Okay, y’all.  Shopping used to be a lot more fun before I started a PF blog.  A few short months ago I would have come home feeling like today had been a happily successful shopping day.  Instead, I’m plagued with self-doubt.  And you know what, I’m not liking it so much.

The Daughter and stopped by the mall to purchase her jeans as planned.  So the first purchase of the day was a pair of American Eagle blue jeans for $53.32.

While at the mall, I wanted to stop in the J.Crew store to check out their sales.  I always do that.  This is the only local J.Crew store in the area that I’m aware of.  I never go to the mall just to visit J.Crew, but I always stop in when I’m there.  It’s not that I’m a big J.Crew fan or anything.  In fact, I’m absolutely appalled by their prices and have no use for their clothes myself.  But their Broken-In t-shirts are fabulous.  The Son loves them.  They are silky soft and have just the right amount of “boxy” in their cut (everyone else went to an “athletic” fit that The Son just hates).  But can you believe they charge $24.50?!  For a t-shirt!  I’d have a hard time paying that much for a shirt that I knew he’d wear until it was tattered.  But for something he’ll be able to wear for a year?  Not on your life.

The Son is still growing at a phenomenal rate (7″ last year) so “investing” in clothes for him just isn’t where it’s at.  But $9.99 each?  Now that’s a price I can live with.  Shoot, three months ago, it’s a price I would have crowed about.  The old me knows that the $32.28 I spent today on 3 T-shirts was a great deal.  But the new me is really worried whether it was a sound financial decision.

The Son was very pleased with the shirts and approved of all the colors (always a good thing).  All three are size Medium (last summer he wore a men’s Small) so unless his body goes completely haywire, they should be a good growing-into fit.  I’m counting on him being able to wear his size Smalls for the first part of the summer, at least.  A couple months back I bought three new J.Crew t-shirts off eBay — at least one of which was a size Medium.  So, with the shirts I bought today, the one or two from eBay, and the possibility of wearing the size Smalls for at least a while, his shirt wardrobe should be good for next summer.

And, that (having next summer’s shirt wardrobe locked) should definitely qualify as worth my money.  The Husband is big on spending money when it needs to be spent.  I understand his argument and for the most part completely agree.  But some things are a sure bet and if I can save $47.00 ($24.50 x 3 x 7.8% sales tax less amount spent today) by shopping now, I think it was the right thing to do.  At least I’m pretty sure it was the right thing to do.

Here are the pros, as I see them, to buying his shirts today:

1. The shirts are a sure bet because The Son, once he finds a style and brand that he likes, hates changing to a new style/brand and these J.Crew shirts are tried and true.
2. We have the added benefit of knowing that we won’t face the dreaded possibility of going back to the store for a product that worked in the past only to have our hopes crushed when we find that the manufacturer has made some sort of misguided change to a tried-and-true style.
3. The Son has approved of the colors and, based on 13 years of experience, he’s not likely to change his mind between now and next summer.
4. The peace of mind I experience in knowing that I won’t waste time and effort trying to find The Son some t-shirts he can and will wear next summer.
5. The peace of mind The Son will experience in knowing that I won’t drag him into stores next year and force him into trying on untold numbers of shirts in an effort to find a style that he likes and I can/will afford.  [Of course, I’ll still have to drag him into stores next year looking for shorts but at least the shirts are taken care of.]

The cons or even the possibilities of cons, as I can see them, are:

1. It is possible, though quite unlikely, that the price would drop even further.
2. That’s $32 that is spent now but won’t be utilized for several months.  In other words, that’s $32 hanging in The Son’s closet instead of sitting in the bank earning interest.
3. There is, naturally, some small risk that for whatever reason the shirts will not be able to be utilized as planned next summer.  We could move to the North Pole; global warming could screw up the weather so bad that we’ll never have use for another short-sleeved shirt; or The Son could bulk up so much and so quickly that he goes straight from a Small to a Large.  To hedge my bets, the shirts will hang in his closet, unwashed and with the tags intact, until the day arrives that they are ready to be worn.  That way, if something does go wrong, I can at least sell them as NWT on eBay and recoup our expense.

On days like today, I’m missing my whole pre-PF blogger ignorance is bliss, fat-dumb-and-happy, suburban housewife thang.

Greetings everyone.  If you’re a returning reader, welcome back!  If you’re new, welcome!  Come on in and take a look around.

I’ve finally gotten around to creating an “about me” page here on my new WordPress blog.  The page provides some background on who I am and what my blog is about.  It might help provide a little perspective on the overall theme of my posts.

I’m still trying to get the hang of this Carnival business.  I can be a bit slow sometimes but I’ll get it figured out in the end.

• Penny Nickle at Money and Values included my Wants vs Needs post in the Carnival of Ethics, Values, and Personal Finance.

As for the round-up, I’m still figuring that out too.  It appears that a round-up is a collection of links (found below) to posts a blogger (that’s me) likes and/or finds interesting over the period of a week (or so).  Well, here goes:

• Lynnae at beingfrugal.net wrote about 5 Ways to Keep the Gimmes Away This Christmas
• Patrick at Cash Money Life published his inaugural Carnival of Financial Goals and got some great submissions.  I desperately wanted to join in but couldn’t come up with a worthy, quantifiable SMART goal so I simply watched from the sidelines.
• Found through the above mentioned Carnival, I particularly enjoyed the goal of Father Sez to impart to his children the most important PF lessons he has learned.
• Pinyo at Moolanomy illustrates the importance of starting your savings early in What a Difference a Decade Makes.  It’s a lesson that’s difficult for a 43-yo woman to face
• Steve at Brip Blap posted an incredibly insightful essay on How To Be a Good Partner to a Stay-at-Home Spouse.

