Double Journey

Despite the fact I hate long lines and crowds, I have for the last few years gone shopping on Black Friday.  I go more to see what the crowds are like and what people are buying than I do to go shopping.  I do have one rule though; if I have to fight for parking, I’m turning around and going home.

That almost happened to me this year.  It would have been the first time in the past three years.  The crowds at my local Best Buy were pretty staggering.  Cars were crowding the parking lot making it almost impossible to find anything.  I knew of parking spots on a street running right next to the mall so I tried my luck there and had no problem.  Amazing to me that people would rather drive around a crowded parking lot for 20 minutes rather than to park and walk no more than fifty meters more.

What is even more amazing to me are the lengths that people will go to to get a “good” deal.  My wife went to the Best Buy on Tuesday to buy Super Mario Brothers Wii.  Already parked outside was a row of tents filled with people waiting to get the Thanksgiving doorbuster deals.  This was Tuesday afternoon.  Best Buy’s doorbusters were not available until 5:00 a.m. on Friday.  Many of these deals were available online so WTF?  Is it really worth it to waste three days of your life to save a few bucks on crap you probably don’t even need?

I’m convinced the only way to shop on Black Friday is to do what I did.  Sleep in and go sometime in the late morning.  Let all the crazies who want to be there as soon as the door opens get out of your way.  There are still some deals to be had later in the morning.  They may not be for crazy amounts off but those “deals” are usually pretty limited anyway and only useful if you don’t mind getting some random stuff.

Better yet, you are better off just shopping online.  Amazon had some of the best deals of any retailer, online or not, this weekend. I saw some crazy good deals on things I was actually interested in.  I didn’t buy anything from them but if I were gift shopping I don’t see why you would do anything otherwise.  My prediction is that in under seven years the days of waiting all night and rushing to physical stores to get the doorbusters will be pretty much dead.  Most people will just come to their senses and do their shopping online.  It is just easier to do and the deals are comparable if not better.

For the first time this year I actually ended up buying someting on Black Friday.  I had no intention of doing so but there was a one day sale at Nordstrom Rack on Seven Jeans.  Nordstrom rack usually sells the jeans 40%-50% off what you can get in the normal retail store but on Friday that added an extra 25% off.  Like I said, I was not looking to buy anything on Friday but since I was bound to buy another pair of jeans anyway in the next few months I figured I would just score the deal while I could.

I’ll be interested to see what the final sales numbers are this weekend.  My hunch is that traffic will definitely be up from last year.  It just seemed more crowded.  I’m just not sure people were actually spending more money.  How about you, did you go out or spend any money this weekend?

I have spent the last several weeks looking for a suit.  This is not just any suit, this is the suit I am going to wear for my wedding. So I wanted to get the absolute best suit I could without spending an arm and a leg.  Boy did I not realize what I was getting myself into.

First off, let me reiterate advice I often give on this blog when it comes to buying big ticket items.  Always buy the best you can afford.  No more, no less.  If you buy something cheap, you will regret that you did not buy the nicer item.  If you overspend, you will suffer buyer’s remorse.  To that end, I set my suit budget to be between $600 and $1200.  I have not been in the market for a suit recently, so I wasn’t sure what I would find in that price range or if this was too high or too low.

This price range ends up being in the upper middle portion for most suits.  Think Nordstrom and Saks not Macy’s or Penny’s.  The upper echelon of suits usually run $2000+ with many getting in the $5000+ range.  I had no intention of buying anything close to that unless it was made of gold.   Anything cheaper, in the $200-$300 range, looked fine at first but close inspection and actually wearing the suit revealed significant drawbacks.  So I was happy with the general price I was aiming for.

Who knew that having this budget in mind could be such a problem.   The first problem you run into with suits is that there really are hundreds of options, styles, and differences between each suit.  It is not like buying a TV where you can narrow it down to a few models from a few stores.  It is as if each and every store has its own set of suits.  The selection of suits was different from stores of the same retailer right down the street from each other!  One store may carry Hugo Boss, the other one would not.  If they both did carry Hugo Boss, they would for sure have different models.

What made the whole situation worse was my “unusual” body shape.  You see, I’m actually in shape.  This means I am thin and have broad shoulders, a wide chest, and a narrow mid-section.  This gives me a suit size of 38, but that is over-simplifying the problem.  It is hard enough finding a 38 in a suit because most men in the United States are not as trim as I am.  There are just not a lot of size 38 suits made. But when you throw in the fact that I have a wide chest and broad shoulders you can be certain that nothing is going to fit quite right.

