MAY BARGAINS

"It's May, it's May, the lusty month of May, a lusty time when everyone goes blissfully astray."

Okay, so maybe that only happens in Camelot; out here in the real world, we've got bargains galore. Here are a few:

1. We told you to buy your new TV in April, but if you check most retailers around Memorial Day, you'll find more terrific TV deals.

2. With Wedding and Graduation season rapidly approaching, now's the perfect time to buy Cookware even if you're not getting married or graduating.

3. New Vacuum Cleaner models arrive in June, so now's the time to buy that Hoover you've had your eye on, at reduced prices. Might also be time to dream bigger.

4. Although the biggest White Sales are in January, retailers are reducing prices on linens at this time of year to make way for the Spring/Summer selections, so check out sheets, towels, blankets, etc., if you're in need.

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BUYING A CAR

Update (1/16/09) - After you read this post, take a look at this article: http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/15/autos/car_buying.moneymag/index.htm?section=money_latest

Here at CHEAPIOSITY, we’re always happy to answer reader mail and reach out a helping hand. Don, a teacher in Studio City, California, wrote asking our help in buying a car. That just so happens to be one of our true time-tested talents. We walked Don through the CHEAPIOSITY process, and when Don didn’t exactly follow our guidelines to the letter, his misstep only created extra work for him in the end. You’d think a teacher would make a more diligent student. We finally beat Don into submission, and he now realizes that our way is the easiest way to produce cheap results. Here’s the CHEAPIOSITY way of buying a car. Pay attention. Don’t skip steps.


1. PICK OUT THE CAR YOU WANT.
Pick the color and all the options. (Do your homework and know EXACTLY what you want.) Drive the car and make sure you like it. Some people will even rent the car for a day or two to make sure it meets their needs. (We think it’s a good idea. Check our post about travel, and you’ll know how to rent a car on the cheap.) Don’t worry about what dealership you go to. Wherever you go, whatever you do -- don’t get chummy with a salesman. This is a fact finding mission only.


2. FIND THE BEST PRICE.
Okay, so you know what you want down to the final option. It’s time for the next step -- FINDING THE BEST PRICE. Go to either http://www.edmonds.com/ or http://www.kbb.com/ (The Kelley Blue Book website), and follow the links to the car you want. Then email several dealerships; choose the dealership most convenient for you and three or four others farther away. The reason you want to do this through the Internet Sales Department is because they are usually tied to the Fleet Department. They sell multiple cars to Corporations for their employees and have better prices. See what they respond with. They will want you to come in. DON’T GO INTO THE DEALERSHIP. The deal takes place via email and phone exclusively. The next time you set foot in the dealership is to buy or lease. Edmonds and Kelley will tell you about any promos, rebates, or dealer incentives so use this information to your benefit. Once you hear back from the salesmen, use their information to pit them against each other for your business. (For example, tell Dealer ABC: Dealer XYZ offered this lower price; can you match it?) Feel free to lie about a lower price than you’ve actually been offered. (Salesmen will do the same to you and complain they’re losing money on the deal. Yeah, sure. That’s gonna happen.) By this point, you should divulge whether you are buying or leasing. When you get to the point where the salesman says they can’t match the price, then you know they’re getting to their bottom line. That price should be very close to or below the dealer invoice that you got on the websites. Don’t feel bad for the salesman and the dealership; they are still making money from the manufacturer through back-end deals or volume sales that we are not privy to.
Consumer Reports offers a New Car Price Service that gives you their “CR Bottom Line Price” for $14. We’re way too cheap to use the service, especially since we do just fine on our own. But if you’re lazier than we are, check it out at:
https://ec.consumerreports.org/ec/aps/order.htm?INTKEY=nc5-nchome
The object here is to get the lowest price and at the dealership most convenient to you. Once you have achieved that price, FAX back and forth all the necessary information, applications, etc. that the dealership needs, so that your actual visit is short and sweet.


3. FINANCING
Depending on your credit score and whether you are buying or leasing, they will give you their rate through their banks or the manufacturer’s financial arm. If you are buying, check around to see if you can get a better interest rate through local banks, http://www.bankrate.com/, or your Credit Union. If you are leasing, make sure that they’ve given you the best deal they offer. For example, sometimes a 39 month lease is better than a 36 month lease, etc. With a lease, you want to put up either $0 or first month’s payment, drive-off costs (license plates, etc.) only. You do not want to pay any cap reductions (money to reduce the price of the car, to make the payments lower. Let the dealer reduce the price of the car. That’s money you never see again.)


