So recent events in the economy have gotten me thinking. Just how many marc jacobs bags can you have? How many pairs of shoes does it take to make one woman feel happy and secure in the fact that she will never be a bag lady? The answer is of course, that you can never have enough shoes and handbags, because they don't make you look fat,ever, period. BUT, I've still been feeling like a little economizing is in order. Nipper Knapp and I make our living primarily as actors, and really, in advertising. The recent contract negotiations, economic downturn, and the appearance of tiny little wrinkles that promise to swallow my face whole by next year, pretty much guarantee that things are changing. And so maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we had a little safety net, a back up plan, maybe a penny or two for a rainy day...
In the spirit of saving, NY Times article be damned, we let go of our cleaning lady. To save money, but also because she hated us, and did all sorts of strange things that made us feel sad when we came home. Nothing extreme, just little gestures to let us know that she thought we were assholes. SO, cleaning lady, banished! That saved us $160 a month. Ok so that's not going to be enough to retire on, but it's a start.
Then I started demanding we eat at home more. In order to save a little money, but also so that Jack wouldn't think that food only came from Larchmont Pizza, Sharkey's, and In-Out Burger. I mean seriously, how did this happen? We used to eat sushi, and things that involved truffle butter. Since Jack was born it's been more like "me hungry, food, face, NOW!" SO we planted the vegetable garden, got a few great cookbooks, and started eating at home more. I didn't think it was really doing much, and it was irritating to have to go to the store almost every day at first, because we had nothing in the kitchen at all. But the other day, I looked at our summary from the bank, and we've been saving $400 a month. That's 400 fast food dollars. Gross.
So that, combined with the the cleaning lady savings, and, hey diddle diddle ,we've saved enough for like 3 new Chloe bags a year!!!! I mean college savings for Jack. Berkeley baby! Not that I've thought about it...
Which leads me to my recession dress. About a month ago, Sadie and I got together for a girls day out. Which sounds very sex in the city-ish. But in reality, was two cranky moms, eating tacos at the Not Grove, and browsing at Anthropologie because one of us had a gift card (thanks sis!).
So we wander into Barney's Co-op, and spot this dress. It's by A.P.C. Madras, and we've both been eyeing it for months. I mention that I love it, and she says she does too, but we both assumed it was a $500 dress, and was something our husbands would hate (the $500 part aside) and so never bothered to try it on. Well internet, that dress had a $170 price tag, which was enough to get us in the dressing room together. We tried it on. We fell in love. We started saying things like "I'll wear this dress forever!!!" And so we decided to SHARE the dress. I know. Idiots. We got all excited in that dressing room. We were swept up in the saving zeitgeist. FIRE the help! Plant your own vegetables! Share that dress from Barney's with your friend! Everyone's doing it!!! No. No one is doing that. You know why? Because it's stupid, and three minutes after Sadie said "Hey, can I have the dress this month, while it's still cold, so I can wear it with boots", I died a little on the inside, and started trying to figure out how to have her taken out mob style. Well, lucky for everyone involved, Sadie wore the dress one time, and decided it didn't fit right. And so I will be wearing my recession dress every day, in order to make it pay for itself. I'll be the one vacuuming, and picking peppers in a dress from Barney's. That's the story I'll tell my grandkids. "Why, I wore the same dress every day one year! The same dress!" Wow, grammy, that sounds TERRIBLE!
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