Joel Stein: The Week of Living Cheaply

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Illustration by John Ueland for TIME

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The recession has hit us in the hollywood hills very hard. Several times I've seen people walking not only their own dogs but also their own children. Though it has not yet come to that for me, I figured I should at least learn how to cut back my spending. And unfold the stroller.

So I decided that for one week I would buy only stuff that was on sale. My first mistake was getting my lovely wife Cassandra to join me. The speed with which she both agreed and went to her computer should have clued me in to the fact that while I envisioned coupon-clipping and circular-reading, she saw the doors swing open to a World Wide Web of crap. Did you know there's an amber teething necklace that the baby doesn't actually put in his mouth but that works by releasing soothing warmth? And would you believe that it's easy to find on sale? (See 10 big recession surprises.)

Figuring we'd need help to keep frugality from bankrupting us, I asked Brad Tuttle, who writes the Cheapskate Blog for TIME.com for some advice. "It sort of doesn't matter if something is on sale or not on sale," he said. "What I always come back to on the Cheapskate Blog is, Do I need this?" Then Tuttle suggested some sites, such as Eversave.com and Coupon.com where I could print out coupons for stuff I wanted. He also mentioned a deal I couldn't pass up: that weekend, Ikea was giving out free breakfasts.

So Cassandra and I woke up early on Saturday and ordered the surprisingly delicious small breakfast of eggs, potatoes and bacon or sausage. Of course, an Ikea breakfast normally costs 99¢. And after eating our $1.98 in savings, we bought $102.98 worth of Ikea products. I do not remember what a Trojka is, but I am relatively certain we did not need it. I was starting to think Tuttle's cheapskate philosophy is to trick other people into having breakfast at Ikea so he can borrow their Trojkas for free.

When I reported my failure to Lauren Weber, author of In Cheap We Trust, she told me my whole plan was faulty. "Stay away from Ikea, stay away from the mall, stay away from Costco," she said. "How often do you walk in and walk out with 50 pounds of M&Ms?" She said some other useful stuff after that, but I was already out the door to go to Costco to buy a 50-pound bag of M&Ms. (See 10 things to buy during the recession.)

Since I, unlike Weber, wasn't willing to subsist on lentils and superiority, I called my cousin Josh Burd, who will one day be rewarded with a MacArthur "genius" grant for coupon-clipping, which he will then exchange for three Fulbrights and a night at a Marriott. Years ago, by combining coupons, discounts, rebates and a CVS Extra Bucks card, he actually got paid $3 to buy a product that accentuates the curls of black women. He still owns that product, with the vague hope of befriending a black woman and inventing a time machine that goes back to 1977. (See how Americans are spending now.)

Josh gave me lots of detailed advice on coupon-positioning and expiration-date-hiding, but as soon as I got to CVS, I was overwhelmed by all the math and rules and price signs that screamed, Wow! Guiding me by phone, Josh let me buy some fish-oil pills that were 2 for 1. But the woman at the register mistakenly rang me up for both bottles of pills, and then I had to wait 10 minutes while a health-care-bill amount of paperwork was filled out. Ten minutes may not sound bad for $7, but it takes just two minutes of staring at sick old people under fluorescent lights to lose any desire to extend your life through fish-oil pills.

The next day, I met a friend at a bar to watch a Yankees playoff game. When I went to order a beer, I remembered my week of frugality and told the waitress I couldn't have one because of its fixed price. So she gave it to me at the happy-hour price. This was the kind of sale I could handle. You just mumble, "Can you do a little better?" instead of mailing in receipts and filling your key ring with bar codes. Sale mavens are people who like rules and finding loopholes and outsmarting systems, whereas I'm a guy who likes flirting with a waitress for his half-price beer. "Coupon-clipping," my cousin Josh admitted, "isn't really a sexy habit — though it's very enjoyable to be hit on by 88-year-old women." It's not a bad point. I am going to start coupon-clipping when I am 176 years old.

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