4. TRADE-INS AND LEASE RETURNS.
You’ll notice we have made no mention of trade-in or lease returns until now. Why? BUYING A NEW CAR AND GETTING RID OF YOUR OLD CAR ARE TWO SEPARATE TRANSACTIONS AND SHOULD NEVER BE LUMPED TOGETHER! The salesman will press you to know what you’re doing with your current car. Your answer is, ‘I haven’t decided yet.’ If you have a trade-in, take the car to a CarMax-type place (http://www.carmax.com/). They will tell you what they will pay for the car; it will be lower than the price you’ll find on Kelley or Edmonds. It will however give you a realistic appraisal of your car; you will want to get more than that and you can. Armed with this information, go to the dealership and find out what they’ll give you (you are still in fact-finding mode; as far as the dealer is concerned, ‘you haven’t decided yet.’) When a big company or dealer buys the car, there’s an approximate $5,000 differential between what they pay and what they will sell it for once they spruce it up. There’s very little room to negotiate at a CarMax-type place, but the dealership wants you to buy a car from them, so negotiate away on the trade-in. Bring print-outs from Edmonds or Kelley to show them what they say the car is worth (you probably won’t get that amount, but you’ll get more than what they’ll offer if you come in empty-handed and unprepared.) With leased cars, most are sold at auction and then resold by used car lots, so there’s a lot of competition out there, which won’t help you with your individual sale.


Obviously, the most advantageous way to sell a car is to do it yourself, but a lot of people don’t want to bother. You do the math about whether it’s worth it to you, dealing with crazy people that might show up from an ad on your local Craigslist or eBay. (We don’t get how you buy a car or boat from a seller in another state, but that’s another story altogether.) Also, bear in mind that this is another way dealerships make money. They make money from the sale, from the financing. and from the trade-in. Your job as a smart consumer is to keep those amounts minimal. For example, if you’re buying and are paying cash, keep that your little secret until you’ve agreed on a price. Paying cash loses the dealer the income they make from financing or leasing.


If you’re leasing, take the car (or some car makers have people to come to you) and find out if there are going to be some additional expenses for bodywork, new tires, etc. and find out what the dealers are planning on charging you. It may be cheaper to fix dents and scratches or replace tires yourself. Also, if your lease isn’t up for a few weeks or a month, wait until then to pick up the car OR ask the dealership to credit your last payment. BOTTOM LINE: don’t spend what you don’t have to.


5. FINAL THOUGHTS
Check newspapers for special rates or promotions.


Buy at the end of the month when dealerships and salesmen need to meet their quotas.


Don’t finalize your sale or lease too far in advance. Every month, sale and lease deals change for the dealership. Don’t negotiate for a car in April that you want to lease or buy in May. Start your shopping at the beginning of the month and finalize towards the end when the dealerships are hungry.


Be realistic about the trade-in price. (We helped a doctor we know, and he was shocked at the trade-in price since both Kelley and Edmonds appraised it higher. Doctor X over-valued his car as in ‘good’ condition, when it was actually in ‘fair’ condition. All the “minor” scratches and dings required body work and repainting. The doctor thought his low mileage was a BIG factor; while it was a plus, the car was still 8 years old! We took him to CarMax for a reality check. The doc didn’t take into account that he was paying cash, meaning no finance profits for the dealership. We ended getting the dealership to kick in $2000 more for his old car. Lastly, he was buying a BMW, in an area where 80% of BMWs are leased; the manufacturer isn’t that interested in car buying since they make the majority of their money though the additional profits from leasing. That means a large amount of lease-end BMWs are being sold at auction, which gluts the market in used BMWs for sale. All these factors play a part in your deal which is why we emphasize doing your homework.)


If you buy, check with your auto insurance that you have ‘gap’ insurance which covers the difference between what the car is worth at a time when the car is stolen or totaled and what you may still owe on the car. If not, you might want to consider buying it, cut the price the dealer offers you in half, or buy it online.


Never buy a car you’ve leased because if you add up what you paid in the lease plus the cost to buy, you’ve overpaid exorbitantly for the car.


Don’t buy undercoatings, overcoatings, paint protectors, extended warranties, etc. All those frills and options can be purchased later online for much less…or even better, never.
When you pay, put as much as you can on your credit card and earn miles.