There are four things you have to look for in a suit to make sure it properly fits (listed in order of importance)

• The shoulders are in their proper place
• You do not get any stress marks in the back of the suit (between the shoulder blades) indicating the jacket is too small or too big
• The lapel does not pop up but lies flat against the chest
• The sleeves are of the right length

The problem for me always lies in either the first or third bullet point.  Size 38 suits are usually too narrow in the chest meaning the lapel does not lay flat.  Size 40 suits are too broad in the shoulder meaning I do not get a proper fit up top.  You want to get a suit that fits as perfectly off the rack as possible because you want as little tailoring done to the suit as you can get.  I went to just about every possible store in Southern California looking for suits.  The list included:

• Five Nordstrom’s
• Two Sak’s Fifth Avenue
• One Niemen Marcus
• Four Bloomingdale’s
• Ten Macy’s
• Two Men’s Warehouses
• Two 3-day suit Brokers
• Nine different Malls

And I did not find a suit that worked until I went to a Nordstrom Rack.  But more on that in a second.  From the list of stores I visited, you can clearly see that this was not an easy task.  I tried on suit after suit.  In each store I probably tried on a minimum of 2 or 3 suits and in a few I tried on as many as a dozen.  I tried on so many that I feel somewhat like an expert in suits.   My problem was compounded because I had particular needs.  I needed the suit to be either black or dark gray, not navy, since this was the suit for my wedding.  So given all this, it was a near impossible tasks to find a suit.

So how did I finally find the right suit?  It was a war of attrition.   I had to narrow it down to what I did not want before I found what I want.  Brands that simply did not work for me because of my body shape ended up being

• Hugo Boss
• Calvin Kline
• DKNY
• BCBG
• Alfani
• Joseph Abboud
• Paul Smith
• Dolce and Gabana
• Versace

The mistake I made was to keep trying on brands that just did not work for me in hopes that I would find a suit from that manufacturer that would suddenly work. I can not tell you how many Hugo Boss suits I tried on before I finally realized it was a futile exercise. The most ironic thing was that I got this bit of advice at the second store I went to (it was a Bloomingdale’s) by a very helpful salesperson.  He told me that the only suits that were going to work for me were by either Zegna or by Canali.  He showed me a Zegna but did not have a Canali to show me.  He said he would only sell me a Zegna and that if I did not like what he had on stock that I should go find a suit made by one of those tailors at another store.  This was very wise advice (as you will see in a minute) and leads me to my first and most important bit of advice.  If you find a salesperson who is knowledgeable, helpful, and puts your interests ahead of his own.  Buy your suit from him.  I probably could have saved myself a big headache if I would have just taken his advice to heart because I found the only suits that worked for me were

• Canali
• Zegna
• Armani

Notice these are all Italian made suits. It seems I should have been European and not American because I only fit into clothes made in Europe.  This is exactly what the salesperson told me would happen and it took me trying on dozens of suits before I finally reached the same conclusion he gave to me at the very beginning.  My body type would only work in one of these suits.

Now the problem with this advice is that these suits are all very expensive.  While I could afford some of them in my price range, they were at the upper end of my price range.  All else being equal, I would have liked to spend at the bottom of the range simply because I do not wear suits too often.  Did I really want to spend $1200 on a suit that I would only wear a few times in my life?   The problem was, as soon as I found out what a good suit is supposed to look like and how it is supposed to fit, I could not let myself buy a suit that did not look nor fit properly.  Before today, I found exactly two suits that would work but they were both above $1000 and one of them was above my budget at $1295.  So what was I to do?

Ironically, I decided to listen to my own advice and go back to that original salesman despite the fact that his store was about one hour away.  I was willing to spend the money and buy the suit from a man I trusted.  It became ironic because I ended up not buying my suit from him, I didn’t even see him, but from a store I would have never gone to if I were not have decided to go back down to see him.  My fiancee suggested I go to the Nordstrom Rack and take a look at the suits there.  I had been to other Nordstrom Racks and not been impressed with their selection.  But the one I went to was different.  It was probably the “nicest” Nordstrom Rack around because it was next to fanciest mall we have in Southern California.  The selection of suits was actually quite large and the discounts were substantial.

I ended up getting a fantastic black Canali suit.  It was the best fitting suit I had come across yet and, being at a Nordstrom Rack, it was the lowest price I had seen for a designer Italian Suit.  It was 70% off of MSRP came in at the low end of my budget at $600.  It was such a fantastic deal that I bought it on the spot without thinking too much about it.  Just to be sure, I checked another Nordstrom Rack in the area and there was not nearly the same selection.  Once again, two stores, just down the road from each other, and not nearly the same suits.

