Posts tagged ‘seattle’
We’ve done a pretty good job of cutting back on unnecessary expenses during this period of reduced income. ‘Magazine subscriptions’ seems like an obvious category to eliminate, right? Yet I kept mine. Here’s why: they save me way more money than they cost.
Consumer Reports
My first-ever magazine subscription, when I was 19 years old, was to Consumer Reports. Other ones have come and gone, but I’ve been a loyal nonstop CR subscriber for twenty years now, and I read every issue cover-to-cover. (The complete lack of advertising makes this a remarkably pleasant experience). I also pay extra for full access to their web site, because the search function is darn handy, and keeps me from having to store and sort through years of back issues.
A lot of what they report on is not of immediate use to me, of course — for example, we buy one car every decade or so. But every time we are ready to make a major purchase, I check CR. About 80% of the time they have a ratings list including feature and price data, plus a detailed explanation of how to assess quality of models not listed. In the past four years I’ve used CR to choose an oven, two televisions, a washer and dryer, a computer printer, a digital camera, and a gas grill — all of which have performed beautifully. That’s not even counting the small stuff, like comparisons of laundry detergent effectiveness, or — in the most recent issue — condoms! Plus they have frequent articles alerting readers to issues like credit card traps and health insurance pitfalls.
Cost: $42 per year ($23 print, $19 web).
Savings: several hundred dollars per year.
(If you want to be extra-frugal, get the web-only CR for $26 per year. I happen to enjoy the print magazine enough to warrant the extra $16, but the important information is all available online.)
Consumers’ Checkbook
A little over a year ago I added Consumers’ Checkbook to my arsenal. They’re sort of like a regional, service-focused version of Consumer Reports, offering both ratings and in-depth reports on various services. They’re only available in seven metro areas, but fortunately for us, one is Puget Sound.
So far this year I’ve used their ratings to select a veterinarian, a dermatologist, and a car repair shop. Checkbook doesn’t have a full report on doctors, so the dermatologist didn’t come with a price comparison or savings. But their feature on ‘doctors rated highly by other doctors’ did help me get someone good. I don’t know anyone locally who visits a dermatologist, so without Checkbook it would have been a crap shoot.
The vet and auto repair ratings, however, have arguably saved us hundreds of dollars this year alone.
Veterinarian:
I know plenty of people with pets, so finding a good vet has never been a problem. What’s harder is finding one that’s both good and cheap, relatively speaking. Here Checkbook’s price comparison between veterinarians was stunningly useful. It would have taken me many hours to do that research on my own. And look at the range!
There are big vet-to-vet price differences. For example, for spaying a 25-pound, seven-month-old dog, charges we found at local vets ranged from $90 to $532. Many of the lowest priced vets rated very high on our customer survey. It is possible to save money and also get top-quality care for your pet.
The vet I selected with Checkbook’s info turned out to be not just great but also very reasonable in cost. When our cat developed alarming symptoms earlier this year, it was worth a lot to know that I wasn’t going to be hemorrhaging money in tests and treatments.
Auto Repair:
Over the last couple of weeks, our trusty little 1999 Honda Civic has been exhibiting some alarming behaviors, such as a sudden loss of electrical function while going 60 mph on the interstate.
Car repairs scare me, because I know very little about automobiles, so it’s very easy to take me for a ride, so to speak. Fortunately, we have a car mechanic in the family — too far away to fix our problem, but at least he could make a long-distance guess at the cause and give me a rough idea of a reasonable charge for repairs.
His assessment: either the ignition switch (~$125 retail part) or the distributor ($450-$500 retail part). Either one would take, he guessed, about one to one-and-a-half hours of labor. (His shop charges $80/hour for labor, for comparison.)
Again, Checkbook reports wild variation in local costs:
There are dramatic price differences. For example, to replace the water pump and timing belt on a 1999 Ford Contour, we found prices ranging from $393 to $950. Hourly labor rates range from $60 to $140. There are many top-quality, low-priced shops. Indeed, we found no relationship between the prices shops charge and the quality of their work.
(Are you seeing a pattern here?)