After your warranty expires and you want to know if the repair place is ripping you off, here are two sites that help you level the playing field and let you know what a fair price is in your area: http://www.driverside.com/ and http://repairpal.com/.

P.S. Back to Don for a moment. Don bought his Toyota Prius. Because the Prius is in demand, many wouldn’t even consider negotiating. Ha. And ha again! Fuel economy, environmental advantages and general coolness aside, our new best friend and follower Don got several thousand dollars off and a much higher price for his trade-in than he expected, all by following our simple steps. (Okay, full disclosure time. We went with him at the final transaction and bullied the saleswoman.) Don also got a very low interest car loan through his Credit Union, much better than what Toyota Financing offered even with his excellent credit score and previous Toyota owner status. The is the outcome we strive for. You can do it too. If you can’t have us go with you, invite an intimidating/cheap friend to keep you from buckling under sales pressure.

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POSTAGE

Did you know that postage is going up again from 41 to 42 cents on May 12, 2008? Well, smarty pants, did you know that you NEVER have to pay that increase? NOT EVER!

...

(We could rant about skyrocketing postal costs, but frankly, we still think it's pretty remarkable that we can stick an envelope in a box and get it clear across the country to exactly its intended audience in only a few days. We're pretty pumped that they can read our handwriting. See? For curmudgeons and cheapskates, we are surprisingly easy to please. But we digress. Which is a large part of our considerable charm, or so we are told.)

...

Anyway…Have you heard about the Forever Stamps? The Post Office started selling them before the 2007 rate increase. You buy these stamps at the current rate, and they are good for first class postage FOREVER.

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No more 1 or 2 cent stamps needed to old stamps after a rate increase happens. Naturally, CHEAPIOSITY stocked up before the 2007 increase, so we'll be ahead 3 cents after May. It may sound like a little bit, but over time, these things add up….In fact, CHEAPIOSITY had better get over to the post office to buy some more before the rates change.

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You can see what the (FOREVER) Liberty Bell stamps look like on the USPS website, but don't you dare order them online. You'll be charged for shipping and handling. Duh. There goes your savings. ... http://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10152&storeId=10001&productId=29351&langId=-1

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KOFFEE TALK

Starbucks' sales are declining. Gee, we wonder why. Maybe because their regular customers are starting to do the math.The average Starbucks brew runs somewhere between $1.50 and $4.00 depending on what fancy shmancy stuff you add and what nonsensical Fritalian name they call it. For CHEAPIOSITY's purposes, let's meet in the middle at $3 for a cuppa joe (mixed/blended with some syrup or dairy product and maybe some ice.)

Let's say you indulge your premium priced caffeine habit three times a week. (Most addicts of our acquaintance go daily, but we're trying to lowball the numbers for you. We would never dream of exaggerating to make a point. Actually, that's exactly what we dream about. Well, that and locking our street clothes in our middle school gym locker and having to go to Algebra class in a towel ... but we digress.) Three cups runs you $9 a week. For you mathematically impaired, that comes to $36 a month, and a whopping $468 a year. That's no chump change. That's a lot of money no matter how you slice it. Or drink it.

(If you're imbibing daily, that's $15 a week, $60 a month, $720 a year. You see how this goes...If you're part of a couple, that little caffeine habit's running you a cool $1440 a year.) Conceivably, you could put that much money to better use for housing, groceries, clothes, gas. (Cripes. Our first Manhattan apartment was only $340 a month. Jealous? Don't be. We're a whole lot older than we look. Thank you, sunblock, Clairol, and low-watt bulbs.)

We know what you're thinking. "Hey, smartass Team CHEAPIOSITY, I like that good java. Stop doing math and provide us a suitable alternative."

We're here for you.

You already know you can buy Starbucks at the supermarket. It's good but it still costs between $8-10 for a 12 ounce package. That's pretty expensive. Look. We know that the Starbucks name is only part of the joy of consuming Starbucks coffee. You groove on the social scene. You like feeling part of the community. You like supporting a company that charges a lot for a little so they can treat their employees well. The anti-Walmart. Besides. you've grown accustomed to seeing that obnoxious guy with the laptop pretending he's working on his screenplay every day, treating the place like his office. And we know how much you enjoy those desperate housewives in their jogging suits power-walk-talking two miles every morning to order their two thousand calorie mocha-chocolata-yayas for the trek home.

We feel your pain and have come up with a (partial) solution.

