New tip: Save $10 on groceries by…

shopping at the Pathmark grocery store near the Atlantic Avenue subway stop in Brooklyn. Mister Redhead and I went to a barbecue in that area yesterday. Being the good guests that we are, we wanted to pick up some beer to bring to the party. We quickly located the alcohol aisle, chose a good beer, and headed to the check-out. We were met by, honest to God, the longest line I’ve ever seen in a grocery store. Of the 20 or so check-out lanes, only two were open, plus the four self check-out kiosks. This isn’t wise in a normal circumstance, let alone on a Sunday afternoon. There was probably a hundred people in line. We looked at our one measly item, looked at the line, looked at our one measly item, talked about how many hours late we’d be to this party if we waited in line, and finally said, “Screw it.” We couldn’t find any liquor stores nearby, so we showed up to the party empty-handed and volunteered to make a beer run if needed later in the night (which ended up not being necessary).

Now, I know places like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods are notorious for long lines that stretch throughout the store. But Pathmark? Really? I’m curious: Has anyone else shopped at this location? Is it always that busy?

Check out Sammy Davis Vintage if you’re in Brooklyn today!

If you’re stylish and like sustainability, get yourself to Artists & Fleas in Williamsburg today for the debut of Sammy Davis Vintage.

Sammy’s a friend of mine who uses her weekends to scour thrift stores and pick the best of the best from the ’60s through the ’90s. She’s gathering her top choices at her booth today from noon to 8 p.m. at 129 N. 6th St. in Brooklyn. And knowing Sammy, if you’re at a complete loss as far as how to wear vintage (like I am), she’ll help you coordinate a cute outfit.

Best of all, the prices aren’t ridiculous. Remember when I went to Brooklyn Flea a few months ago? All the booths had cool stuff, but everything was kind of expensive, which to me defeats the purpose of buying vintage. Why buy something used if you can get something brand new for less? (Sorry, I’m not the most sustainable-minded person.) But Sammy knows that vintage items should be a good deal: She calls herself the “H&M of vintage.”

Let me know if you go and if Sammy hooks you up with a new outfit!

Library late fees

I love libraries. I really do. One of my first posts was all about how great they are for saving money on entertainment. But today my library let me down, or maybe I let it down, but whatever the case, there is a strain in our relationship now.

I usually check out items on Saturdays, since it’s rare I’m in the city during the week while the libraries are open. I had last Friday off, though, so I stopped by our branch and picked up a few books and DVDs. This morning, I remembered that the DVDs are due after a week.  I logged onto my NYPL account and renewed everything. But one DVD wouldn’t renew. Furthermore, it wasn’t due today. It was due June 9th, four days ago and just three days after I’d checked it out. So at $1 per day for every day its late, I now owe the New York Public Library four bucks.

Here’s the part that really gets me: This DVD wasn’t some amazing documentary or artistic tale. I owe the library $4 because of Hairspray. No, not the cool-kitschy ’80s one. The one from 2007. The one with Zac Efron and John Travolta. John Travolta, in drag:

So I’ll have to go to the library tomorrow and put on my Minnesota-nice smile and try to work my magic on a good-hearted librarian. If that doesn’t work, I’ll be coughing up a $4 penance for my poor judgment in choosing movies and my lack of attention toward the check-out receipt. Between this and the bus ticket, it’s beginning to feel like NYC as a whole is against me lately.

Quick, somebody write something positive about libraries in the comments. Maybe that positive karma will help me tomorrow as I try to get out of paying my late fee.

Wedding on a budget

I just stumbled across this slideshow over at WalletPop. I feel for the guy. He’s a newspaper reporter who accepted a buyout package weeks before his wedding. With no paycheck in sight and the nuptials and a move looming, he and his fiancee managed to cut $13,000 from their wedding budget. I have to admit, that’s pretty impressive.

But I also have to admit that I don’t think I spent $13,000 total on our wedding. Granted, our wedding was in Des Moines, Iowa, and you can’t get a much cheaper locale than that. But our celebration included all the traditional things: Dinner, drinks, dancing, cake, limo, flowers, deejay, and so on. It’s not like we got married in a field of wildflowers with three people as witnesses. And while my parents paid for the reception, we covered most everything else. Our wedding was the September after we graduated from college, so we were making a lot of these down payments while we were students and then during our first few months as New Yorkers. But we made it work and didn’t go into debt over it; we just made some pretty easy choices on what mattered to us and what we could do without:

• Our college friend took our engagement photos, and they turned out great because we had so much fun taking them.
• Mister Redhead’s aunt made our invites, programs, and thank-you’s, and my aunt made the decorations for the church.
• I love calla lilies and wanted my bouquet to be nothing but callas. Then I saw the price estimate and decided I didn’t really love callas at all (although I did get a few in the final bouquet).
• We arrived in Des Moines a couple days before the wedding. Rather than pay for a week at a hotel, we stayed with Mister Redhead’s brother. We slept on an air mattress in our nephew’s bedroom. Between the air mattress and the nephew, I don’t think I slept more than two hours that whole week. Adrenaline, meet wedding day.
• We had a professional photographer at the ceremony and for formal shots, but he didn’t come to the reception. We asked my aunt to do our reception photos instead, and our friends took plenty of pictures during the cake-cutting, toasts, and dancing!
• Our cake did not come from a bakery, and it did not cost hundreds of dollars, but it looked cool and tasted good, so what else matters?
• I love my wedding dress; it was the first one I tried on. Was it from some expensive bridal specialty boutique? No.
• We didn’t take a honeymoon. This was more of a practical choice than a financial one, seeing as we had to travel from Manhattan to Minneapolis to Des Moines for the wedding, then do that trip in reverse to get back to the Big Apple. You couldn’t have paid me enough to add another leg of travel on that trip.

