What is Value?

Sometimes I need to be reminded that my job doesn’t come with a paycheck. My impulse spending creeps up a little at a time, and suddenly we’re off budget. I try to make smart decisions about what I purchase, but that leads to the question, “what is a good deal?”

Wait, wasn’t I a math teacher? (strictly middle school, but still, I taught math!) I could convert into unit prices with the best of them (see, math nerd talk), but it can still be tough to figure out where to spend my limited spare pennies.

I’m bringing this up, because I’m confronted with a “bad deal” purchase every morning when I perform my miraculous transformation from tired mommy to super-hot-well-rested-mommy. Ok, so that transformation never actually occurs, but I do try to slap on some make-up and blow dry my hair daily, and that very make-up is causing me to regret one of my spending cuts.

For the most part, I’ve been using MAC cosmetics since college, when my friend Kathie introduced me to two little beauties (Vex eyeshadow & a tube of Viva Glam if you care about these things). When trying to cut corners a little this fall, I decided that MAC was an extravagance I wouldn’t miss too terribly.

Slap on the “shallow” badge now, because I was wrong.

I purchased some relatively inexpensive eye shadows, liner, and lip gloss in trendy colors and looked forward to a little change in my daily look. (I won’t mention the brand, because maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing, but it can be purchased at Target and not “department stores everywhere”.)

There’s no change in my daily look, in part because the make-up doesn’t stay on my eyes for very long, no matter what I do to prep my face. Also, despite my attempts to play around with the different colors available on my little palettes, everything looks exactly the same on my eyes. And I’m not talking subtle color differences – the green and purple eye shadows look exactly the same within minutes of application.

And that, in my oh-so-amateur financial opinion, is not a good deal.

Since I know many of my few readers (if that makes sense) come here for the eye candy (and not of the eye shadow type), here are some pictures of my best yearly deal - our zoo membership!  I could pay double and still consider it a value (but I'm glad I don't have to, because of that whole budgeting thing.)