If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Having Someone Else Do It

Spend Some Now, Save More Later

Ok, so saving is great, but there are times when we should spend (wisely of course) in order to get the job done right.

For example, I hate basic grocery shopping. I love going to Citarella, or Balducci’s, or Chelsea Market and choosing lovely seafood, complicated dips and fresh breads, garnishes, and pretty, dainty tropical fruits to serve. What I don’t love is stocking up on the staples, gallons upon gallons of water (sorry, but looking at my apartment’s plumbing, I am NOT drinking out of that sink..) soup for sick days, frozen snacks, and the weeks worth of juice, milk, or soda that need to live in the fridge at all times. So, once every few weeks when I make myself travel further than the bodega which is out my door and across the street by 14 steps, I go to the supermarket.

Once there, I fill my cart with no fear, because I know I’ll be getting it all delivered. The cost to me of attempting to carry it all home myself is either a free but painful walk, or the price of a cab ride ($2.50 to get in the door, another several dollars to drive around many useless blocks because i live three blocks away down a one way in the wrong direction.) If I go the cab route, I will still have to fight with my two front doors and my apartment door, not to mention a flight of stairs, all on my own. If I try to walk back (not even possible with two 2.5-gallon water dispensers thrown in) I will require a chiropractic visit, which will definitely run me into the hundreds, and probably a manicure after I break all of my nails struggling with the bags and my keys. So, instead, I pay the $2 the grocery store adds on to the bill, and another few for a tip, shop at my leisure, head home and wait for the doorbell, and consider my time and money well spent.

Other times when it’s good to call in the pros? Exterminating pests of any kind (see Dad in Minnesota- he called the Molinator rather than risk his hands, or my puppy’s feet, in a mole-trapping incident gone wrong), wiring electricity (ZAP), installing things heavier than 5lbs on your wall, or doing anything that professionals can do without hurting themselves but you cannot. The money you spend is small in comparison to the costs of fixing the damage to yourself or your home if you try to pinch pennies in the wrong place.

Helliot

Henry Elliot

Walking a Mile in Your Own Shoes

The price is low, but what is the REAL cost of wearing inexpensive shoes?

The Best-Laid Plans..

Sometimes a bargain isn't really a bargain

It is almost always cool to be NP. We find the best deals on designer duds, spa services, travel arrangements, and restaurant rendezvous. With our skills and savvy, we keep up our NP lifestyle at the same standards as we always did, but with a lower price tag. HOWEVER, I myself have made the mistake of taking it just a little bit too far. My hairy tale begins in the aisle of my local Duane Reade, one boring weekday afternoon.

My hair is what we’d call an unfortunate Minnesota brown. It’s sort of an ashy blonde-brown-grey mixture that looks good on some varieties of house cat, but is not that flattering on any person I’ve yet met. As such, I have become a great friend of hair dye. Why, with dye, I can be blonde, brunette, gothically dark and striking like Snow White, or have a Lohan moment and rock the red/wine color sure to get attention.

Unfortunately for me, and my wallet, such fun with color does not come cheap. Any NP girl out there knows the cost of a salon visit, whether for highlights or all-over color. Dripping a small dose of glaze alone will run you upwards of a half-Benjamin! So, in the depths of my dispair (and after having viewed my Amex bill for the month of March) I took the fateful walk down the aisle - at Duane Reade, that is- and purchased *gasp* box dye, because I’m worth it too. And boy, was it a good deal. Even after buying two boxes, because I have long hair, I had spent less than $10 for what I was sure would be my best new look ever.

What. A. Mistake.

The process itself was easy, and even after the rinse-and-repeat, I was feeling confident and good to go (and go I did, I went out that night looking good and feeling great.) The truth didn’t set in until the next day. Ahh yes, though the hair had held up well under the pulsating strobes of the club I’d been to in the evening,  by the bright light of the sun, things were looking decidedly less pretty. The top half of my mid-back length hair was a lovely fiery red, wheras the bottom was a dark, murky chestnut brown, had it been through a forest fire. Not my best look. Nonetheless, I decided to bide my time until I could justify a quick trip to the stylist to even it out, and in the meantime wore a lot of ponytails. No one but me really noticed.

So, fast-forward one month (the amount of time I figured I should let my hair rest between treatments, and not coincidentally, the time at which my mother was coming to visit from out of town.. I knew she and her credit-card would know what to do!) I went to a lovely little salon, and before I could even sit down the owner ran up to me to express his condolences on my box-dye-job gone bad. And to yell at me, just a little. I had figured a 6:00 pm appointment would mean I’d be done well before their 8:00 pm closing time, but by 8:45, I realized that was not to be. As I sat and heard horror stories of the salon owner’s attempts to remove the awful, caustic, metallic dyes found in those drugstore boxes, I had to keep checking the mirror to make sure my hair hadn’t gone up in smoke. At 10:00, I got a little nervous that I’d have any hair left at all after the color-stripping, re-color, re-glaze because even that color didn’t stick properly, and three or four rinses. Thankfully, by 5 hours later at 11 pm, I made it out alive and intact, with a financial hit in the hundreds to fix my $10 experiment.

Next week, I have to go back for another glaze, condition, and $50 hit, just to get my hair back to the normal state it used to so happily exist in, BBD (Before Box Dye). Moral of the story? Scrimp, save, and budget, but NEVER cut back where it counts. The only benefit you’ll get from a hair-brained scheme like mine is all those extra points on your Amex from spending so much to save the day.