such a fun idea! Thank you!" and including a picture of their first day's progress.

Expanding this idea, I decided to send a present to my aunt and uncle in New York City as well. Living at Ground Zero of the Covid crisis in the US as they are, I figured they could use a little something to lift their spirits. So I selected a small box of Gianduja chocolates (a chocolate-hazelnut confection sort of like Nutella fudge) from our local chocolatier, Birnn, and sent it off to them. They received it today and sent back the message, "Delicious, and I'm not a big sweets fan. Thanks so much." So, once again, that killed two birds with one stone by supporting a local business and sending a little comfort to socially distanced relatives.

Unfortunately, those were the only stores on the list that seemed to be offering any products for sale online. But we found a way to throw a little business to some other local establishments nonetheless. For instance, on Friday, we stopped by the local Dunkin Donuts, which is still open for takeout orders (and has been sending me frequent emails to remind me of this fact). Since it was the last Friday of their "free doughnut day" promotion, which included a free doughnut with the purchase of any beverage, I got an iced coffee (it being a warm day) and a vanilla frosted doughnut, which we ate that evening for dessert. As Brian observed, maybe doughnuts just taste a lot better when you only eat one or two of them a year, but this one certainly seemed worth the calories. Sadly, I had to get my coffee in a disposable cup (no reusable cups during the health crisis), but at least it was recyclable.

Then, on our way home, we passed by Ellinikon, a small Greek grocery that's still open (as a food store, it's allowed to keep operating) but keeping limited, unpredictable hours. This reminded me that we actually needed some olives for the upcoming Seder, since we follow the modern custom of adding an olive to our Seder plate to represent the hope for peace in Israel. (I partly chose to adopt this custom because Brian likes olives and seldom gets to eat them, so it's a treat for him as well.) So I popped in and picked up a small jar of green olives stuffed with garlic, which (since garlic is reputed to be good for you) can also represent the hope for a quick end to the pandemic. The helpful salesclerk even sprayed my hands with sanitizer afterward.

That's four local businesses, and I have a plan to add one more to the list by ordering takeout food tonight from one of our local restaurants. Our favorite one, Pad Thai, appears to be still open for takeout orders (as far as I can tell, they don't do delivery), so we'll try there first; if that doesn't work, maybe we'll take the opportunity to try the new Chinese place, Chef Tan. We haven't gone there before because reviews generally said the food was good but the service was terrible, so perhaps takeout would be the ideal way to experience it.

Recipe of the Month: Vegan Stuffed Acorn Squash

Last summer, Brian and I discovered a great vegan mozzarella recipe on the blog "It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken." It was so much better than any of the more expensive nondairy cheeses we'd bought at the store, and so easy to make (much easier than real homemade mozzarella, which we've also attempted), that I decided to sign up for her weekly recipe mailings. And last week, my email brought me one that looked so tasty and interesting, I just had to try it: Vegan Stuffed Acorn Squash.

You can get the full recipe on her site, but the gist of it is, first you cut acorn squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake them. Then you stuff them with a filling made from quinoa cooked in veggie broth with onion, garlic, chopped nuts, dried cranberries, thyme, sage, salt, pepper, and cinnamon. There was nothing in that description that didn't sound good to me. Plenty of healthy fresh veggies, quinoa to supply carbs and protein, and an interesting combination of flavors and textures. How could it miss?

We already had most of the ingredients needed for this recipe on hand, but we needed to buy the dried cranberries and, of course, the acorn squash. Since the recipe said two squash would make four servings, we decided to buy just one for the two of us. On a trip to Shop-Rite, we spotted acorn squash for just $1 a pound, but we decided to hold off and see if it was available at the farmers' market, figuring we were willing to pay a little more for the sake of supporting local farmers. That turned out to be a smart move. Although it was a very chilly trek out to the farmers' market on Friday, with the temperature at around 43 and a stiff wind blowing right in our faces, the butternut squash there were only 75 cents a pound—so buying local actually saved us money. One good-sized squash cost us $1.80. As for the cranberries, we needed only a quarter-cup of them for the halved recipe—which was fortunate, since these suckers are really expensive even when bought in bulk. That one scoop of them cost us $1.55, nearly as much as the squash.

Since we had other activities going on Friday and Saturday nights that cut into our cooking time, Brian waited until tonight to make the dish. It wasn't all that difficult, just a bit time-consuming, since the squash halves took about 40 minutes to bake (5-15 minutes longer than the recipe's estimate). However, there were no such complications with the quinoa filling, which went pretty much according to the instructions. The recipe offered a choice of different nuts to include in the filling, so Brian used walnuts, which we had on hand; salting it "to taste" came to about 1/4 teaspoon for the half batch. The only thing he admits he may have fudged a bit is that he didn't quite halve the amounts of fresh herbs he used when halving the recipe.