(Frankly, you're on your own with the whole Starbucks gestalt: people-watching and the coffee as philanthropic Support Your Local Barista thing. We're all about your money. And your coffee.)

The secret to good coffee is the quality of the bean and freshness. Costco to the rescue! Costco now roasts its coffee in the stores and gives you a choice of beans from all over the world. When you buy your coffee in the supermarket, you don't know how long it's been sitting in the container and under what conditions it's been shipped and stored. That freshness affects the taste of the bean. At Costco you can buy 2.5 POUNDS of fresh roasted coffee for only $8.99. That's right. Fresh roasted coffee beans for $3.60 per pound! Buy the beans whole and grind it as you need it. Don't have a grinder? Buy one. You can find one for $15 or less at your local Target or Kmart or wherever. Store your coffee beans in a cool, dark, dry place in an airtight container. Use good-tasting water -- filtered, bottled or from the tap if you're lucky to have good-tasting municipal water. (Ours is Chunky style with extra additives. We wouldn't feed it to our cat, let alone brew premium coffee with it.) Finally, brew it yourself! Take your coffee to work in a thermos. Reheated brewed coffee doesn't taste as good. And you've got your Starbucks quality coffee right at your desk. You can even use a Starbucks thermos and impress people who care about such things.

You can even make your own espresso, cappuccino, lattes, schmattes, whatever. Really. You can. Be your own barista. Break that Starbucks habit now. A few years of brewing your own could save you LITERALLY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. THOUSANDS.

Remember the real secrets to Starbucks (or whatever coffee shop you frequent) are bean quality, freshness and water.

Oh yeah. Just FYI. That guy in the corner with the perpetually unfinished screenplay is probably just surfing for porn. Non-Starbucks dependent "exercise" crew members can still walk their daily two miles with their friends, carrying a thermos and blazing new trails. Imagine all the styrofoam and plastic and cardboard (and calories) you'll save.

You're welcome.

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WORTH A LOOK

We at CHEAPIOSITY spend a lot of time on the internet. A lot. Some people call our perpetual surfing anti-social, but we call it research. Whatever. What’s in a name? When we find something worth reading, we’ll post a link just for you. We’re always thinking of you. Even though we don’t exactly know who you are….
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Here's a very cool page linking you to printable coupons and bargains galore:

couponing.about.com

We came across a very interesting article in the New York Times about getting better deals at the megastores. While it’s nice to know that the country’s newspaper of record has legitimized the return of haggling, we here at CHEAPIOSITY weren’t aware it had ever gone out of style…don’t be shy. It’s your money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/business/23haggle.html?em&ex=1206417600&en=1f71cf57986b3fa8&ei=5087%0A

On The Today Show (March 3, 2008) there was a terrific segment about saving money and calories. Check it out for yourself:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23441460/

Why we buy: The truth about shopoholics.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23450003/

Making Kids Money Savvy: Try These Four Financial Tricks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120468099339812197.html?mod=hpp_us_personal_journal

Protecting your savings accounts: http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/news/cnwin0708/limits.html

How to avoid hidden hotel fees.

http://www.smartmoney.com/dealoftheday/index.cfm?story=20080221-hidden-hotel-fees&split=0

101 Fantastic Freebies from PC World. Nothing's cheaper than free.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143642/article.html

The best and worst college savings plans.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120830955932118243.html?mod=pj_main_hs_coll

Hotels that are offering gas incentives.

http://www.smartmoney.com/dealoftheday/index.cfm?story=20080414-hotels-offering-gas-incentives

How to sell gold jewelry.

http://www.smartmoney.com/dealoftheday/index.cfm?story=20080418-selling-gold-jewelry&cid=1012

10 myths about investing and finances that trip up people.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/basics/2008-04-17-myths-mistakes_N.htm?csp=34

Does collison damage cover you in you use a credit card for a car rental?

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_8625501?source=rss

If you find anything you think might prove interesting to our cheap and growing fanbase, write us and we’ll link.

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THRIFT SHOPPING

Don’t you wrinkle your nose at us. Some of the best stuff in our closets came from thrift stores. In fact, just about every designer label article in CHEAPIOSITY's closet came from thrift stores. Many pieces came with their original tags attached too. You’d be surprised how many compulsive shoppers shop for the thrill of the hunt and donate unworn designer duds. Trends rarely last more than a season; paying full price for a trend is wasteful. The really fashion-forward folks donate trends the moment the rest of us Muggles hear of them. You can usually find the latest fashions for a couple of dollars at good thrift stores well before the department stores have consigned those trends to their discount racks..

