Susan Hamersky's clients ask her errand service, California Concierge Service, to run from The Dollar Store to Wal-Mart and across town again for
the best bargain, at $39 an hour.
It ends up costing the clients more in time than they could possibly save on bargains, the Los Angeles-based business owner says, but if that is what they ask for, she is happy to oblige.
The idea seems extreme: paying someone to run all over town to save a few dollars here or there. But it is the essence of what so many families do every Saturday morning.
The weekly dance
They hop in the car and go to the drug store that is
having a sale on vitamins, then on to Target, where paper towels and dish soap are always cheapest, and then over to the next town, to the warehouse store, to stock up on meat and maybe pick up some jeans.
The day's total tally is four hours, 35 miles and less than $10 in savings.
All that and the grocery shopping still hasn't been done, plus the minivan is probably full of things that weren't on the shopping list.
At times when we are trying so hard not to waste money,
we are often frittering away time and cash.
Every bargain hunt is a judgment call, Hamersky says, but the balance of the cost of gas and the expenditure of time is easily underestimated. She is inclined to go for simplicity.
"Whichever store you feel overall on their prices is the best, then you just do your shopping there and don't worry about the rest, because you can drive yourself crazy running to three or four stores to finish your list," she says.
A gas analysis
In mid-August, the AAA Fuel Gauge Report showed the national average for regular gasoline prices was at $2.48, up 62 cents from a year earlier. The escalating price of gas is quickly bringing up the cost of driving every mile, said Geoff Sundstrom, spokesman for AAA.
The cost of gasoline alone is now 9.9 cents per mile for a 2005 Dodge Caravan, for a total operating cost of 16.2 cents per mile, including maintenance and tires, according to the AAA calculations. At
15,000 miles per year, with insurance and maintenance factored in, the Caravan costs 56.3 cents per mile to operate.
On a recent weekend in Portland, Ore., three of the best deals at Target -- a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats, a 15-pack of Bounty paper towels and a 24-pack of Frito-Lay snack bags -- were $6.65 cheaper than they were at a local Albertsons grocery store. The paper towels were the big buy, at a savings of $5.
At 56.3 cents per mile, if Target were even six miles away
from home, you would be losing money on that "great deal." Just considering the operating costs, it actually costs more than $3.24 to make a 10-mile trip across town and back. So the savings plummet to $3.41.
Then the question becomes less about math and more about what makes sense in your own life.
"You don't tend to put a price tag on your time, and people tend to think of time as an unlimited resource, but it is limited," Hamersky says.
Consider time and energy
California Concierge runs errands, shops for gifts, and is a personal assistant for anything time-consuming. Hamersky's customers are people whose time is very precious, whether they are CEOs or a new mother bonding with a baby. | "They can be at work working with their clients, making a sale, or spending time
with their family or their leisure activities that only they can do," she says. "It's about prioritizing." The key, in the case of hiring out the errands, is to be in a certain income bracket. It may not make sense to pay someone $39 an hour when you clearly can't afford it, but that doesn't mean your time doesn't have a dollar value. It's easy to look at the world as a balance sheet of expenses, says Rosemary Senjem, a business development consultant in Minnesota. She
says people need to learn to look at their energy as a resource just as finite as their bank account.
When people look at the list of things they have to do, whether is it setting up a business or planning the weekend, they tend to only see parts that are highlighted by money. Senjem, owner of Hand Spun Digital Inc., says she works with entrepreneurs to help them assign values to tasks based on the toll it takes on their energy, not just the dollar drain. "The sorting and
purging process is very important," she says. "We get confused because we think money is the only measure." Yvonne Mancini lives in southern Washington, but regularly crosses into the sales-tax-free state of Oregon to buy clothing or to make a big monthly trip to Costco. Because she lives close to the border and works in Portland, Ore., the trip is short, but sometimes so are the savings. "I guess sometimes it's a trade-off of gas for sales tax," she says. She
will get "twisted up about it" and go to 15 different stores to be sure she is getting the best deal possible. Her husband, Jim Moody, says he just doesn't understand it. He heads straight for the place he knows will have the part, shoes or food he is looking for and doesn't look back. "If it's 50 cents more or 50 cents less, I am not going to get in my car and go all over," he says. Mancini is willing to invest the time, but if she is busy with work or if a
gift-giving event comes up, she often falls back on what is most convenient. The best time savings comes in the form of heading to stores she knows will have the best deals. Nordstrom Rack and Ross Dress for Less are her stores of choice. "I know I don't have to go hunting for a bargain. I know it's a good deal," she says. The payoff of shopping
The caveats about bargain shopping don't apply to everyone: Some people enjoy the thrill of the hunt. Hamersky says
there are bargain hunters that love getting a deal and don't mind the time involved. "It's a kind of leisure activity," she says. Mancini is one of those people. She enjoys estate sales and talking with friends about the bargains she found. "That's trophy hunting," she says. For most people, though, time spent hunting the aisles with clipped coupons and four newspaper advertisements is time that could be spent elsewhere. "In the overall scheme of life,"
Hamersky says. "What's better? To spend time with your family or do something you really enjoy doing -- or to save two bucks?" |