Once again, my patience in shopping paid off.  I was about to give in and just pay full retail for a suit that actually met my needs but ended up getting an even better suit for a lot less than I would have paid.  I love a great deal!

I’ve done some of my shopping at the Fresh and Easy that recently opened in my neighborhood. The idea behind Fresh and Easy is somewhat opposed to the trend lately in supermarkets.  Fresh and Easy stores have much smaller footprints than grocery stories that have become supersized as of late.  It also offers far fewer choices than others, usually only offering one brand and its own store brand on most items.

What it lacks in variety it makes up in price.  I do a lot of comparison shopping and the prices there are probalby the best per item that I can find locally.  They definitely beat my local Ralphs and they are probably even better than the Trader Joe’s, the normal price leader around these parts. Yet despite being cheap, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food that I’ve gotten.

But I’m writing this post to cover my favorite thing about the store.  They only have self serve lines.  Yes, that’s right, they do not have any cashiers.  You scan and bag your own groceries.   I am sure this is one way they are able to keep costs low.  The grocery business is very low margins and one of the biggest variable cost is headcount.  They reduced this by making their stores self serve.  While I really do value good customer service, I really like self-serve models when it comes to paying.  Most lines take too long because most people are slow or have too many questions.  I want to pay for my item and leave.  If I have a problem it is my fault and problem and nobody else.

This is like me and having my gas pumped.  I hated living in New Jersey because you can’t pump your own gas.  This means you have to wait for the attendant to come over and pump your gas.  If he is busy with others, you have no choice but to wait.

How do you feel about self-serve models.  Would you rather just have cashiers or do you like doing it yourself?

I have officially crossed the line.  I fought it off for years but I think my time has officially become more important than my money.

I love a good deal.  In fact, I can not buy most things without getting a good deal on it.  I’m the type of person who will spend hours making sure I not only get the absolute best product to fit my needs but that I also get the absolute best deal I can find.  Well I have been in the market for a new video card for quite a while.  Like usual, I scoured the internet to figure out what the best card was and find the best deal on it that I could.  The problem was that I could not find a card that met all my needs so I kept searching.

Now usually, I have a lot of patience on this type of thing.  I waited almost 5 years before I finally bought my TV.  But I hate not having the use of my computer so it really bothered me to not have my computer working.  I kept looking for a good deal, looked every day.  I went to the brick and mortar stores to look but was not crazy about the prices there.  Then last week, I finally found what I was looking for at Frys (I had been there several times before with no luck).  It wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty close.  The only problem was that I was going to have to pay full retail price. 

I am Chinese.  If there is one thing I hate doing is paying full retail price for any sort of electronic device when a deal is almost always to be found on the internet.  But I was more tired of waiting to fix my computer and I was even more tired of looking every day to try and find a deal on a card.  So rather than keep looking, and maybe save $20 or $30, I decided to just buy it.  When I think back on it now, the hours I spent looking for the card was nowhere near worth $30.  If someone offered me $30 to just nothing but search for a great price for a product for several hours, I am certain I would turn it down.  Why is it that I find it necessary to do when the cost is not as explicit?  What about you?  Do you do equally illogical things?

I thought we are in the middle of a recession?

I went to Fry’s this past weekend.  I’m looking for some accessories for a new laptop I just bought (more on that in a later post).  On the way to Fry’s, I stopped at a mall that was nearby and could barely even get into the parking lot it was so busy.   Later, when I finally made it to Fry’s, the parking lot was almost unmanageable.  I parked at the very far corner of the lot.  Inside was almost as bad.  They have a line that snakes around at Fry’s, and it actually overflowed it.  Lucky for me I ended up not buying anything because I would have gone insane waiting in that line.

It just goes to show you, people will keep buying no matter what the heck is going on around them.  I had some hope that America would learn its lesson and end its spendthrift ways.  Maybe it was too much to ask for.

It was announced that Circuit City was unable to secure more financing or to find a buyer for its troubled business.  They have started an immediate liquidation sale at all their stores.

This has been a long time coming.  Without getting into too much detail, I had a lot of dealings with Circuit City at a business level.  I was, to say the least, not impressed with them.  When you compared them to companies like Best Buy, it was hard to see how Circuit City was ever going to make a comeback.  I predicted that a major retailer would go under this year.   While this one does not count toward that prediction, lots of people expected this, it really does not forebode well for the economy going forward.   Circuit City hires about 30,000 people.  That’s 30,000 jobs that just vanished.  To make things worse, this probably will serve as a domino effect.  That is, Circuit City is often found in either malls or shopping centers.  These types of stores are considered “anchor stores”.  They drive traffic to the other stores as people tend to like to do their shopping all at once.