If you’re vigilant and cautious, you can find incredible bargains. Oh sure, there’s a lot of junk too, and very few thrift stores have changing rooms so clothes-buying can be a bit of a gamble. Arm yourself with a tape measure and promise yourself you’ll donate back anything that doesn’t truly flatter you.

For sewers and crafters, it’s well worth buying clothing for the unique buttons or trim. When you’re buying a jacket or pants for only a couple of bucks, you can easily afford a trip to the tailor to customize the fit. Some enterprising souls thrift shop for quality and vintage items and resell on eBay or at their own yard sales at huge profits.

Our favorite thrift stores dry clean and launder items before adding them to the floor. (Still, we make a habit of washing everything before we wear, just to be safe.) The better thrift stores don’t display or sell items with obvious defects; therefore, stains, flaws or tears may be harder to see. Examine your purchases carefully; most thrift stores have a no-returns policy.

Really good thrift stores arrange garments by color or by size and category, making it a pleasure to shop. Other less well-run establishments present more of a challenge, but you may appreciate your brilliant finds even more if they’re hidden in piles of unspeakable rubbish.

The thrift stores we avoid tend to smell like a junior high school locker room on a very bad day. Sometimes, in a pinch, we’ll proceed there with caution, but we carry hand washing gel in our car, and everything we buy gets thrown in the washer as soon as we get home. Chewing gum helps us cope with the odors while in the store.

Look for sale days; many stores make major markdowns one day a week. Our favorite store discounts their oldest merchandise (easy to spot by the price tag color) 60% on Sundays and 40% every day. Our second favorite store discounts everything in the store 50% on Wednesday mornings. These policy insures a rapid turnover.

Wooden furniture is an excellent buy; upholstered items can be a bit more risky. Shop for picture frames; you can always discard the “art.” Look at the bones, not the surface of wooden items. A lick of paint or stain can work wonders, and a little carpenter's glue can tighten a wiggly joint.

Appliances, unless they are sealed in their original packaging, probably aren’t worth the gamble. We have purchased all kinds of iffy items: linens, pillows, hats, stuffed toys. We simply machine wash them in warm water and dry them in the dryer; if they survive, we know they’re clean enough to display and use.

Donate your own used clothing and household goods once they’re no longer in heavy rotation. It’s the right thing to do, and it will help you declutter, making room for more thrift shop finds.

Yard sales and flea markets can be terrific places to browse and bargain-hunt. Sadly, in these Antiques-Roadshow-savvy days, it gets harder and harder to find real treasures, but real bargains are literally around the corner every weekend. You can always try to negotiate, but remember: There is a limit. Fifteen years ago, we ran a garage sale of our own. Men’s shirts were all marked two for a dollar, and someone asked if we could “do better.” At that point in the story, our memory gets a bit blurry, but we vaguely recall garments flying and voices rising. Even for CHEAPIOSITY, two shirts for a dollar is cheap enough.

FYI: Here's another terrific article about secondhand shopping for you to read.

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ANNUAL & SEMI-ANNUAL SALES

When CHEAPIOSITY goes shopping in a store, first thing we do is look at the SALES racks. There’s simply no good reason to pay full price unless you plan on leaving the price tag attached to impress shallow, stupid people. There are sales, and then there are SALES. Some annual (or semi-annual) sales are so popular -- and the payoff is so huge -- that consumers wait all year long to snap up their favorite brands and coveted products on the cheap..

· Filene's Basement

Sale: 'Running of the Brides'
Location: Flagship is in Boston, Mass.
(Also in New York, Georgia, Virginia, and Ohio)

When: Varies per location, typically in February or March.

Why It's Worth the Wait:
First held in 1947, The Basement's Bridal Gown sale has become a tradition among brides-to-be who mob the store in search of designer wedding gowns at ridiculous prices. Dresses worth thousands can be had for as little as $249.

· Victoria's Secret

Sale: Semi-annual sale

When: Each year in January and May

Why It's Worth the Wait:
The store brings out its signature pink bins and fills them with items up to 70% off. Keep in mind that the sale can start online almost a full month before hitting the bricks & mortar stores.

