Sunday, January 18, 2009

Week 2: Ballers on a Budget

How does a married couple wanting to cut back spend their Sunday afternoon? Well, we went to the local shopping center to check out all of the liquidation sales. We did have a purpose. We're in the market for a new television since our plasma crapped out in November. I was pretty disapointed with the prices. Circuit City is only offering 10% off their TVs. Boo. We were expecting much better deals. Joe seems to think we can find what we want online cheaper than in any retail location. I personally could live without a new, giant TV, but there's a huge mounting bracket above my fireplace where our TV used to be before it died. And then there's our old tube TV sitting on the hearth. It's super classy.

We weren't quite ready to go home after window shopping so we headed to Barnes & Noble. It was nice. We each got a tall skinny latte and cozied up with our favorite mags. While Joe was ordering our lattes, I had to walk away from the Starbucks counter because they had some pretty decadent desserts calling to me like sirens. I hightailed it to the magazines and picked up a copy of Cooking Light to bring me back to my senses. While in the food section I picked up the latest editions of the Wine Enthusiast and Food and Wine magazines. Yes, we're those people who sit and read an entire magazine or two and leave without buying anything. I told Joe to replace the US Weekly subscription he bought me last year for Valentine's day with a subscription to one of those.

So we found our Sunday entertainment for under $10. While we probably could have not spent any money at all, it was a nice treat. Cutting back has made the things we once indulged in regularly seem special. That's not so bad.

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