Word: sales
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dawn of the 21st century, America is, if nothing else, the land of the bargain. Big-box stores like Wal-Mart dominate the retail landscape, peddling middling goods at rock-bottom prices. Higher-end stores put their merchandise on sale like clockwork; if you wait a little longer, you can get it even cheaper at a factory outlet. Afterward, you can fill up on all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster for $15 - truly, the American Dream...
...nutshell, it comes back to bite us in the ass. It's short-term gratification and long-term pain. Now, I'm a rabid bargain hunter. Ask my kids. When I come back from the store and I have four boxes of cereal, they know that cereal is on sale. I'm what behavioral psychologists call "deal prone." And yet I noticed this wasn't really saving me any money - in fact, it was costing me money. I went and looked at the data and found that since the 1970s, we are spending less for clothes, food and appliances...
...pays full price for a mattress. There's actually been a lot of litigation around mattress prices because they set those reference prices very high to make you think that you're getting a good deal. In fact, often a department store will put one mattress on so-called "sale" and raise the prices of the other mattresses so it makes it seem that that mattress is cheap. The only mattress they really expect to sell is that mattress on sale...
...write about how working on the book has changed the way you shop. Are you spending less now that you're not focused on buying stuff just because it's on sale? I absolutely am. It's incredible. I bought mulch, just last week, from my local hardware store. It's more expensive than going to Home Depot, where I used to get it, but the guy there could direct me to exactly the type of mulch I wanted, he carried it to my car, it's much closer, and I got exactly what I wanted in the right amount...
...result - since expensive houses tend to sit next to other expensive houses - is certain neighborhoods practically become no-sale zones. Rich Toscano, a financial adviser at Pacific Capital Associates in San Diego, crunched listings data for his metro area and found that while sales for the 20 most-expensive zip codes were down 8% in May, compared to a year ago, sales in the 20 cheapest were up 37%. Try to sell a house in Chula Vista and you're good to go - but don't expect much luck in La Jolla. Of course, what houses are selling...