Miss Cheapist and even cheaper sister

Sister Cheapist taking the ocean breezes of Venice Beach, CA

Miss Cheapist received the news in May that her sister, A., planned to move to Lost Angeles after the summer to pursue a degree in architecture, abandoning her lucrative job as a software consultant for something more artistic. A.’s pending departure marked the year anniversary of the blog (which was inspired by the Virginia suburb that she called home, as well as her frugal spending habits), and also reflected the general themes of East Coast abandonment that served as the subtext for Miss Cheapist’s regular musings. Given that everyone else found a better life in California, why wouldn’t A.? Who could resist its still developing cultural landscape, coastal modernism, and the chance to sight celebrities? When the feeling of being the remaining survivor after a nuclear holocaust gave way to quiet acceptance, Miss Cheapist went south to help her sister pack and move. In that experience, she learned quickly that her interpretation of cheapism was generational, as her sister lived in a realm simply known as “cheap.” Anxious that becoming a full-time graduate student would leave her a pauper, A. practiced a risky approach to cheapness, gambling in the world of Craigslist commerce.

Sister, cousin and Miss Cheapist (left to right) in the early 90s . All following pictures are of items sold online and photographed by A.

Miss Cheapist always thought of Craigslist as a place inhabited by amateur and seasoned child prostitutes, wanna-bes and their greatest fans. As many of her teenage students marketed themselves and found inappropriate friends through this medium, her assessment of the site fell just right of Nancy Reagan. For the less deviant, Craigslist is better known as a clearing-house for “stuff,” obviously a front for its greater purpose of bartering and subjugating bodies (to crudely borrow from postmodernism). What a great way for axe murderers to seduce twenty-somethings with limited budgets and expensive tastes: advertise a stylish piece of furniture and invite Net-faithful young’ uns to ones lair under a “cash and carry" policy. Or better yet, troll the site for college co-eds looking to sell their belongings online…and then access to their homes with little suspicion. But don't worry. Miss Cheapist is malleable. Those who see Craigslist as a rebellion against the retail industrial complex and a means of Paglia-esque female empowerment will be glad to know that through a few experiences with A., her opinion of the site did change. She came to learn:

Kind, hard-working people really need cheap stuff. The first couple to call was very persistent about a specific meeting time to view A.’s couch. Miss Cheapist saw their rigidity as an indicator that they were controlling freaks and warned her sister of confrontation if the meeting in person went sour. Please cancel, she said, and A. did not listen. When the couch coveters finally arrived, they appeared to be perfectly normal: a sweet, newly engaged South Asian couple (both architects by training) who had just moved from Texas and wanted to furnish their new life, cheaply. A., in an effort to make the situation legitimate, often asked buyers about their professions, reasons for purchasing the item and even their educational backgrounds. Perhaps it made for comforting small talk as strangers entered her home. Or maybe it was important that these beloved possessions go to people who met her approval. It turned out the couch was too expensive for the couple; they asked A. for a lower price, but she refused. Even when it seemed the couch was out of reach, they still sat and chatted for twenty minutes, the man leaving with her undergraduate duplicate packet of HBS case studies (estimated value of $100) for ten dollars. Miss Cheapist was so touched by their congeniality and humility that she almost convinced her sister to give the couch away to them. After all, they clearly deserved a prize for not being axe murderers; just average Americans pursuing a dream of cheap domesticity.

Some people take the time to give things away for free, and others are willing to go the distance to help them. One critical piece of advice Miss Cheapist gave A. was to purchase quality moving boxes. A. instead collected several odd-sized and partially deconstructed boxes from random hallways, with the intention of finding ways to “make it work.” After much insistence from Miss Cheapist, she finally sought out better boxes…by looking on Craigslist. Within minutes she found a woman who had 10-15 boxes to give away (side-note: 20-somethings really know how to use search engines). The woman just moved and was looking for someone to take away her boxes. Again, Miss Cheapist was very suspicious, and warned her sister not to allow herself to risk her life and precious packing time just to save a few dollars. A. ignored her, and Miss Cheapist reluctantly followed her sister on the fifteen minute drive to the woman’s apartment. Again, the visit was surprisingly fruitful: the woman was not an impersonator, and she had genuine intentions. She even helped to bring down some of the boxes from her fourth floor walk-up and offered a few words of advice on moving.