The finished dish was certainly pretty to look at. The baked squash halves, with their golden color and scalloped shape, looked quite appetizing with the filling mounded up over their tops. Appearance-wise, at least, it was a dish you wouldn't hesitate to serve at a fancy dinner party.

And taste-wise? Well, it certainly wasn't bad; it just wasn't quite as good as I expected based on the ingredient list. Part of the problem may have been that Brian used a rather generous hand with the herbs, so the filling was a bit too wibbly-wobbly thymey-wimey for my taste. But mostly, I just didn't like the baked acorn squash quite as much as the butternut squash we usually make. Although it was certainly cooked through and tender, it seemed a bit stringier than the butternut squash, and it didn't have the same sweet, full flavor. As I said, it wasn't exactly bad, just a little tasteless. However, I found that sprinkling on some of the squash seeds, which Brian had roasted without cleaning them first, as Martha Stewart recommends, helped quite a bit. And while the dish wasn't exactly bursting with flavor, it certainly was filling; although Brian finished his whole squash half, I only got through half of mine before hitting the full mark on my internal gauge.

So would we make this recipe again? Well, probably not. Though it wasn't that hard to make, I wasn't exactly crazy about it, and the dried cranberries make it a little pricey for a dish that we don't both love. Instead, I might be inclined to try a different squash recipe from the same website, Stuffed Roasted Butternut Squash. This one uses butternut, a squash I know I like, and mixes the flesh of the squash in with the stuffing, which would probably help distribute the flavor better. So keep an eye out for that dish in a future blog post.

How lucky am I?

Yesterday, Earth Day, was windy and wet—not a particularly great environment for getting in touch with the earth. I did manage to get out for a walk in the afternoon and try out my new reusable cup at the Dunkin' Donuts, but I had to wrestle with the wind for control of my umbrella the whole way. It didn't leave me feeling very planet-friendly.

Today, however, made up for it by being balmy and beautiful—almost unreasonably warm for April. I set out for my usual walk around 2:30 in the afternoon, and the farther I went, the more overwhelmed I felt by just how lucky I was. I kept thinking of all the different things I had to be thankful for:

• It's a beautiful spring day - sunny and warm, but not overpoweringly hot, with no rain or harsh wind.
• I have a job that allows me to take an hour off in the middle of the day to take a walk and enjoy this beautiful weather.
• I live in a place where I can safely take a walk in the middle of the day, with sidewalks to keep me apart from the traffic and no roving bands of muggers.
• Not only is my neighborhood safe, it's full of beautiful springtime blossoms—redbuds, dogwoods, ornamental cherries, the last of the daffodils and magnolias, and the first of the lilacs.
• My health is good enough to allow me to walk three miles through this beautiful landscape without straining my heart, coming home limping in pain, or just suffering miserably from hay fever.
• I was able to take a route home that led me right past a new local business selling bubble tea.
• I have no dietary restrictions to prevent me from enjoying a bubble tea, and no financial restrictions to make the four bucks it costs a strain on my budget. (And if I feel any guilt about the "unnecessary" expense, I can just consider it part of my local shopping budget.)

That's seven different strokes of good fortune just in the space of a single hour. And, most fortunate of all, I was actually able to realize how lucky I was, and to appreciate it, where so many other people in my enviable position would simply take it for granted.

Thrift Week 2017, Day 4: Local Shopping Budget Day

The fourth day of Thrift Week is designated as Keep a Budget Day. Budgeting is, of course, a favorite topic of frugal-living experts; Money Crashers alone has numerous articles on how to do it, including envelope budgeting, zero-based budgeting, and the anti-budget system. It's practically an article of the frugal faith that you have to make a budget of some sort if you're ever going to prosper.

So I realize I'm probably going to shock a few people with this confession: I don't have any sort of budget and never have. I do track my spending, so I can keep tabs on where my money goes, but I've never sat down and decided, "OK, I want to spend 30 percent of my income on housing, 10 percent on food..." and so on and so forth. Instead, I just follow what the blogger at The Financial Diet calls a "minimalist mindset." Rather than setting aside a specific sum for savings, I look on all my money as savings and see my bills as cutting into that savings—so every time I make a purchase, I ask first whether I'm willing to spend my savings on it. This has worked just fine for me for over 20 years, and I see no need to suddenly switch to a rigidly regimented budget now.