What would/have you cut out of your wedding budgets? What would you do if you lost your job right before the wedding?

New Yorkers: Staying in more

When I moved to New York a couple of years ago, it seemed that no one hung out at other people’s apartments. It was just a NYC thing: Apartments here are not meant to hold more than three people. Everyone wanted to meet for dinner or drinks, or go see a show, or embark on some other NYC adventure.

But during the past few months, in this “great recession,” I’ve hung out in more friends’ apartments on the weekends than I have since I moved here. Bottles of wine, snacks, ten or so people? You’ve got yourself a party. This is a completely anecdotal observation, but I’m sure I’m not the first to write about it. It’s the kind of quaint, novel phenomenon that the New York Times loves writing about: Look! New Yorkers, learning to simplify and save money! Appreciating the sense of kinship in scaling back and slowing down!

Of course this makes sense financially. Anyone can tell you splitting a few bottles of wine is cheaper than ordering one glass in a restaurant. But maybe it’s not only the economy that’s causing this behavior. Maybe it’s simply that my friends and I, being a few years out of college, are upgrading to nicer, more spacious (well, as “spacious” as you can get in this city) apartments. You know, apartments that you aren’t embarrassed by and that you’re okay with inviting people into. We’re taking the time to paint these apartments, get real furniture, spruce up the places a little. We want to show them off to our friends.

I am all for this trend. I had the best times in high school just hanging out at friends’ houses. Granted, those houses also had pools and hot tubs and bonfire pits…but the  important thing was the great conversation. Ditto for college. Attending a school in Des Moines, Iowa, pretty much guaranteed  that I was more likely to hang out in a dorm room on a Friday night than be rocking the club scene (the club scene in Des Moines consisted of Coconut Joe’s, which I think went out of business, and The Garden, a gay club). I’m all too happy that people in New York are turning into little homebodies.

In light of this recent trend, I’ve been pondering throwing a party of my own. (I’m the type who always goes to parties, but never hosts parties–selfish, I know!) So, before the summer is done, I will host some sort of belated housewarming party.

Have you been staying in more? Do you stay in for financial reasons, or are you just over the NYC night scene?

What would you do if you won the lottery?

How would you spend (or save) your winnings? Here’s my list:

• Pay off our student loans.
• Pay off any debt on my side of the family and Mister Redhead’s side. Student loans, credit cards, whatever–we’d pay it off.
• Buy an apartment in New York, a house in Minnesota, and a condo in downtown Des Moines. Gotta cover all the bases!
• Take that honeymoon we haven’t gotten around to taking yet.
• Give back. How, exactly, I don’t know. Maybe I’d give money to a bunch of different charities, or maybe I’d start a scholarship fund, or maybe I’d support research to find cures for cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and so on. Or perhaps I’d go live in a third-world country and build hospitals or help women start businesses.
• Go back to school and only take classes that really, really fascinate me. Maybe I wouldn’t even get another degree; I’d just take completely random courses.
• Buy motorcycles. I’ve never been on a motorcycle, but I think I’d like to have one.
• Save a bunch of the money. Like, enough to live on for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t want to be one of those lottery winners who’s broke in three years! This may involve reining in my above plans a bit, but I’d rather be reasonable with my money than blow it on fancy cars and houses.

How about you? What would you do with millions of dollars?

Cheap eats in Midtown

In case you missed it, the Dining section of yesterday’s New York Times featured an article about another cool website: midtownlunch.com. Use it to find lunches under $10 (think street meat) within the boundaries of 32nd St. and Central Park South and Eighth Ave. and Third Ave. Search by location, name, or type of food. I have no practical application for this very cool tool, seeing as I don’t work anywhere near Midtown, but enjoy it for me! Let me know if you find it to your liking.

New website showcases budget-friendly Brooklyn

I stumbled on a new Brooklyn-centric website today: Brokelyn, which carries the tagline, “living big on small change.” Clever, right?

It covers the usual food/entertainment/lifestyle things I’ve come to expect of local blogs and magazines, but I absolutely love that it’s from a practical, budget-conscious angle (see: “Restaurants that only seem pricey” and “The poser’s guide to budget yoga”). It’s so rare to find wallet-friendly sites that are funny, irreverent, and not aimed at coupon-clipping mommies. Even though I don’t live in Brooklyn, I think Brokelyn may make me a more frequent visitor.

Bringing back the weekly free event!

Awhile back, I made a goal of doing one free thing every week. Things went according to plan for a few weeks, and then I lost focus on that little project. Oops, life happens! But I found a great event for this week.

The American Folk Art Museum (45 West 53rd St.) is celebrating spring by offering free admission this Friday, from 5:30 to 8:30. In addition to the funky artwork, there will be live music. I’m really excited to check out this museum. I’ve heard and read so much about it recently; it’s high time I actually see it. Give me a holler if you want to accompany me!