Timing Your Shopping Spree and Smart Credit Card Use

As a nod to my buddy over at Fiscal Musings, here now is my first (and maybe last, who knows) blog about financial issues.

This past weekend I decided it was time to add a bit to my wardrobe.  I was after some long sleeve shirts for work to get me through the rest of winter and the spring.  Our destination for the day, JC Penny.

Weekends are good times to shop at Penny’s.  They are almost always having a weekend sale of some sort.  This weekend we found stuff up to 60% off on clearance.  Of course, being March it makes sense that these clearance items were long sleeves shirts, just what I was after.  So we tooled around and finally ended up with 6 shirts, all on sale.

Now here is where the credit card angle comes in.  I have a Penny’s card.  I rarely use it.  The only reason I have it was from a previous shopping trip that was pretty big, and Penny’s offer of an extra 10% off if you apply for a card and use it that day.

Now, on this trip to the mall, along with the clearance sales, they were offering an additional 15% off if you make the purchase with your Penny’s card.

Well, I had a $0.00 balance on the card, and I had intended to buy  the shirts with my debit card, so I made the call that I could get the extra discount and pay the card off as soon as I get the bill, and not have to worry about interest accruing.

This is the catch though.  I have the money in the bank to pay it off immediately, and I was planning on paying it straight out of my bank account in the first place.  If I didn’t have that money sitting there, ready to pay off the card, I wouldn’t have used it.

But I did, and all told, I spent $80 for $210 worth of clothes.

Win for me.

Moral of the story, shop the sales, and use credit wisely if you have the opportunity to get something out of it.

Timing on the Road is Everything

I had to make a quick trip home today during lunch because I walked out the door with my wife’s car keys this morning. On the way there I had to cross over the Missouri River, typically not a big deal. But today, for some reason, they are working on the bridge. Two of the five lanes are closed. Not just any two, but two in the middle, so they are routing traffic to both sides to get past it.

Here is where the timing comes in, when I went by traffic was still flowing good, though of course slowing down just a bit to get by. Fifteen minutes later, when I went back past on the eastbound bridge, I saw that traffic westbound was now backed up at least a mile and a half and almost sitting still.

Timing is everything, and today, that lucky timing of going by when I did saved me quite a bit of my workday.