I actually went to a Circuit City this past weekend to see if there was anything worth buying.  Let me go on record as saying almost all Liquidation sales are a complete waste, and this one is no exception.  I could go on a long post about how liquidators dupe consumers in these sales but I digress.  Let me just say this.  The particular Circuit City I went to was packed.  I had never seen it quite so full.  Walking in to the store, there were long lines as people were waiting their turn at the undermanned cashiers.  As I walked around the store, I saw several signs for either 10-30% off the original price.  Is this a good deal?  Not sure how people think that it is.

You can buy almost anything online for 10-30% off.  Seriously, just go to Amazon and do a little bit of shopping.  Almost everything there is at least 10% off the MSRP.  All most liquidation sales do is to mark things back up to the original price, and then take the discount off the top.  While 10-30% is nothing to sneeze at, it also is not as good of a deal as it seems.  I checked out several TV’s and sound systems just to gauge how much one might “save” and pretty much everything I looked at could be had for cheaper at Amazon and for us Californians had without sales tax.  Yet here was a store full of people waiting in Christmas-like lines to get these “discounts”.  If this is not some sort of commentary on the American Consumer, I am not sure what is.

I walked into a Banana Republic tonight.  I was not really intending to do any shopping but the fiancée wanted to do some shopping so I went in.  With two days left till the big day, I was not looking forward to the big crowds.  So as I went into Old Town Pasadena, I was pleasantly surprised that it was not as crowded as I feared.  It was crowded, but definitely subdued from what you would expect just two days before Christmas.

I got parking relatively easily.  And when we walked into various sores, it really was not crowded at all.  The very first thing I saw when I walked into Banana Republic were heavily discounted items.  There was a light silk cashmere sweater (similar to the one pictured) at the front of the store marked down about half of its normal price, from $70 to $35.  To make it an even better deal, there was an additional 20% off any sale item.  I ended up getting that item for about $30.  I had no intention of buying anything but since I needed some new, warmer clothes anyway I decided to take advantage.  I bought two other items, all of which were heavily, heavily discounted.  This can not be a good sign when there are deals this good.

The thing is, the store was relatively empty.  It seriously looked like any other night.  Now granted, it was getting slightly late at around 9:00 p.m., but still plenty of time was left for people to shop.  Even sadder was the fact that I basically walked up to the register to pay, something that almost never happens this time of year.  I have had many similar observations at Best Buy, even on Black Friday.

So it is no surprise that many forecasters are saying this will be the worse shopping season in decades.  It was just reported that for the first time ever, online sales actually decreased from the previous year.   There is no doubt to me that this is going to be a very tough Q1 for many retailers as they report dismal numbers.  The trick is, are they as bad as everyone expected?  It is hard to say because so many people have predicted a dire year, myself included.  But I have to think the market is going to sell off even more in Q1.  While the predictions have been dire, the market over the last month has behaved relatively well, shrugging off most of the bad news.  Can it continue to do that?  I just cannot believe it can.

Now if only my Home Theater receiver would go on sale even more than it already is …

To add to my post about my engagement, I learned one interesting thing about engagement rings.  It pays to go to a small specialist.

Like a lot of people, I tend to feel  more comfortable shopping at big chain stores.  That is why I tend to do my shopping at places like Best Buy, Target, and Amazon.  They tend to have the widest selection and the best prices because they have huge stores and usually do not offer high level of customer service.  I actually prefer this since it not only keeps prices low, but I do not like to be bothered by sales people when I am shopping.

However, with the ring, I went a different route.  I should say, my fiancee went a different route.  Someone like me would be tempted to go to one of the big engagement ring stores like Robin’s Brothers, Jared’s or Tiffany’s.   Especially the latter one because the name is so well known.  I would shy away from a small mom-and-pop type setup because I would not feel as safe going to a place like this given how expensive this purchase is (it is now probably the most expensive thing we own).  But my fiancee had a particular style in mind, so she decided to do some shopping.

She picked a style and decided to ask several of the local jewelers for quotes.  To her surprise she found one that quoted her a very reasonable price just for the band.  She also asked about the solitaire diamond and they gave her several options, each of which were actually cheaper than anything we could find elsewhere.  This was very surprising to me because their prices were actually better than the online retailer Blue Nile. Blue Nile is known to have very good prices on its single diamonds and when we tried to find one of the same quality as the one our jeweler offered, it came out to be more money online.