In recent years, however, I have discovered that there's one problem with this minimalist approach. Because I've gotten into the habit of questioning every single purchase—"Is this really worth the money?"—it's sometimes hard to convince myself to spend on things that actually do matter to me. For example, as I've noted in previous posts, I really like the idea of supporting local businesses—but when I see their prices, I just balk. $30 at the local comic-and-game shop for a game that costs only $20 online? $10 a pound for fresh mozzarella from the farmers' market? $5 for a tiny cafe mocha from our local organic roastery? No...no, I just can't do it.

To get over this mental block, I've sometimes thought I should give myself a monthly budget for this specific purpose—not to control my spending, but to encourage myself to spend more where it matters. The idea was that Brian and I would set aside some small sum we can easily afford—say, $10 or $20 a month—with the goal that we will spend that money at local businesses. Unlike a normal budget, it wouldn't be a maximum for spending, but a minimum. The point would be to use all of it if possible.

That way, when I see the $30 game at the local game shop and realize I could get it for $10 less online, instead of going home and handing over the money to some stranger, I'd think, "Great, this will just meet my local shopping quota for this month." The extra money would go to support the local economy, helping local businesses stay afloat so our town can thrive. And the $10 lost from my monthly savings would be so trivial a sum that I'd never even miss it.

Over the past couple of months, Brian and I have made more efforts to spend locally. For Christmas, he bought me the latest Sandman graphic novel at the local comic shop, even though it would have been about $9 less online. And this week, I splurged on an $8 tin of fancy, Fair Trade hot cocoa mix from Ten Thousand Villages that he could enjoy at work. But so far, we haven't given ourselves an official local shopping budget to cover these little extravagances.

So today, in honor of Thrift Week, I've decided it's time to make it official. As of now, our local shopping budget is $10 a month, an amount I'm confident we can manage. If I'm finding we can easily meet that goal every month, we can maybe bump it up to $20, but for now I'm keeping it modest.

My rules for this local shopping budget, which I just made up right now, are:

1. The money must be spent here, in Highland Park. Supporting locally owned businesses in other towns we visit is a nice idea, but it doesn't count toward our local shopping budget.
2. Priority will be given to independent businesses that are locally owned as well as operated: the comic shop, the art-supply store, the wine shop, the farmers' market (in season), and so on.
3. Local branches of larger chains, such as the Stop & Shop and the Rite Aid, get second priority. They're not locally owned, but they're still part of our town's economy, and I'd like to see them stay in business.
4. However, since the point of the budget is to encourage me to buy from local businesses even when their prices are higher, money spent at these stores will count only if it costs more to buy there than it would to go somewhere else. If cereal goes on sale at the Stop & Shop for $2 a box—a better price than I could get anywhere else—and I buy five boxes, I can't count that as my local shopping for the month.
5. If we buy something that we didn't particularly need—say, the cocoa I got for Brian—then the entire sum can be applied toward the local shopping budget. If we buy something we were planning to buy anyway, but could have bought for less somewhere else, such as the graphic novel Brian gave me, then only the difference in price—the amount we paid for getting it locally—counts toward the local shopping budget.

The $8 I spent on Brian's fancy cocoa mix gets us most of the way to our local-shopping goal for this month, so I just need to find some way to spend an extra $2 in the next 11 days. Perhaps one of those overpriced $5 mochas from the local coffeehouse isn't such a bad idea.

Money Crashers: How to Eat Local

So far, in my work for Money Crashers, I've written several times about article to eat sustainably. I've already covered organic foods, vegetarian diets, and Fair Trade, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I tackled the same subject from yet another angle: eating local.

Like the other food-related topics I've covered, this is a type of eating I've dabbled in myself but never quite gone all the way with. Last June, for instance, I embarked on a local produce challenge, attempting to eat only Jersey-grown produce for one week. This wasn't all that strict a challenge, since (a) it was only a week and (b) only fruits and veggies had to be locally grown; we didn't even attempt to find local sources of, for example, wheat flour, sugar, or milk. And yet even with the bar set fairly low, we didn't exactly manage to stick to the letter of the challenge. We ate a lot of locally grown produce during a ten-day period, but there was no consecutive seven-day period during which we ate no produce from anywhere else.

Our experience illustrates both the benefits and the challenges of being a "locavore." On the one hand, during our local-produce week, we ate a lot of really good, healthy meals with tasty, seasonal veggies. We tried foods we might not have bought in the store, and we supported our local farmers at the same time. But on the other hand, we had to work harder to figure out recipes that would use nothing but the fruits and veggies available to us locally...and we still didn't succeed entirely, because our choices were limited.

