The Pair of Shoes That Made My Wife’s Day!

The months of July, August and September are probably the busiest months for us when it comes to our social life.

These are the months that most of our friends, godchildren, and relatives are celebrating their birthdays.

As part of our frugal shopping ways, we always try to shop for gifts during the holiday sale and we normally go to outlet stores.  Not only that stores reduce the price but they also provide additional discounts on top of that!

We usually keep a budget for each person when we’re giving out gifts. With the help of the sale, we were able to give more items for the same amount of money. Nope, we do not reduce the dollar amount, we just give them more. As an example, for the kids, our budget will probably buy them a pair of shirt and pants without the sale but if we buy during the holiday sale, often times, we were able to double and sometimes triple those gifts. The gift may turn out to have a retail value of as much as $60 to $70. So in essence, we are doing the recipients a big favor by shopping around for them! We could have given them gift cards but then again the value is lost here if we do so.

When you visit Southern California, you’ll find a lot of outlet malls where you can see most of the popular branded products such as GAP, Nautica, Tommy Hilfiger, Cole Haan, Guess, Calvin Klein, Coach, Banana Republic, Benetton, etc. There is one that is just 15 minutes away but it is not as big as the one’s that are at least an hour away.

The holiday is a perfect time to buy because of the clearance sale and on top of that, you can avail an extra 10% to 70% discount,some are early bird special. So luckily for us, there is the 4th of July holiday that we’ve been waiting for so we can start buying gifts for this quarter.

Of course, while we were shopping for other people, we also try to see if there are good items that we can buy for ourselves. This is how we ended up purchasing the boots for my wife.

My wife has been looking for a pair of ankle boots and she found one that she liked. As a frugal shopper, she would shop around to other stores to see if there is a much cheaper one available so she did not want to decide right then if she’ll purchase the pair of shoes. However, when she checked the price, the clearance sale price was $29.99 but to her amazement, the sticker said “Compare it to $19.99” – the retail price. This was weird as normally the original price is usually higher but for some strange reason, the original was lower than the clearance price. So my wife asked the manager on why this was the case but the manager was also surprised and she was kind enough to give us the $19.99 price. Obviously, there was a typo here as the price should have been $79.99 with a clearance sale of $29.99.

With an additional 15% discount, the cost of the pair of boots was reduced to $16.99. At that price, she can’t say no and bought the shoes immediately. As soon as we paid for the shoes and getting ready to leave, we noticed that the manager took out the incorrect price.

When we got home, my wife wanted to see if she really got a good deal so she went online and checked the price sold by other retail stores. Talk about a potential buyer’s remorse here but I really think that it was a good deal. After searching other stores for similar items, it turned out that it was a great deal!!

Below are the comparable price of the pair of boots on the other online sellers:

• Amazon.com – $39.99
• QVC.com – $66.00
• Famousfootwear.com – $38.99

So this is the pair of boots that made my wife’s day because this is something that she really like for a rock bottom price!