Do You Remember Dime Stores?

Do you remember dime stores? Or sometimes they were called five-and-dime stores. When I was a kid, in the 1950s, there was a dime store on the main street of my beach town, and we used to love to spend hours browsing through its offerings. It had a little of everything, much of it made in Japan, all of it pretty cheap, in both the cost and quality senses of that word. Pencils, paper doll books, rubber flip-flop sandals, those little blue glass bottles of Evening in Paris cologne, small pastel diaries complete with a lock and tiny brass key... all ours to covet and maybe buy with allowance or chores money.

The five-and-dime stores have been gone for a long time now. But... not really. They reappeared several decades ago, reinvented per inflation as dollar stores. And when the recession hit, dollar store sales skyrocketed. There are quite a few different chains, but  in my area we have Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and Dollar General, and they always seem busy. Inflation has again hit... dollar stores often offer a lot of things for sale for more than a dollar.

One of my planned activities this weekend is a walk to the neighborhood Family Dollar to get more canned dog food. I feed Petey a good quality dry kibble with a couple tablespoons of canned food mixed in, to make it more appetizing for him. Family Dollar's selection of dry dog food is pretty pathetic... corn seems to be the main ingredient in all, and the last time I tried that Petey ended up with an astoundingly bad case of "doggie dandruff." I've had to start ordering Eukanuba's dachshund food from Petflow.com to get his skin back to normal. Pet food seems to be one of those things where you often do get better quality by paying more.

The canned dog food I get at Family Dollar is a good example of why dollar store shopping is not always the bargain you'd assume it to be. The Family Dollar price for the brand Petey and I like is no different than the supermarket price. I buy it there mostly for convenience... it's nearby and I don't need to take the bus. Actually, Family Dollar's prices are often about the same as supermarket prices, or a bit lower, but they tend to carry more of the lower-cost brands. That's where most of my savings come in, because most of these (but not all, such as the dog kibble!) are as good as the higher-priced brands. Sometimes even better!

I've learned that the "rounding up" phenomenon that occurs at some dollar stores, such as Dollar Tree, can make prices actually higher than conventional stores. Due to inflation, a lot of dollar stores have given up on trying to sell only items for $1.00. But some, like Dollar Tree, still try to maintain that price for a majority of their merchandise. Sometimes this results in a really good deal. But sometimes you can find the same item for less at groceries or discount stores. Some shampoos that sell for $1.00 at Dollar Tree can be had at the supermarket for $0.89 on sale, for example. Last week Dollar Tree was selling name brand canned beans for a dollar,  but I can always get an equivalent product at the grocery store for less. No bargain here. On the other hand, I can always find full-size tubes of name-brand toothpaste for $1.00 at Dollar Tree, which is a huge savings - much cheaper than drug stores,  groceries, or even Family Dollar.

So to use dollar stores effectively, I've had to train myself to pay more attention to prices. I've read about really hard-core frugalists keeping "price books," which they carry with them on shopping trips and keep updated with the best prices and sources of everything they buy. A good idea, but time consuming and more trouble than I've ever wanted to go to.

Maybe an even more important skill for using dollar stores effectively is learning to avoid impulse purchases. Sometimes I find something at a dollar store that I'd been kind of thinking about buying, but for a lot more money. It makes sense in this case to grab it fast. But... it's so, so easy to end up with a bag full of cheap, appealing stuff that I don't really need, cancelling out my savings on my planned purchases. I'm getting a lot better at this.

In doing volunteer work, I meet a lot of well-heeled women, and have been surprised how many of them regularly shop at dollar stores. In fact, when I was new to this city, I got some of my best bargain-hunting tips from a pair of ladies who live out in the suburbs in million-dollar homes. I have come to believe that we humans have not completely outgrown our hunter-gather pasts, and that's why so many of us enjoy the hunt for bargains. Bargain hunting  is not only a very useful skill when you are living on a tight  budget, but it seems to fulfill some primal psychological need, for some of us at least. I like to think of it as a profitable form of entertainment.