My article on local eating goes into its benefits and challenges in more depth, exploring such questions as the relationship between eating local and eating organic, how supporting local farmers improves our nation's food security, whether it costs more or less money to eat a local diet, and the environmental trade-offs involved in eating an exclusively local diet. And to wrap it up on a practical note, I cover several different places to find locally grown food and ways to make the fruits of the harvest last longer.

Read about it here: How to Eat Local and Become a Locavore – Benefits & Challenges

Money Crashers: How to Become Financially Independent

It's been a few years now since Brian and I, having paid off our mortgage, decided to set our sights on Financial Independence (FI) as our new long-term goal. At that time, I did what I considered some extremely rough back-of-the-envelope calculations to figure out how long it might take us to reach this goal, based on our present rates of spending and saving. I made a guess, based on the historical averages for the federal funds rate, that we could count on our investments to bring in a return of 4 percent each year. True, this doesn't look like such a safe assumption now, when the federal funds rate has been stuck at close to zero for over five years—but then, back in the late '70s and early '80s, it was at over 10 percent for nearly the same period, and often above 15 percent. So my theory was that it all balances out.

Since then, I've discovered that my wild guess is actually a well-established rule of thumb, generally known as the 4 percent rule. It's based on a 1998 study called the Trinity Study, which found that as long as you have about half your retirement funds invested in stocks, you can safely withdraw 4 percent of the total each year without depleting your reserves. Over the long term, this rule holds through all the ups and downs of the market. Numerous financial bloggers, from Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar (whom I don't always consider reliable) to J.D. Roth of Get Rich Slowly and Mr. Money Mustache (both of whom I generally trust), rely on the 4 percent rule. And while many sources, from CNBC to the New York Times, have questioned whether the rule still applies in today's economy, a 2015 study found that for households with "considerable wealth"—enough to ride out a market downturn—it's still a reasonable guideline.

The main thing that struck me back then, as I fiddled with the numbers, was how much more benefit you get from cutting your expenses than you do from increasing your income by the same amount. Every dollar you add to your income (after taxes) helps you once: you can add it to your savings. But every dollar you cut from your expenses helps you twice: it increases your savings, and it decreases the total amount you need to save, because you now need less to live on. According to my calculations, a hypothetical saver who trimmed $5,000 a year from his expenses would shorten his time to FI by more than twice as much as he would be getting a $5,000 raise.

All this struck me as so interesting and useful that I decided to turn it into a post for Money Crashers, so I could share it with a wider audience. In the first part of the article, I outline the formula I used (which, I acknowledge, is still a very rough approximation) for calculating how long it will take you to reach FI at your present rates of spending and saving. Then I go into ways to reach FI faster by saving more, and I go into specific strategies for earning more and spending less (with an explanation of why the second approach helps you more). And finally, I outline a simple approach to investing for financial independence, known as a lazy portfolio. Investing this way means:

1. Pick out two or three funds with low fees—either ETFs or index funds that cover the whole market as broadly as possible;
2. Invest a fixed amount in each of these funds every month (automatically, if possible, so you don't even have to think about it); and then
3. Just hold the funds until you're ready to start withdrawing. Don't try to adjust based on performance or market conditions; that's a good way to guess wrong and withdraw your money at exactly the wrong time. Just sit tight, and let it work out in the long run.

I first learned about this strategy from Andrew Tobias, one of my personal household gods, and it's worked out well for me—especially the part about not having to think about it. The term "lazy portfolio" was new to me until I started working on this article, but now that I know it, I'm going to use it often in casual conversation.

So if you want the complete scoop on everything you need to know to become financially independent, you can check out the complete article here: How to Become Financially Independent Quickly Using the FI Formula. However, I would ask you to please disregard that word "quickly" in the title, which was added by the editor. I do not, anywhere in the article, promise that this strategy will help you reach FI quickly; I only help you figure out how quickly you can do it, and then suggest some tips for getting there a little faster. But it is not, in any way, a get-rich-quick scheme, and if you click on the article looking for one, you will surely be disappointed.

Thrift Week finale (two months later)

Two months after my Thrift Week series on local thrift shops was cut short by the one big snowstorm of 2016, I finally got a chance to visit the last thrift shop on my list: Second Time Around in Pennington. This thrift shop is run by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton, in whose church my Morris dance team holds its weekly practices, so I had been seeing a flier advertising the store and its wares on the church bulletin board every Thursday night for months, and it looked a lot more appealing than most of the thrift shops in our immediate area. Based on the pictures, the store appeared to be fairly small, but clean and well organized, and the clothes seemed to be nice but not too trendy. So I thought I would probably have a much better chance of finding something wearable in my size than I had so far at other area thrift stores, where the clothing selection was either (a) very limited, (b) old and in poor condition, or (c) very fashionable and pricey and too small to fit me.

