How much money are you spending on clothes? A month? A week?
$200 a week? $50 a day?
It’s so easy to add something to your online shopping cart, or grab something while you’re out at Target. Shopping used to be something that I did on the weekend, every weekend and spending way more than I wanted to. (I can spend $1,000 in about 30 minutes flat.)
If you’re a member at Stitch Fix, Trunk Club or other subscription clothes services, you might be spending a lot more than that. Maybe you’re renting the runway, but you have to buy shoes, or other accessories to complete the outfit. I would encourage you to take a minute and think about this.
For a long time, I thought, “it’s on my credit card. No big deal. I’ll pay it back later.” But I started to realize how much interest I was paying and how many more clothes I could afford if I didn’t pay interest.
One day, my friend Mallory told me that she has two or three store cards for her favorite stores, and she shops their annual sales. Period. She strategically buys clothes she knows she will wear, get good use out of from places where she knows her size and how the clothes fit. And she knows that she’s buying things that don’t go out of style. I should note that Mallory has excellent style.
Obviously, Mallory is a genius.
So I made a big change – No more shopping on the weekend just to pass the time passively picking up items and purchasing something I like at the moment. Instead, I think (in advance) about what I need and what I like. I do my homework, and I save up money in advance so that I can put everything onto the store card but pay it off immediately.
Why do I have a store card? One word: perks.
For example, right now the Nordstrom sale is happening, but only cardholders have early access. This causes quite the stir because everything sells out by the time the sale opens to everyone. Nordstrom, rather than change this has doubled down actually making early access longer.
It cost nothing to have a Nordstrom Card. Because I spend so much money annually on that card, I’m at a level where I get very early access so I don’t run into the issue of everything being sold out.
But again it’s not that much money because it’s literally 100 bucks a week on everything from clothes, shoes, accessories, even gifts for my family and friends, and clothes for my child. Tory Burch and Lilly Pulitzer don’t have a store card so I use my Nordstrom card to buy clothes at the Tory and Lilly sale as well which only increases my ability to shop the Nordstrom sale sooner. Each time I spend a certain amount on my Nordstrom card, I get Nordstrom notes which is like free money. The Lilly sale gives you gifts with purchases. The other cards I have are the J.Crew card, Target Red Card and the Amazon/Whole Foods card. I also get alterations credits. And at target and Amazon I get 5% off automatically on top of any other discounts.
So by planning ahead and knowing what styles I like, What brand I like, what size I am in a specific brand, the color palette I prefer I’m able to save a lot of money on clothes.
Sure, I’m not trendy. I generally don’t have the thing that everybody is running out to go buy. But what I do have are high-quality pieces that last for years and in some cases decades. I have Lilly Pulitzer dresses in my closet from the 90s that I could still wear to this day.
Also, I quickly return the things I genuinely don’t love and/or that just don’t fit or feel good. In fact, I build the return process into my overall shopping. I don’t immediately open my online order. Instead, I wait until I can carefully look at what I received, try it on and decide if I am keeping it. It’s so easy to return something these days.
So, if you’re frustrated that everything at N Sale 2021 is sold out, consider becoming a card holder! Start saving for the next big sale at your favorite store and consider skipping the trends or a cheap item that may fall apart after a few wears for classic, higher-quality (maybe designer) item that you can wear for years to come.
P.S. $200/week is $10,000 annually and $50 a day is $18,000 annually!
