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One-Stop Shopping
Our once-a-year buying plan started of necessity. But it paid off big time!
By Eric Reed | posted 9/12/2008
 2 of 4
My wife, on the other hand, was subjected to laborious monthly buying trips for a family of six, embarrassed by the second cart she pushed behind her mother while complaining just out of earshot about store-brand corn flakes: "Silly Rabbit, Trix are for other families."
Challenged, I would join the best of both approaches: frequent, joyful trips filling multiple baskets.
"We're spending more at the grocery store than we were eating out," my banker-wife announced a month later. "Now what?"
That's when a columnist from USA Today came to our rescue.
Our family project
The man confessed that his weakness was clothes. He couldn't step into a store without buying a sweater or slacks or shoes. So the columnist gave up buying anything for one year. We Americans have far too much stuff, he reasoned.
Good for you, I thought as I read this column online in late July and wondered if Donna and I could pull off a similar feat.
Our temptation was at the grocery store, but also at the discount store, the mall, and Amazon.com. Every trip for a gallon of milk produced a tab for $100. What good is milk without chocolate, right? Pantyhose cost $100 dollars—with the requisite make-up, power tools, and DVD. It was as if the stores could read the balance in our checking account, and we would not be allowed to leave until that amount had been exacted.
"I think we should stop buying anything for a year," I said, relating the columnist's experience to my patient wife.
"Okaaaaay," Donna said. "Can we try it for a month and see if we're up to it?"
One month with no exceptions, we agreed. Not even gifts, because in a pinch one might accept a bucket from Kentucky Fried Chicken as an anniversary present. We bought supplies for the larder and gritted our teeth.
Could we go one month without buying anything?
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