This was a very good diamond, it scored very well in the 4 C’s (Cut, Clarity, Color, Carat).  In fact, we found that many of the chain type stores could not match the grade of diamond that we were getting.  While most people worry about the big C, Carat, we found that it was probably the least important factor.  Her diamond is brilliant, it really sparkles in the light because it scores so high in all the other factors.  So my strong recommendation out there to anyone looking to get a diamond ring, focus on the OTHER C’s.  It is much more important than you think.

My only other concern was how I could be sure I was getting what I paid for.  That was easily taken care of by going to a third party jewelery appraiser which I had to do anyway to get the ring appraised to buy insurance on.   Of course, the appraisal went fine and my fiancee could not be happier.  So we found not only better service but better price and quality by going with the small guy.  It may make me rethink what I thought I knew.

Despite the fact that I absolutely hate crowds, and I hate fighting to get a parking spot, the last few years I have gone out on Black Friday.  I never buy anything, but I like to get a sense of the crowds and to see what people are buying.  I have never actually bought anything because of one simple fact.  While there are great deals to be had on Black Friday, they are usually for things I don’t need.  Now there is the part of me that loves a good deal.  I see something at 50% off, and it instantly piques my interest.  However, I find the whole thing rather sad as people line up more than twenty-four hours in advance to take advantage of doorbuster deals.

I only went to a few places.  I went to a Best Buy, a Borders, and a Macy.  I also just glanced in a few others.  While some pundits have predicted this to be a horrible shopping season, there were some pretty significant crowds at the Best Buy. The parking lot was quite full, with several cars continuously circling for a parking space.  I ended up parking pretty far away but I at least did not have to wait for my spot. I walked in and it was pretty crowded.  There was however no line at the registers.  It was kind of odd.  It was the first time I have not seen significant lines at a Best Buy on a Black Friday.  It might mean that Best Buy is getting really good at getting people through the line.   This is entirely possible because all the registers were opened and they had several makeshift registers throughout the store.  It might be also that there are lots of people like me, looking just not buying.

The same thing at Macy’s and Borders.  It just was not all that crowded.  It seemed even lower on Saturday and Sunday.  This is in contrast to what is being reported in the news as most news outlets are reporting higher foot traffic this year than in years past.   It will be interesting to see how this news will be digested by investors.  It will really show how much bad news is actually baked in into the equity markets.

I’ve decided to buy myself a digital SLR camera. I, like always, did a lot of research on what to buy, and I ended up deciding to buy the Canon Rebel XSi. I’ve been interested in photography for quite a while. I owned a Canon Elan 7E and was pretty happy with it so I decided to stick with the Canon line.  It has the additional benefit that I can use most of my old lenses on the new camera, so I should save some money since I won’t be buying all new gear.

This is actually a little unusual for me.  When I buy electronics, I almost never buy the entry level.  I’m a firm believer that you should basically buy the upper middle of a product line.  You should not buy the best because usually the price premium is too great to justify the benefit you get out of the extra features.  You usually should not buy the entry level either because the manufacturer often saves the better, more useful features for the step up models.  The upper middle of a product line tends to be where the sweet spot is in terms of price and performance, so it is what I generally recommend people do.

Now while I could have afforded to buy the step up model, either the EOS 40D or the EOS 50D, I decided that this time the entry level model just made more sense to me. The step up features did not seem to mean too much to me.  The step up models have better construction, higher ISO settings, and a few more controls to tweak.  None of these are a show stopper for me, and not worth the price gap of over $300, or over a 50% premium.  The resolution of the XSi is actually better than the 40D and slightly under the 50D but I don’t expect this to make much difference.  Photography at high levels depends much more on your lenses than it does on the camera body, so for me I think it is all a wash.  So this time, I decided to save the cash and hopefully use the price difference to buy a nice lens or two.

I also decided to just save some money on this purchase.  It is not as if I’m worried about my finances, far from it, but it cannot hurt right now to be a little cautious just in case.  In fact, I’m saving money mostly because there is a host of other things I want to buy and I did not want to go overboard buying too much photography equipment; especially when you consider the fact that I’ve taken a few years off from this hobby and I’m not so sure how much energy I’m going to put back into it.

So if anyone has any experience with this camera, or any of the other ones I’ve mentioned, let me know what you think.  I’ll be buying it off Amazon soon, much like I will be for most of my purchases going forward, to get around some of the things going on in California.  More on that later …