Wednesday evening, while The Son was busying playing his cello in orchestra rehearsal, I ran a couple of errands.  The hardwood floor store didn’t have what I was looking for and I still had about 45 minutes to kill so I stopped in the Marshalls down the street.  I needed to return that pair of “swish” pants.  Having plenty of time left and no reading material with me, I decided to kill the rest of the hour looking around the store.  I ended up finding a nice $54 Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown for $16.99 that I thought The Daughter would like.  And she did — like it, that is.

  But as I entered the purchase into my YNAB budget that night, it occurred to me that I’d just spent The Daughter’s money.  We’ve been working up to her having a set monthly clothing allowance but now the YNAB Program* makes it really easy to keep track of exactly what I spend on her clothes and exactly how much she has left in her allowance at any given point.  So after entering the purchase in the register, I clicked on the “Budget” tab and saw that her clothing allowance had just decreased by $18.36.

It struck me that I had just spent her money and that we had a potential problem here.

The reasons for giving The Daughter a monthly clothing allowance are 1) to demonstrate to her how quickly expenses such as clothes, shoes, bras, undies, sportswear, ect add up; and 2) to help her learn to live within a limited budget and make the corresponding necessary decisions now, while she’s still at home, rather than later when she’s on her own.

So as I entered the expense and saw her budgeted allowance drop, I realized that I’d have to make a few changes to my own shopping habits.  In truth, I don’t shop for The Daughter very much.  She’s a pretty typical 15-yo girl — she thinks my taste sucks, she likes to choose her own clothes, and I’ve taught her from early on to always try something on before buying.  The nightgown purchase was a whim.  I knew she could use another nightgown, I thought she’d like the pattern, and, well, just because.  [Note to self:  work on this impulse shopping thing. ]

Wednesday night, while tucking her in to bed and saying “good night”, I mentioned that I’d spent her money and that she needed to decide whether that was money she really wanted to spend and whether the nightgown was what she really wanted to spend it on.  With school and sports and life-in-general, we didn’t return to the issue until this morning.

Yesterday, The Daughter went window-shopping at the mall with her schoolmates/teammates/friends and ended up finding a $50 pair of American Eagle jeans she wants.  Having no money on her at the time and knowing that such a big purchase should be carefully considered first, she put them on hold as I’ve taught her to do.  Her plan was to ask for the jeans for Christmas.  I said “no” to Christmas — I’ve already decided what the kids are getting and a pair of jeans isn’t on the list.  “But,” I said, “you can take them out of your clothing allowance.”  Hmm.

Now some people would freak at spending $50 on a pair of jeans, myself included.  But I know that that’s actually a pretty average price for a pair of “designer”-type jeans.  I don’t like spending money on clothes but I sure can appreciate that some brands fit better than others.  I personally see no point in paying $15 for a pair of generic jeans that don’t fit well and one doesn’t enjoy wearing.  I also know, from experience, that AE jeans do consistently fit The Daughter well and that she gets her money’s worth out of the two pair she currently owns.  So I agreed to take The Daughter back to the mall today to purchase the jeans.

This talk of jeans and clothing budget brought up the topic of the nightgown.  It also brought up the fact that currently her “allowance” is completely arbitrary.  I’ve been assigning that budget category $100 each month for the past three budgeting periods (months) but I have no idea, really, of how much I think she should get.

One hundred dollars a month seems like an outrageously large amount of money.  But if you add up what we’ve spent to clothe her over the past few years, I suspect that $100 is pretty close to what we average every month.  She’s 15, after all.  Tastes and preferred brands aside, the past few years have been a complicated period for her.  She’s grown.  And developed.  And her style preferences have matured and gone through several changes.  In addition, she started attending school full-time, stopped swimming competitively, and joined two new sports.  So between basketball shoes and cross-training shoes, track pants and volleyball socks, sports bras and ankle braces, the dreaded “muffin-top” induced cup-upsizing and a change in underwear preferences, normal-growth- and weight-gain-caused outgrowing of pants and shirts, dressy-clothes and accessory requirements on game-days — all of this really adds up but I had no idea of how much it all added up to.  So I assigned a very arbitrary and most-likely generous $100 per month.

Now that her growth has slowed or maybe even finished and her weight stabilized, one would hope that the influx of new clothes would slow down. But, at this point I’m going to stick to that budget allowance — while also informing The Daughter that it might be lowered if deemed prudent by the parental units. :-)  And I’m going to stop spending her money.  Every single clothing and accessory purchase for The Daughter — except gift purchases — will come out of that budgeted allowance.

Oh, and the nightgown?  It’s going back to Marshalls and when the return is done the funds will be returned to The Daughter’s budgeted allowance.  And not because she has decided that a new nightgown is low on her priority list but because, after trying it on, she doesn’t love the fit and doesn’t think she’d wear it much.  I completely agree and fully support her decision.  That will teach me to spend her money!