Frugal in the Fruitlands

In my hand I hold the December 2007 issue of Real Simple. At roughly $5 a pop, it’s not a magazine I frequently buy. Or ever, really. But back in November, I was stuck in the Cleveland airport for an ungodly amount of time, returning from a business trip, and I decided to pick up a copy. I’d been meaning to take a deeper look at this magazine, which at first glance struck me as not particularly real or simple. I figured that, if nothing else, my $5 investment would net me a good Spendthrift Sunday article.

I was not disappointed.

First of all, like many magazines, it’s in large part ads. 215 of the magazine’s 396 pages contained ads - most of those 215 ads were whole-page or multiple page ads. That’s right - 55% of the magazine was advertising. This is not counting the inside back and front covers, which were also ads; or the fact that most of the articles, were, in fact, product recommendations. Let’s take a look at some of these articles:

“How sweet it is” gives details on holding a cookie decorating party. This party is incomplete, of course, without bakery boxes ($1.30 a pop), copper cookie cutters ($13 a pop), and for that very special holiday cheer, Wilton cookie icing ($4.50).

“Your days are numbered,” a feature on using your calendar effectively, featuring ‘Real Simple picks’ such as a $31 “6-inch personal pocket journal.” But wait! It can be embossed! And has city maps!

“Black magic,” a fashion spread of “little black dresses” - including one for $1,130, and several in the $400-700 range.

Let us not forget the ever-helpful “Real Simple To-Do” list at the back (2 1/2 pages), which offers a handy-dandy guide to all the advertisements found within the pages. This is followed by another four pages of “Simply shopping,” with even more items to lust after, such as a device to “scan, read, and organize” your receipts. Because I guess, if you’re reading this magazine and buying $1,000 dresses, you need to be clipping coupons, amirite?

In case you’re wondering who is behind this drivel, look no farther than Steve Sachs, the publisher of Real Simple. Apparently he’s been quite good for the company. Of course, some of the articles about him highlight what Real Simple is really about:

One of Sachs’s biggest successes has come in an area that most consumer marketers are finding difficult to tap into: Partnership marketing. As Real Simple’s consumer marketing director, Sachs oversaw the development of partnerships with companies such as Coca-Cola, Pottery Barn, and Whole Foods-partnerships that netted the magazine more than 200,000 new subs.

Partnership marketing. Who is profiting from my $5 “investment” in this rag? Not only Steve Sachs, apparently, but Coca-Cola, Pottery Barn, Whole Foods, and others. Unsurprisingly, you find advertisements for all three of these in the pages of December 2007’s issue.

Since I work in advertising, in my own way, I love taglines. Real Simple’s tagline is “life made easier.” This life appears, then, to be a life of unitaskers - a world where no product can stand in for another; where we need exactly the “best product for dry skin,” exactly the right cleaning products from Target, exactly the right cookie icing. However, it is telling that none of these articles say much about where to store your cookie icing when you’re done with it, unless it’s to sell you a cookie icing organizer. It doesn’t mention that you’ll need to dust that new tchotchke, except, perhaps, to recommend an environmentally-unfriendly, non-biodegradable product with which to dust it. The entire magazine is based on the premise that stuff will make your life easier; but doesn’t recognize the kind of escalation that results from this attitude, that ultimately, you will need more stuff to solve the problems the stuff caused in the first place.

Interestingly, the average American doesn’t need to turn to a $5 magazine to tell them how to simplify their lives. Voluntary Simplicity, the seminal work of the VS moment, tells the stories of many individuals who managed to simplify their life. In large part they did it by turning of the stuff machine and tuning out the advertising drivel.

But that isn’t as sexy, and doesn’t sell slick magazines, does it?

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Recently The Tao of Making Money posted a list of twelve things he would never buy. Computer upgrades and repairs were among them. Golbguru rightly pointed out that you can learn to do these simple things yourself, or have a family member or friend do them for you. As a computer-savvy family member, I encourage the former more than the latter, but the basic logic stands.

As a computer-savvy family member, I also am called upon to cut through the jargon and half-truths that stores such as Best Buy throw at their customers. My most recent experience with Best Buy and its associated Geek Squad involved my father, in fact. Keep in mind, my father would buy that bridge. He would buy any bridge. Hell, he bought a dump truck.

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Spendthrift Sunday is a new feature designed to highlight one distinctly un-frugal product that we’re being convinced we need.

Fashion is not a luxury, says the strident tagline of Sarah Jessica Parker’s new line of clothing, Bitten.

There was something about the signs that enraged me the moment I saw them, on a visit to the Leominster mall two weeks ago. I saw these ads immediately as the mind control they were: Forget your thousands of dollars of credit card debt, you deserve fashionable clothes, it said to me. Months of staying out of malls has made me keenly aware of the psychology used to part me with my money.

The topic didn’t come to the fore again until my mother visited this past weekend. She had seen the episode of Oprah where Bitten was featured, and thought she might find some clothes for her teaching gig this fall. Apparently the clothes are advertised as fitting a wide range of women.

So to Steve and Barry’s we went. Far be it from me to deny my mother.

The first thing that amused us is that of the Bitten items that were displayed at the front of the store, the XL shirt wouldn’t have fit me, let alone my larger mother. So much for fitting larger bodies. However, the prices were low, low, low.

We were soon to find out why.

In all fairness, there were definitely some styles that caught my eye, and I needed some new pants, so I retreated into the dressing room with a pair of khaki capris with odd ties at the bottom. The poor workmanship of these clothes became evident immediately. “This waistband is fraying,” I remarked, eyeing the “Made in China” label. Maybe it’s supposed to be distressed? Who knows? But the hems were fraying, too, and there were threads coming off all the seams, and the fabric itself was the same cheap, silky synthetic that all the Bitten pants are made out of.