The only downside of this store is, it's all the way out in Pennington—a town that's nearly an hour away from us and isn't very close to anywhere else we tend to go. It's not too far from my parents' house in Hopewell, but it's not exactly on the way, and we tend to visit my folks mostly in the evenings, after business hours are over. So in all the years we've lived in Highland Park, I haven't been able to visit the store more than once or twice.

However, about a week ago, Brian and I planned an extended shopping trip that would take us to our favorite Amish farmers' market, where we could stock up on free-range meats and assorted types of bread flour, and on from there to the Trader Joe's in the Princeton area for some other staples. So Brian suggested that, since this was within striking distance of Pennington (maybe 15 minutes away), we should make a regular excursion of it and go hit the Second Time Around as part of the same trip.

Unfortunately, even though I knew this thrift shop was on our itinerary for the day, I forgot to bring my camera, so I can't provide any photos for you. However, the photos you can see on the store's Facebook page give a fairly accurate overall impression of the store and its contents. Basically, the clothes are what people would call "nice"—fairly upscale, but not particularly fashion-conscious, and definitely aimed at a rather older crowd than the modern looks I tend to find at the consignment shops and even at Goodwill. The selection leans toward dressy clothes for both day and evening, and there's a whole rack specifically for clothes from Chico's, which specializes in casual looks for mature ladies. (I assume the reason these items are sequestered on their own rack is because Chico's uses its own particular sizing scheme, which bears no relation to the sizes found at any other store in the known universe—but the fact that the store has enough of them to fill an entire rack tells you a lot about its clientele.)

This looked fairly promising for me, since I am now approaching the point of being "a lady of a certain age" (though no one seems to be quite certain what that certain age is) and the teen-centered styles found at a lot of area thrift shops definitely don't suit me. There were a couple of things in particular I was hoping to find at the store:

1. A decent pair of walking shoes. With the weather warming up, the heavy Timberland boots I've been wearing all winter (one of the better finds I've had at our local Goodwill store) are no longer particularly suitable, and the pair of Skechers I wore through last summer and fall are now so worn down that I can feel the sidewalk through them. I wasn't too optimistic about my chances on this front, since as I've noted before, I have a great deal of trouble finding shoes that fit me well and are a reasonable value. I'd already checked all the other thrift stores I visited during Thrift Week without success, and an initially promising pair I found at Payless turned out, after a short trial, to be too tight to wear for more than a few minutes at a time. (Fortunately, the store was willing to take them back even though they'd been worn; unfortunately, when I tried on the same style in a larger size, it wouldn't stay on my foot.) But I figured it was at least worth looking.
2. A dressy outfit for winter. Back in 2014, we were invited to a December wedding reception for a couple of friends, and it wasn't quite clear what sort of clothes would be appropriate. I have a couple of different cocktail dresses that I knew would pass muster, but neither one of them provides much coverage, and I didn't care to freeze my tush off. I also have one floor-length velvet dress that only gets worn once a year for the Princeton Winter Cotillion, but I was afraid that dress, though warm enough, would be too dressy for the event. So I ended up wearing a casual skirt with a turtleneck and tights and being woefully underdressed. (I saw guys in suits at that party whom I'd never in my life seen wearing anything but blue jeans.) So ever since then, I've been looking for some sort of outfit that's moderately dressy but still warm—perhaps a dress with long sleeves and a mid-length skirt that I could pair with fleece-lined tights, or maybe a nice pair of pants and a silk or velvet top. But even though I've checked every store and website I could think of, I haven't been able to find a single outfit that meets this extremely basic description. So I thought perhaps the problem was that garments of this type just aren't in fashion right now—in which case, a store full of slightly dated-looking clothes might actually be the best place to look for them.

Unfortunately, I struck out on the dressy clothes. The store didn't have a very big selection of pants and blouses, and the dresses were mostly on the highly formal side. I did try on one sort of grey wrap dress with mid-length sleeves, but it wasn't particularly flattering, so it wasn't much of a bargain at $25.

However, I had an unexpected hit at the shoe rack. Although the selection of shoes was fairly small, it was all sturdy, high-quality brands, and unlike the selection at most thrift shops, a significant percentage of them were sensible walking shoes rather than high-fashion, high-heeled, highly impractical styles. And, since they were secondhand, I was willing to waive my objections to wearing leather. This one pair caught my eye: a modest, practical pair of leather oxfords originally from J. Crew in a size seven. This isn't my exact size, at least not usually, but I ventured to try them on anyway and found that, at least with the socks I was wearing, they were reasonably comfortable. Of course, the pair I bought at Payless had seemed comfortable at first, too, and if this pair proved to cause some sore spots upon further wearing, I wouldn't be able to return it. And the color, a light brown, wasn't one I'd usually wear.