Checkbook listed ten repair shops within five miles that earned their top recommendation for both price and quality. (Hourly labor charges in our immediate area ranged from $73 to $110.) Jak picked one on a direct bus route that had a $75 rate and customer comments extolling their ‘honesty and service’.
As Jak was the one to take the car in, I didn’t interact with them directly, but the results were impressive. The diagnostic mechanic couldn’t quickly determine whether it was the ignition switch or a distributor problem, but rather than suggest we replace both — which would mean more money for him, and the tack many shops would take — he persevered.
Ultimately he was able to confirm the fault was in the ignition switch, which he replaced. He charged us for one hour labor and — based on the information I got from Bill — something that must have been very close to his own cost on the part. Total charge: $120. It could easily have been double that at another shop for the very same repair; a lazy or dishonest mechanic might have tried the distributor and charged us $600 or more.
Cost: $14 per year (print and web).
Savings: several hundred dollars per year.
(Note that Checkbook subscriptions are for 2-year periods, and cost varies slightly among locations.)
Alert readers may have noticed that lately the frequency of posts here at Pocketmint has been somewhat reduced.
One reason is that some of my recently personal-finance writing has gone to Get Rich Slowly instead. In addition to the aforementioned discount grocery store adventure, I did a post on Discovering — and challenging — your financial values, which might just be my personal favorite for the year. A third post, this one about furniture, will be up on GRS soon.
But the primary reason I’m spending less time writing here (or anywhere) is that since mid-August I’ve been working hard on a new project — one that I hope will ultimately be of interest to Pocketmint readers. I’m not ready to announce a lot of details yet, but I will say that it’s a web-based application (like Gmail, or Facebook) which will help people save money on a regular basis.
We’re building a prototype now, and in another month or two I expect to be ready to enter an alpha-testing phase. If you’ve never been involved in software development before, alpha testing is where a small number of people — in our case perhaps around a dozen — use the app and tell us what they like and don’t like about it. We attempt to change the things people dislike or find confusing, and let the alpha testers try it again. After a few rounds of that — maybe another couple of months — we move into the beta phase, where we open the app to the public.
Alpha testers are a huge help to software designers and developers. In return they get a few unique perks: they get to see the app before anyone else, and to have a major voice in what the finished product is like. In the case of this specific project, alphas will also get a permanent free account to the software. So down the road, when we’ve added a bunch of cool extra features that everyone else has to pay for (and believe me, there are some very cool things on our drawing board), alphas get a free pass to all of it. Think of it like trying out a very early version of Flickr or Evernote and getting a permanent Pro/Premium account.
If this is something you’d like to try, and you live in the greater Seattle metro area — roughly Everett to Tacoma — email me with ‘alpha tester’ as the subject. I’ll write back with a few questions and if it all works out, add you to our alpha team.
With the entire country in dire financial turmoil this week, I’ve been fighting my own great depression with the quintessential American pastime: shopping!
Well, sort of. I didn’t go on any kind of wild spree, nor was I shopping just for shopping’s sake; we’ve had a few months to grow our home-improvement fund since our last big remodeling outlay, and so I made a list of the next steps I want to take. It’s a longish list that includes some cleaning and organizing, some remodeling and landscaping, and some things to purchase or replace. Most of the shopping (like pricing attic insulation, or careful selection of litter box scoops) makes for less-than-fascinating blog fodder, but I’ll share a couple of exceptions.
Last Saturday I made a trip down to what might be Seattle’s best little shopping secret: the Pacific Coast Feather outlet store. You almost have to hear about it through word of mouth, as it’s not even mentioned on Pacific Coast’s own web site, much less advertised anywhere else. It’s a factory outlet in the original sense of the term: there’s just one, right next to the factory, and it holds mostly overstocks and discontinued items, occasionally seconds. (You may not know — I didn’t for a long time — but most ‘outlet stores’ in malls carry predominantly items specially made for those outlets, of cheaper materials and manufacture than regular merchandise from the same company.)