Some people find it difficult to buy new items at retail prices, and at the same time, they have the resources to move a three piece sectional within a moment's notice. The second couple that came to see the couch at 9:30 PM had visited other sellers that day and seemed ready to seal the deal. The woman unfolded herself into the couch and put her feet up, marking her territory. Within five minutes of saying she would take it, her brother-in-law arrived in the parking lot, ready to help carry and transport it home in a large van. A few minutes later, Miss Cheapist found herself watching “Girlfriends” reruns from the floor, while her sister fingered the $800 cash in hand. The transaction ran so smoothly that Miss Cheapist even considered selling something on-line. Unfortunately nothing of value, short of herself, came to mind.

The outcome: Based upon the spreadsheet A. created, (20-somethings are very comfortable with Excel), she was able to earn back at least 50% of what she spent on all belongings purchased in Virginia over her years of residence there. Because she kept her prices high, she was even able to make a profit on some items bought previously at a lower price on Craigslist. Winning this strange gamble between frugality and personal safety, she emerged victorious. Still in one piece, she was able to use the extra cash for the move and shed herself the burden of shipping all her possessions across the country. She did good business and learned to live more simply. Freed from attachment to her former life as a corporate stiff, she gained a chance to acquire more, in a new city. It would be only a matter of time that something caught her eye online, and she would have to get it. And the cycle of risk and reward would continue…

Secrets: Miss Cheapist will never tell...

Remember when friendships were defined by our ability to divulge everything? The sign of a true friend was someone you with whom you could unload all your secrets: vices, sexual preferences, hidden mistakes, family scandals, and all other unspeakables in between. Miss Cheapist formed an unexpected bond with a college classmate named J. after he disclosed his dirty little secret. Before that, their relationship had not extended beyond witty party banter and academic de-briefing. But one day, after a particularly charged class about “historical trauma,” J. pulled her aside and admitted that his high school research of family roots yielded the discovery of a slaveholding past, quite a source of shame given his liberal, open-minded ways and his family’s commitment to civil rights. Later he also admitted to being strangely attracted to women of color, and felt guilty about it, hoping that he wasn’t objectifying them for their “otherness.” Although there was probably no connection between the two secrets, his ability to articulate and admit both these things seemed to seal their friendship for life. Although Miss Cheapist has broken her promise in the name of online self- promotion, it’s important to note the point made here. Someone who is openly racist is completely déclassé, but someone who recognizes the contradictions of their views, and knows when to conceal, and when to share, was highly evolved. What self-awareness! The fact that they attended college in the era defined by “political-correctness” made his frankness all the more courageous.

But somewhere between elementary school and our early twenties (when Carrie and SATC brunch buddies set the norm on sharing), an unexpected discretion has taken over. Friend M. recently mentioned this culture of secrecy to Miss Cheapist, wondering how it was possible to have genuine friendships when everything from money to pregnancy seemed suddenly off-limits. In a variety of social settings, her questions meant to show sincere personal interest were received with off-putting comments and a huffy wall of silence. Did her behavior suddenly take a turn for the socially inappropriate or had people become too sensitive? If the latter is true, it seems a shame that friendships no longer require us to share our responses to life’s various passages, both celebratory and tragic. Clearly no one wants to unintentionally alienate their nearest and dearest, but Miss Cheapist suspects there is some benefit to secrecy or at least some reason for this new cheapness of candor!