But given that spring was nearly upon us and I hadn't succeeded in finding a pair of spring shoes anywhere else, it seemed worth risking $12 on these. And actually, it turned out that the store was in the middle of a sale that weekend, with everything reduced by 50%—so at $6, the shoes were definitely a reasonable buy. I spent an extra $2.50 on a new pair of laces to replace the original rawhide thongs, which I found very difficult to adjust. (Those found a new use as part of the belt pouch that goes with Brian's Renn Faire costume, giving it a much more authentic look than the  modern shoelaces I originally used to tie it.)

My new spring shoes aren't exactly perfect. Though sturdier than my old Skechers, they're not as versatile, since they're a style that really doesn't work with skirts. The color isn't ideal for me, and the leather lining only extends as far as the ball of the foot—so the place where it cuts off creates an awkward ridge in the footbed that feels uncomfortable when I'm wearing these with thinner socks. (I tried adding an insole to alleviate this problem, as we did with the pair of yard-sale sneakers we bought for Brian, but that made the shoes too tight overall.) But still, they're reasonably comfortable for walking in, and they look incredibly durable. Unlike most modern shoes, these can probably even be resoled when they start to wear out, so I should be able to get far more use out of this $6 thrift-shop find than I can out of a brand-new $50 pair of Skechers, which seem to show visible wear after less than a week.

So I think, thanks to this one fortuitous find, I can belatedly declare my Thrift Week thrift-shop experiment a limited success. Sure, I visited eight stores (only seven of which were open) and only found any useful secondhand goods at three of them. But on the plus side, I came away with one rare (if possibly slightly overpriced) book, two usable pairs of pants, and one usable pair of shoes, which are really hard for me to find...all for just $21.50. And, on top of that, I now know of at least one area thrift shop that is actually worth the trip. It's not terribly convenient to get to, but it's no more inconvenient than the Unique Thrift Store in South Plainfield, and the overall selection and prices are better at Second Time Around. Plus, I'd rather support the Unitarians than a for-profit business.

Money Crashers: What Is Smart Growth

Three years back, I talked about how I considered small towns like the one where I live to be the best of all worlds for people who want to live an ecofrugal life. I pointed out that our town offers "all the perks of suburban living without the sprawl," including good schools, a variety of housing and shopping options, and a good public library—all within walking distance. This partly explains why, at least in New Jersey, towns are attracting a lot more new residents than suburbs.

What I didn't say explicitly at the time, but probably should have, is that this kind of development—compact and walkable, with homes and businesses close together—is a textbook example of "smart growth." This type of development, which is designed to protect the environment and improve quality of life, is based on ten basic principles:

1. Mixed land use, with housing and retail close together
2. Compact development (sometimes worded as "growing up, not out")
3. Varied housing choices
4. Walkable neighborhoods
5. Distinctive communities
6. Open space
7. Developing within existing borders
8. Transportation choice
9. Supportive government
10. Community involvement

Pretty much everything that makes Highland Park, and other towns like it, such ecofrugal places to live fits somewhere on this list. It's because our town fits these smart-growth principles that Brian can bike to work, I can run errands on foot during the day, we can walk in the park when the weather is nice, and we can stay in with books and movies from the library when it isn't.

So I've written a piece for Money Crashers all about smart growth. I cover the ten principles in more detail; go into the many benefits of smart growth for the economy, environment, and communities; provide several real-life, award-winning examples of smart-growth projects; and conclude with advice on how to get involved with the smart-growth movement where you live. I hope this article will serve as a useful basic primer for anyone who wants to know what smart growth is all about.

You can read it here: What Is Smart Growth – Urban Planning Principles, Benefits & Examples

Thrift (Shop) Week 2016, Day 6: Tower Thrift Shop

Of all the thrift shops in Highland Park and its immediate environs, the Tower Thrift Shop is the only one I visit regularly. It's within walking distance, it has a bigger selection than the other Highland Park shops, and its prices are even lower than Goodwill's—just $1 for most tops and $2 for pants. And while the clothes aren't as well organized as at some stores, they are at least loosely grouped into small, medium, and large categories, so I don't have to examine every single garment in the store to figure out which ones are likely to fit me. Its biggest drawback is that its hours are limited, but I can usually manage to make the time to stop by on a Friday—especially during the summer, when our weekly farmers' market is being held in the parking lot just outside the church where the thrift shop lives.