The PCF outlet is a bare-bones shopping experience, just a warehouse with some industrial tables, bins, and shelving piled with feathery bedding. Available stock varies: sheet and pillowcase options can be sparse; you’ll have the best luck with pillows and comforters. I expected to get a basic white down comforter but was happy to find a chambray stripe instead. I also picked up two of my favorite pillows, the ones with a feather core surrounded with down on all sides. Then I had to resist the urge to add a feather bed to my haul. Bargains can be a slippery slope! But I’m consciously keeping a tight rein on unplanned purchases.
Next up was replacing our dishes. We have some plastic Ikea kid dishes, some Ikea stoneware that Jak picked out before we were living together, and a twelve-place stoneware set that his mom gave us a few years ago. I’ve lived with them so far for reasons of frugality, but the frustrations include:
- the table settings don’t fit our lifestyle: we have way too many large plates and never enough bowls;
- the large plates of the better set are ginormous (12.5″ diameter) and don’t fit in standard cabinets or the dishwasher …
- … nor do they help with portion control!
- various pieces of both are scratched, chipped, or broken and missing altogether;
- the better set doesn’t include any serving pieces, and is impossible to match;
- and while I can imagine many less attractive options, these aren’t my preferred style.
I’ve never really shopped for good dishes before, so I was appalled to discover that ordinary stoneware typically runs $10 to $12 per bowl or plate! We’re not talking fine china here, yeesh. I wasn’t ready to drop $400 on new dishes, so I kept looking for a cheaper option.
Outlet store? I remembered there was a Mikasa at a nearby outlet mall (for loose values of ‘nearby’ — actually about 30 miles away). But when I looked it up, I discovered that Mikasa had closed all its retail stores and gone web-only. Thank goodness I didn’t just drive out there.
I’ll spare you the rest of the dead ends and just skip to the finale: I did eventually find two real bargains that fit our needs. For cheap daily dishes I ended up in Corelle’s online clearance section, where I bought 8 bowls ($1.19) and 8 ‘luncheon’ plates ($1.49). Corelle isn’t my idea of ’stylish’ but it’s nicer than plastic, lightweight, easy to clean, and virtually indestructible — a good choice for the kids and our informal lunches and snacks.
I had nearly despaired of getting a nice dinnerware set I both liked and could afford before I finally found the clearance section at Pfaltzgraff. They have a surprisingly large selection of discontinued patterns, both sets and open stock, for as little as $2 and $3 apiece.
I found a style from last year that Jak and I both liked, and selected ten each of the bowls, small plates, and dinner plates, plus six mugs, two serving bowls, one serving tray, and a coordinating decorative bowl and urn. (We can only seat eight, but I got extra plates and bowls in case of future breakage; with a discontinued pattern I assume replacements will be hard to come by.) Total price: $126. Then, icing on the cake: my usual online coupon search got me an extra $25 off; after tax and shipping (dishes are heavy!) the grand total was $134.
I confess that the decorative bowl and urn were impulse purchases not on the original shopping list, but I judged them to be well worth the extra $16 or so. We sorely need some decoration around our house; I’ve just been too focused on the functional basics to go looking for any.
And while yes, I know that shopping is not a cure for depression — either mine or the economy’s — sometimes new things do make me happy, especially when they directly improve my daily environment. I love snuggling up in bed with the new comforter and fluffy pillows. I expect the Pfaltzgraff, when it arrives, to make cooking and serving dinner more enjoyable and cleaning up afterward less of a frustration. Heck, I’m even a little bit pleased to have a better litter scoop!
I’m glad (and a little amazed) that we have enough money right now that we can selectively upgrade for attractiveness and better functionality. It’s a nice feeling.
(Photo by pillowhead designs.)
I had a sort of mini-vacation last week; didn’t go anywhere, but took off work to hang with a visiting friend. I had every intention of posting during the break, but … I was too busy playing. And eating. Stacy and I are both unapologetic foodies, which means we spent much of our time bouncing between restaurants, markets, and kitchens …
I’ve been trying to hit the farmers’ markets as much as possible this summer, but I’m finding those visits increasingly stressful. I am hugely in favor of both buying local and supporting small farms, but that desire is at war with my equally strong tendency toward frugality.