· Nordstrom's

Sale: Annual anniversary sale

When: Last two weeks of July

Why It's Worth the Wait:
Savings up to 40% draw hordes of bargain-loving summer shoppers. The sale also extends to its online catalog, Nordstrom.com. Even greater deals are available on leftovers at Nordstrom's Rack Stores, where unloved goods go for a song.

· IKEA

Sale: Annual sale

When: Late July to early August

Why It's Worth the Wait:
The prices are pretty reasonable on most things, and discounts can occasionally be found in the room where returned goods are kept (though they are sometimes damaged) year-round. But anyone looking for serious bargains has to wait for the once a year sale in late July to early August when stores knock 20 to 60% off selected merchandise.

· Williams-Sonoma

Sale: Semi-annual blowout sale

When: January and June

Why It's Worth the Wait:
Twice a year, the high-end purveyor of quality cookware slashes its prices on selected items by 50% -- even 75% -- off, making sometimes unaffordable items way more affordable.

· Hammacher Schlemmer

Sale: "Rather Famous" annual sale

When: Oddly, this "annual" sale is held several times a year

Why It's Worth the Wait:
The oldest continuously-published catalog in the U.S. offers many of its unique items for up to 65% off. If you were hoping for a water-repellent goat suede blazer or an Italian Merino ruffled cape, these sales may be your chance to snap up some pretty unusual stuff.

· Garnet Hill

Sale: Post-Holiday sale

When: January

Why It's Worth the Wait:
This catalog merchant holds a great post-holiday sale and carries a wide line of impressive goods. It offers women's and children's clothing and household items from linens to furniture. During the sale, a wide selection of its products are available at savings ranging up to 75% off. Garnet Hill offers e-mail sale alerts to clue you in to upcoming bargain opportunities.

· Hot Topic

Sale: Half-off clearance items

When: Usually in early spring and late summer

Why It's Worth the Wait:
A couple of times a year, Hot Topic puts all of its clearance items on a half-price sale. Unfortunately, these sales are usually not announced until the absolute last minute; in fact, even the store employees aren't told about them until the day before the sale begins.

· Brooks Brothers

Sale: Preferred Customer sale

When: January and June

Why It's Worth the Wait:
The suits normally cost a minor royalty's ransom -- the Golden Fleece two-button pinstripe, for example, retails for $1,600. However, the company's semi-annual sales knocks 25% off much of its stock. If you open a Brooks Brothers credit account at that time, you can bump this discount up to 33%.

· Menards

Sale: Fit-in-a-bag sale

When: Possibly August

Why It's Worth the Wait:
In this promotion, Menards sends full-sized grocery bags out with a sales flyer. Shoppers can fill the bags with whatever they wish (subject to some restrictions), and items in the bag are then discounted by a percentage (which varies from sale to sale, but last August's was 15%) off the normal price of the items in the bag. A Menards spokesman declined to confirm the sale.

· Henri Bendel

Sale: Semi-annual sale

When: January and late August

Why It's Worth the Wait:
Twice a year, even the grand dame of New York elegance marks down goods in order to clear the way for the latest runway hits. In late August and January, savvy shoppers from all over the country find their way to the mansions to score clothes, accessories and some cosmetics to carry home in Bendel's trademark white and brown striped bag.

· Manolo Blahnik

Sale: Sample shoe sale

When: Possibly in May and November

Why It's Worth the Wait:
If you want to get $500 shoes, for say, $100, you'll have to keep on your toes. The sale is never announced until just a few days before the event. Usually, they are on any given day in May and November, but in 2004, they had a sale in the month of February; earlier this year, they had one in January.

· Vera Wang

Sale: Sample/clearance sale

When: Late November

Why It's Worth the Wait:
Wang's fashions can be also be found in Saks, Neiman-Marcus and Marshall Fields, but only in NYC does this killer deal take place. Past sales have found shoppers fighting over gowns and using aisles as dressing rooms to score 75% off of Wang's dresses that cost up to $10,000.

· Lincoln Highway
Multi-State Yard Sale

Sale: BUY-WAY Yard Sale

When: August 7-9, 2008

Why It's Worth the Wait:
If you want to find your bargains in a more interesting al fresco manner, check out the longest yard sale in America. It stretches out from West Virginia to Illinois along the Lincoln Highway (old U.S. 30 in most places).

. Bath and BodyWorks

When: June 1-15

Why It's Worth the Wait:

Items up to 50% off (and sometimes more). Check website for details: www.bathandbodyworks.com

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