Yet despite these many advantages, my trips to the Tower Thrift Shop are very hit-and-miss. Sometimes I find two pairs of pants in my exact size, just like magic; other times I flip through every rack in the store and find nothing that looks remotely useful. So I had little idea what to expect when I headed down there today. Would I finally hit my thrift-store shopping stride, or would I strike out yet again?

At first, it looked like this trip was going better than any of the others. I actually found several pairs of pants worth trying on, in an assortment of fabrics: shimmery grey fine-wale corduroy, fully lined black wool, and some sort of lightweight synthetic. But alas, not one of them actually fit well enough and looked good enough to be worth the $2 they were asking. I also tried on a grey wool sweater in a boys' size XL that mistakenly got filed on the women's clothing rack. This was something I'd been looking for specifically, and the overall size and sleeve length were actually about right on me, but the boxy boy-sized cut just didn't look good. So, regretfully, I returned that to the rack as well.

In the interests of giving the store every possible chance, I made a point of checking out the bookshelves, as well. Our town doesn't actually have a used bookstore anymore (in the 13 years we've lived here, two of them have gone under, and so far no new one has emerged to take their place), but the Tower Thrift Shop has a rather motley assortment of volumes at truly unbeatable prices: just 25 cents for hardcovers, 10 cents for paperbacks, and if you buy two, you can get a third for nothing. But this time, nothing on the shelves particularly jumped out at me. I suppose I could have bought something just to buy something, but right now, we already have several books at home on the "to be read" pile (including our new Wilkie Collins from Hole in the Wall Books), and I just didn't feel the need to bring home any more. So once again, I walked out with plenty o' nuttin'.

Unfortunately, I fear that I won't be able to make my final Thrift Week excursion tomorrow, either. I was planning to stop by The Second Time Around in Pennington, a somewhat larger and nicer thrift shop that I seldom get a chance to visit, before going on to a belated birthday dinner with my parents. But it looks like both plans are going to have to be postponed, as we're currently expecting blizzard conditions all day long, with total snow accumulation of about a foot. So it looks like my Thrift Week thrift-shop binge is coming to a premature and rather unsatisfying end. Still, I will make a point of visiting the Pennington store some time in the next month or two and reporting on the results. I remember patronizing this store in the past, back when I lived in Hopewell, and it was pretty good back then—and at this point, I feel like it's become my personal quest to discover at least one good thrift store in Central New Jersey where I can reliably find useful stuff.

Thrift (Shop) Week 2016, Day 5: Greene Street Consignment

Greene Street Consignment in Princeton is a far cry from our so-called consignment shop here in Highland Park. Where Pure Green is dim and cluttered, Greene Street is bright and spacious. The racks are well organized, with clothing actually sorted by size; there's plenty of room for hangers to slip on and off the rack, and plenty of room between the racks for shoppers to pass by. Shoes are neatly stacked on racks, so you can actually see the entire available selection at a glance. And there are plenty of fitting rooms—clean, well-lit rooms with hooks for your clothing selections and a stool to sit on as you take off your shoes. For me, after the low-rent thrift shops I've been experiencing the rest of this week, this was unimaginable luxury.

Compared to those other stores, Greene Street also offers a much wider selection, with a focus on upscale brands. For instance, I spotted sweaters on the rack by the likes of Ralph Lauren and Ann Taylor, and pants by Michael Kors (without the words "for Target" tacked on). Clothing tends to be newer, too; I happened to overhear a conversation outside the fitting rooms between an employee and someone who was interested in bringing in some clothes to consign, and the employee was explaining that anything more than a year or so old probably wasn't worth bothering with, because they wouldn't be able to sell it.

Of course, this posh atmosphere comes with much higher price tags than the ones I'm used to seeing at Goodwill, or even at the local "vintage" and "consignment" stores. I saw sweaters ranging from $20 to $50, and some pairs of pants for as much as $70—comparable, or in some cases even more, than I'm accustomed to paying for new clothes off the rack. Of course, I'm sure that it's much less than those particular brands would cost to buy new, but then, I wouldn't be shopping for those particular brands if I had to pay full price.

Still, I was determined not to be put off by the prices. I figured that I probably wouldn't be spending any more on these consigned clothes than I'd pay at Sears or Target, and I thought, or at least hoped, that with the wide selection on the racks, I'd actually have a better chance of finding something I liked. Unlike the local stores I'd visited on Tuesday and Wednesday, this one actually did seem to have a good assortment of practical clothes for everyday wear, including shirts, slacks, and sweaters in a reasonable range of sizes. So it looked like if I was going to find anything, this was my best shot.