Today I was talking with a friend who lives in the DC metro area; he extolled the cheapness of farmers’ market produce, which he reckons as being about on par pricewise with the budget grocery chains like Safeway, but with consistently superior quality. I was envious to say the least. In the Seattle area, even Whole Foods is often cheaper than the farmers’ markets. This week, a pint container of organic multicolored cherry tomatoes is $4.50 at various farmer stalls, but only $2.99 at Whole Foods.
Last Thursday I tried a different market from my usual, in hopes that maybe it was a neighborhood thing, but no — still expensive. I did walk away with some cheap zucchini (three large for $2!), but otherwise the prices were astronomical. Peaches were $4/pound; I bought four small ones. They were much more flavorful than the ones I got at Fred Meyer for .79/pound, but at a dollar for about six bites, they were no bargain.
Tom reports that in Maryland, eggs at the farmers’ market go for $3.25 or $3.50 per dozen. Last week I saw eggs at the market listed at $5 and $6 per dozen. At the regular grocery they run around $2.50, and by watching for sales I can cut that considerably — this weekend I got two dozen for $2.69 in a buy-one-get-one-free deal. Costco regularly carries two dozen for under $3.
I have no idea why market produce is so expensive here. Perhaps it’s another manifestation of our (relatively) robust local economy, and farmers are merely charging what the market will bear. Perhaps Seattleites have such a green-and-local focus that the demand outstrips the supply — certainly the markets have been mobbed every day I’ve been since June.
Meanwhile, my internal battle rages on. Lately I’ve been compromising by buying certain ‘treat’ foods where flavor quality is most important — the sweet peaches, Rainier cherries, assorted berries — from the farmers’ markets, and getting the bulk of our staples from grocery sales and Costco. But I sure do wish I could satisfy both mandates at the same time instead of having to choose.
(Photos by Sasha Kopf and Chas Redmond.)
The last time the economy took a sharp downturn it hit me hard. With dot-coms failing right and left, suddenly there was a huge glut of Internet-industry workers. Employment levels took four or five years to fully rebound, during which I got by on intermittent income and credit-card debt.
This time, though Jak and I both work in Internet-related jobs, they both appear stable for the long term — and if one of us needed to find a new job, the market for our skillsets still seems pretty decent. We are making enough money relative to our expenses that we can afford the occasional decadent splurge and still continue to accumulate substantial savings. We aren’t needing to sell our house anytime soon, so even if prices flatten for a bit, it shouldn’t impact us much.
I am noticing the sharp uptick in food and gas prices but am generally able to absorb them. Still gunshy after the Dot-Bust years, I’ve been feeling lucky that this time we seem to be well-placed to ride out the fall. But a recent article in Forbes suggests that my experience is exactly typical for Seattle, which has the highest inflation rate in the country:
While Seattle’s housing market has shown signs of strain, it’s still a far more stable market than most cities in the country. But the simplest reason for inflation is the health of the local economy. When metro area unemployment sits at a rock bottom 3.7%, it’s an employee’s market for wages, because talent is tough to come by. Higher costs for labor on the manufacturing or service side, and more cash in the hands of the consumer, means prices can float higher without much resistance.
So wait — prices are climbing faster here in Seattle because … we can afford them? What a Catch-22. If we couldn’t afford the price increases, things would be cheaper … but a lot more people would be out of work. Like in Detroit, where “unemployment is over 8%, the highest of any big city in the country, and yet inflation rests at the lowest level of cities we measured.” You just can’t win.
Anyway, I’d much rather be here than in Dallas, which ties our 5.82% inflation rate. According to Forbes, it’s not a robust economy but heavy energy use that’s driving up prices there. “There just isn’t much you can do if you live in Dallas and want to conserve energy. Driving is a way of life and … the city is so spread out that residents are traveling long distances. Add in the summer heat and humidity, and Dallas citizens are pumping the air conditioning non-stop.”
Hey, Seattle — bring on the light rail and the clouds!
(Photo by The Lebers.)