To further investigate this matter, Miss Cheapist probed her friend N., who still believed in the comfort of a long phone conversation and the healing power of confessionals. Always known for her insight and her pithy one-liners, N. theorized that people are keeping secrets for a number of reasons. 1) They are making a lot of money and they don’t want one anyone to know. 2) They aren’t making money or feeling professional fulfillment and want no one to know. 3) They are desperately unhappy and are ashamed about it, either because they suspect friends will minimize their feelings or feel they are far to fortunate to be so miserable. Given all these different limitations, it is no surprise friends aren’t talking...if N. is right, somewhere between the concerns of both the blessed and the scorned, everything has become taboo! With this explanation, it’s clear that withholding is not personal, or a statement of ones trustworthiness. Instead, secrecy has become a coping mechanism, a testament to the power of denial. After all, if we don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist. Miss Cheapist thinks something's gotta change.

The Formula for Good Fortune

Just a few months in and tragic events have revealed that the Year of the Rat has been most unlucky. Miss Cheapist finds herself reeling from deaths of two significant figures in her life, trying to make sense of seemingly unpredictable cycles of fate. Shortly after the Lunar New Year, Miss Cheapist held a small dumpling party and then set off to a vacation in Akumal, Mexico. The vacation was long awaited, and one of the few in recent years that did not require her to fulfill any obligations or accommodate the needs of others. In effect, it was the first “selfish” trip that she and her partner had taken since their nuptials two years earlier (i.e. no weddings to attend or family in attendance)…quite a luxury indeed. Not that they were complaining; the past few years had granted them great fortune: a blowout island wedding, generous support from loved ones, and several subsidized family vacations (as documented in this blog). Actually, there were moments where Miss Cheapist really didn’t believe she deserved any of it, and felt that with the excess of good fortune, there would be some kind of ‘correction,’ when the proverbial ‘other shoe would drop.’ She tried to commit a few good deeds in an effort to compensate for the footprint of indulgence that she was leaving behind. Gratuitous, yes, it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time. You see, in spite of her complaints about expensive urban life and her sense of entitlement to the accoutrements of a neo-Gilded Age NYC, Miss Cheapist secretly felt quite blessed.

So when they received the call informing them that a parent had suddenly died on their first day of the vacation, it seemed that it was their turn to experience something unimaginably unfortunate. Although the two were no strangers to unexpected deaths and familial loss, their previous streak of good luck and their unwavering desire to take a vacation on their own, as well as the eternal nature of their parents made this loss seem particularly unjust. In those first days of shock, so much was uttered in grief, and even more they feared to say out loud. It was at this time when the natural feelings of their own special-ness surfaced, the sense that bad things could not possibly happen to good people. After all, this can’t be our life.

Without organized religion or coherent faith in a higher being, it seemed that the universe was guided by a nameless cheap bastard who only doled out happiness in small servings, and decided quite arbitrarily and prematurely whose turn was next. For the believer, one might similarly wrestle with the deeper meaning of loss, and yet might find comfort in the fact that “everything happens for a reason,” that human beings do not belong to the world of the living, but instead are gifts from God, spending time on earth for a limited time to leave an imprint, but little more. And of course, there is the belief that the deceased enter a world where they feel no suffering, a place that we can’t even pay to get into.

Miss Cheapist may be entering the dangerous territory of uninformed religious interpretation, so she will pause, only to say that in a time period when faith is consumable and believers can vote with their feet, all these points of view were examined in the process of grieving. Even superstition and a curiosity about “crossing over,” were entertained. Dreams were interrogated for deeper messages from the dead, and Miss Cheapist wondered if we receive clues that our lives will be cut short. In effect, do some live larger because they know even more than others, that nothing lasts forever? Should we all just try to live excessively, and throw caution to the wind? Or is caution necessary to prevent accidents and injury? In a world that seemed so possible to control and organize, Miss Cheapist saw all the patterns recede and the equations of fate impossible to balance. Although it was just two months ago that all this happened, time stopped and stretched thin, and Miss Cheapist remained in the world of the living, wondering just what the future held.