At first, matters looked promising. As I browsed up and down the racks, I found several garments worth pulling off the rack for a closer look, but none of them looked like it would really serve to fill a gap in my wardrobe. I did try on one pair of pants that looked like they might fit me—a bit long, perhaps, but they could be hemmed—and weren't too outrageously expensive at $32. But though I was able to get into them, they turned out to be a low-rise style that looks absolutely awful on me (something that wasn't obvious from the way they looked on the hanger). So the entire bottom floor of the store, from sweaters to shoes, yielded no treasures.

Upstairs, in the clearance section, the pickings were slimmer, but the prices were lower—not as low as Goodwill's, but getting closer to that range. I tried on a deep-pink wrap dress that looked like it might be a reasonable deal at $15, but it proved to be too big in the shoulders, too low in the neck, and too skimpy everywhere else—though that might have been partly because I had a lot of trouble figuring out exactly how the thing was supposed to fasten. It was a bit like trying to tie myself into a pink toga.

So, sadly, despite the nice selection and atmosphere, I still left Greene Street empty-handed. It was a bit of a consolation to know that at least I had managed to get a look at everything on the racks, so if I hadn't found anything, it must have been because there was nothing to find, and not because there was some hidden gem buried so deep that I couldn't unearth it. But this was cold comfort when I reflected that even a really good thrift shop apparently couldn't provide anything to suit me. If my ultimate goal for this thrift-shopping binge is to fill all the gaps in my wardrobe, thereby eliminating all need for cheap, mass-produced clothes from third world sweatshops, then the prospect of completing my quest successfully seems to be looking dimmer and dimmer.

Thrift (Shop) Week 2016, Day 4: Pure Green Consignment

My week of thrift-shop-hopping continued today with a trip to another local establishment, just a block away from the one I visited yesterday. Pure Green Consignment is not a complete store in its own right; it shares a building with Pure Light Gifts, a sort of New-Age-y shop that sells crystals and incense and hosts meditation classes. There's no real overlap between the two businesses, though; Pure Light occupies the back of the store, in an open space smelling faintly of patchouli, while the front half is crammed with overcrowded racks of clothing, tables full of knickknacks, piles of shoes, and ladies busily chatting together in Mandarin. I think there's probably also a dressing room in there somewhere, but I couldn't easily spot it.

The selection of clothing at Pure Green overlaps a lot with what I saw yesterday at Sibel's Vintage: there's a heavy emphasis on coats and shoes, particularly fancy ones. However, the tightly packed racks do also appear to have a reasonable selection of everyday garments. Unfortunately, searching through them was rather difficult, since everything was so tightly crammed onto the racks that it was almost impossible to extricate anything. I managed to pull a few garments partway out so I could get a closer look at them, but what I saw wasn't encouraging. Most of the clothes, particularly the few pairs of jeans on the rack, appeared to be in tiny sizes. I did dig out a colorful skirt—which actually turned out to be two skirts clipped to the same hanger—in a size that looked reasonable, but the price tags on the two skirts were $15 and $16 respectively. I'm sure that's a significant savings over retail, but it's still more than I'm really willing to pay for a garment I definitely don't need and might not ever wear at all.

My search of the shoes was equally fruitless. They weren't sorted in any way by size, of course, but that's par for the course at thrift shops and I didn't really expect anything different. But most of them also weren't set out on any sort of racks; they were just lined up on the floor, pair after pair, where you had to crouch down to get a look at them. I stooped once or twice to pick up a pair that looked like it might be my size, but none of them actually had the right number on them. A couple didn't appear to have any size marked on them at all, and I might have attempted to try them on, but since there was no place in the store to sit down, it didn't seem worth the effort to try and change shoes while standing on one leg.

One of the racks, near the back of the store, had some men's clothing on it, and I gave it a quick glance—but there aren't really any gaps in Brian's wardrobe that need filling at the moment, and anyhow, I wouldn't want to spend $15 on a garment for him if he couldn't try it on first. So after about ten minutes of browsing, I ended up leaving the store empty-handed.

So, halfway into Thrift Week, my tally is:

Thrift shop visits attempted: 5
Thrift shops successfully visited: 4
Items purchased: 4 (1 book, 2 pairs pants, 1 pair tights)
Items purchased that were actually secondhand: 3
Total spent: $20.50

So far, the numbers aren't exactly encouraging. But tomorrow I'll have a chance to visit a bigger and more upscale thrift shop in Princeton—two of the factors that I usually find add up to a better selection of secondhand merchandise. So perhaps I'll have better luck on that trip.