The price for these pants? Fifteen dollars. $15 isn’t much at all for a pair of pants, but I felt like I could buy one of those 1960s paper dresses and be getting a better value for quality.

Visiting the website, I discovered that Bitten has a manifesto - I kid you not. I hope the pants feel empowered by it. “It is every woman’s inalienable right to have a pulled together stylish, confident wardrobe with money left over to live.” Inalienable right? Isn’t that going a little far? I mean, to hell with suffrage, if I can get some cheap clothes, right? Probably the person who made those clothes makes as much in a month as one pair of pants costs - what about their inalienable rights? How do they feel about being stylish and pulled-together?

I guess I can get past the trampling-on of a phrase that is so key to real independence everywhere, but I can’t get past the fact that this is advertising up to its same old tricks. They’re not selling you the clothes, they’re selling you a vision of who you will be when you’ve acquired those clothes. You’ll be “pulled together,” “stylish” (or “pulled together stylish,” if you go by the grammar above), and “confident.” And, assumably, be able to hide behind a toothpick like Sarah Jessica Parker.

The logistics of the manifesto fall apart as soon as you have a real look at the clothes. How can you argue that a pair of pants that’s going to fall apart in a year is worth $15? Here I revert to the wisdom that it is better to have a few high quality, classic pieces, and accessorize on the cheap, than it is to have lots of inexpensive, flimsy clothes. Ten out of ten classy French women would agree!

Admittedly, my own fashion concerns don’t extend beyond, “Do I stink?” and “Are my naughty bits covered?” but I encourage you to do what I did, and walk out of the store without spending a cent. Or don’t walk into it. Your money - your life energy - is better spent elsewhere.

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Spendthrift Sunday is a new feature designed to highlight one distinctly un-frugal product that we’re being convinced we need.

I think I have a drinking problem: every day I pour two to three cups of coffee into my body, and I can’t seem to stop. One good thing is that I have a free source of it: the coffee at work. The bad thing about this, however, is that it needs some nuclear-powered chaser to bust through its bitterness. Half and half with sugar? Too weak!

The balance of light and dark in my (work) coffee is only restored by the power of non-dairy creamer. The liquid kind, and a brand name, at that - I won’t disclose which one, but it rhymes with “irate.” By its power alone, the coffee at work is rendered drinkable.

Now, the creamer is not provided free of charge - someone usually has to buy it. Since I seem so dependent on it, it tends to be me. And here’s where the spendthrift part comes in: I spent around $7 last week providing my office with creamer, a large part of which I won’t even get to drink.

If it were simply a question of money, I might accept this fact. But let’s examine the fact that there is nothing even close to “cream” in non-dairy creamer. The British call it whitener, and that’s a far more accurate term. What are some of the tantalizing ingredients? The top three are water, sugar and partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil. Mmmm. I luvs me some of that trans fat.

But wait! The label claims that there is “no trans fat.” How is that possible? Oh, I see. They’ve engineered the serving size so that the amount of trans fat slips in under label regulations. Clever.

So every day I’m putting a shitload of trans fat into my young-and-yet-cholesterol-ridden body. AND I’m paying for the privilege.

Sadly, all the options for changing this habit seem less than ideal:

1) Make coffee at home. When I make coffee at home, it’s usually Kenya AA or Kona coffee (some of the world’s finest), and it’s not bitter enough to need more than a splash of half and half and some chocolate syrup. This combination would probably make my at-home coffee expense more than my at-work non-dairy creamer expense, but it would be moderately healthier - well, except that half and half is not exactly a healthy food, either.

2) Drink tea. I have plenty of teas at work, caffeinated and otherwise, so that’s an option. Generally I don’t get much of a high off tea anymore, and it is by caffeine alone that I put my hands in motion.

3) Wean myself off caffeine. I am not, by any means, a h4rdc0r3 coffee drinker. Two or three cups is enough to turn me into Rainman. So this would likely not be terribly difficult. What I would miss most would be the ritual: the coming into work, turning on my computer, and sitting down to a cup of sweet, sweet transfatty caffeinated goodness.

Any other suggestions for avoiding this spendthrift pitfall, my good readers?

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Spendthrift Sunday is a new feature designed to highlight one distinctly un-frugal product that we’re being convinced we need. (And this time it’s one day late).

Who knew that you needed an entire, Flash-based site to sell iced coffee? I mean, really, it seems like a no-brainer: people like icy, caffeinated drinks. Not so with Dunkin Donuts, apparently: they recently launched MyIcedCoffee.com, an intricate site designed to sell you such icy, caffeinated drinks (ironically, if you search Google for “dunkin donuts iced coffee,” this site does not come up) and paraphernalia.

… paraphernalia such as a Dunkin Donuts Cup Cooler. Lest you think that no one would ever spend $3-$4 on one of these, I was introduced to this phenomenon by my coworker, who had bought one. “It’s really great,” says she. “It keeps the cup from being slippery and you have a little slit to see how much you have left.”

DOT DOT DOT.

It’s… a cozy. For your iced drink. Nay, it’s a cozy specifically for your Dunkin Donuts iced drink. What would happen if you tried to use it with a Starbucks frappucino? YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW. We never found that one guy who tried.

I’m waiting for the branded straws. At $1.99 a pop, I’m sure they would double - maybe even triple - my enjoyment of a large raspberry chocolate iced coffee with cream and sugar.

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