Shopping Strategies

Recently I went to visit a friend in New York for just a few days and had the pleasure of perusing the plethora of fabulous stores in SoHo. Oh my! The shops went on for days. Sadly, I did not have days. Instead I had only a few hours. So the list only included...

• TopShop
• JCrew
• Anthropologie

Yup, that's it. For 3-4 hours. How does anyone do more than that? I am happy that I was able to visit these great stores but am so sad I did not get to go browse through some unique boutiques or H&M or so many other places... (Made it to H&M but they had already closed... so I sadly peaked through the window mentally shopping the shelves before slumping my shoulders and sadly walking away...)

I feel like people have shopping strategies and you develop them at a fairly young age and they are hard to change. For example, I was always a bargain shopper. For me, I typically used to shop with a $50 limit and searched the clearance racks trying to get the most possible for my money. But, with a certain level of quality. I wouldn't buy just anything, it had to pass the, "will I actually wear this, and how often?" test. 

Some of my favorite clearance bargains include items that I still wear today. For instance, today I am wearing a Calvin Klein black blazer that I found ON SALE at Ross. Now, Ross is already pretty inexpensive but when you add the sale to it, you can find some real steals. I already got a compliment on it! Final price? $25 (Had it for 3 years)

Some of my other FAVORITE steals are for name brand jeans. These days, you can hardly find a pair of name brand designer jeans for less than $200. Being tall, I prefer the designer duds because they are actually the proper length and don't need hemming. A few years ago I went to Barney's Outlet and snagged a pair of J Brand and Joe's jeans that fit perfect. The Joe's jeans are still going strong but the J Brand I wore through only recently. (very, very sad day.)

But, point is, even now that I have a few dollars so spare I cannot bring myself to pay full price for clothes. What do you think? What is your shopping strategy?