Most people know they can get discounts at places like TJ Maxx, Burlington Coat Factory, and the like. But these places aren’t often the best for low prices and great discounts.

I’ve found that the ideal place to shop is a regular department store in an area that has very low volume at the time of seasonal sales. Besides the after-Christmas sales, there are big sales in spring (to get rid of winter items), summer (for spring stock), fall (for summer stock), and winter (for summer stock). Buying a season off can get you big discounts, but the very largest discounts come from buying clothes from 2-4 seasons ago.

Department stores, despite all their electronic inventory abilities, really aren’t all that good at adapting their stock purchases to local conditions. Stores that have low-volume often get a large backlog of the previous season’s clothing, meaning that more things kit the 70%-off-and-more-racks.

How do you find such a store? First, avoid the obvious places: tourist shopping meccas, busy malls in metropolitan areas, and regional shopping districts in midsized towns that draw customers from smaller surrounding communities. Great places to find low-volume store are in towns that are just large enough to have their own department stores but are close to much larger cities with more shopping choices. A good way to cheat is to go into the local Wal-mart and look behind the customer service counter. There are donations posted on the wall–the higher volume the Wal-mart, the higher the level of community donations. A low-volume Wal-mart will pretty much guarantee that other local stores will be low-volume, too.

To give you some idea of the kind of discounts that you can get, I cleaned out a department store on Maryland’s Eastern Shore this summer. I bought some 60 items of clothing for right at $250. These were standard-fare department store brands. Some of my best “steals” include no fewer than three pairs of pants for $.99 each (retail was originally $38-46 each), a Liz Claiborne cashmere/angora/merino-blend sweater for $2.99, and an upscale little girl’s sweater–probably about $40 retail–for $2.99. Quite literally, I averaged about 90% off the original prices. I had very little luck with boys’ clothing–that always seems much harder to find marked down significantly–but with everything else, I made a killing. By the time I finished with the store, there was nothing on the sale racks left that looked good on me or that my family would use.

One great way to save both time and money is by restricting the days that you shop. Set aside one day per week for grocery shopping, and once a month do all other errands.

On average, people went shopping 14 times per month in 2006, in 2008 1.9 times per week or 8.2 trips per month for grocery shopping alone.

You can reduce this to 4-6 shopping trips per month with little pain, gaining many hours of spare time back–and save yourself from impulse expenditures at the same time. All it takes is a little self-disciplined list-making and planning. Every so often, you’ll mess up and have to make an extra trip, but as you adjust, you’ll become more and more used to your system and will make fewer mistakes.

The process is simple:

-Keep a separate list for each store.
-Add items to your list as you realize that you are running low, before the moment of emergency.
-Take one large trip once a month to any of the non-grocery store places for which you have a list that is long enough or critical enough.

List-making keeps you from forgetting things and keeps you from impulse buys, as well–of which Ic an be as guilty as the next person! You go in knowing what you need, you get it, and then you go–without the leniency of window shopping, you get much better results.

Some stores send out coupons regularly, so try to time those shopping trips so that you can use the coupons. For example, Bed Bath & Beyond is usually outrageously overpriced, but they have items that can’t be found elsewhere for cheaper if you figure in shipping. I get 20% Off On One Item of $10 Off Any Purchase of $30 Or More fairly regularly. When I wanted two rather expensive spice racks, I waited until I had a coupon good for that weekend to buy them. I also get Home Depot coupons with predictable regularity. I get $5 Any Purchase of $50 Or More once every couple of months and 10% Off Any Purchase Up To $2,000 about three to four times a year. Knowing this, I put off going to Home Depot whenever I can until I have $50 of items on my list and a $5 coupon.

The best way to get a good deal on clothes is to decide how much you’ll spend before you go into the store.

For me, I will spend up to:

$10 on casual shirt
$20 on a nicer shirt
$30 on a dress or a pair of pants

For the Bear, I try to spend:

$5 or less on casual shirts and shorts
$10 or less on pants or formal shirts

For Stinkerbell, I try to spend:

$5 or less on casual shirts and bottoms
$10 or less on play dresses
$15 or less on fancy dresses

For DH, I try to spend:

$25 or less on work shirts
$35 or less on slacks

With these limits, I know to go straight to the sale racks at the right times of the year, and I simply pass over things too far above my budget. If something is 50% off or 70% off, it’s only a “deal” for me if it ALSO fall under my maxes for clothes prices.

This doesn’t mean that I buy junk that will wear out. I’ve bought crappy clothes now and again–and regretted it!–but for the most part, I stick with department store brands and quality. But I do shop deals! My wardrobe has recently gotten beyond pathetic, and so I’ve had to replace much of it. I bought around 60 items and spent around $250 last month–all on name-brand clothes and averaging about 85% off on each item. So you do have to make decisions about not buying everything you like, but you don’t have to compromise quality or style if you don’t want to, nor do you have to spend so much time hunting bargains that you might as well spend the money, anyway!

And that way, you’re less likely to fall for this kind of thing.

There’s a new trend in home-oriented magazines and articles to push certain upgrades as good for the environment and for your wallet because they save energy or water. I found an article on CNN.com that enthusiastically recommended replacing all your old appliances with Energy Star models and your old toilets with new 1.6 gallon models. The article claimed boldly that you’re doing your wallet, as well as Mother Earth, a favor.

Just for the heck of it, I decided to do the calculations to determine the payback time for replacing a toilet. I began with the guess that a family on well water was paying more for their water than a family on city water. Well, after two different calculations using numbers from two different sources, I turned out to be dead wrong. The *energy* cost of having a well is quite low–only about $60 a year at the most for most families. The cost of well water comes from the equipment–the well head, the pressure tank, the purification system, and the septic–and their maintenance, not from the energy used to get the water from the ground. (The extra wear and tear on this equipment because of the additional water it handles due to high-flush toilets wasn’t estimated, but it’s probably pretty negligible.)

Let’s add a second, fictitious family that has an average monthly municipal water bill of $150 a month, which is apparently possible in some desert locations and areas of California, for an annual rate of $1800. And to make it a bit more sane, let’s throw in a third, who has a modest $25/mo rate (say, in Beaumont, TX), for a yearly total of $300.

Next, I looked at data for what percentage of domestic water consumption goes to toilets when old models are used. A generous estimate is about 40%. So, you take $60*.4=$24. A high estimate for how much a family on a well will spend directly on pumping their water for flushing the toilet is $24.

The folks in California spend $720 a year flushing their toilets.
The folks in Beaumont spend $120 a year.

Each of these families toilets that use 5.5 gallons per flush. If they change to 1.6 gallon toilets, they will save a sum that is equal to their current expense * 1.6/5.5.

So the well water family will save $7.
The CA family will save $209.
The Beaumont family will save $35.

Now, if you renovate your bathroom, you are required to buy a new toilet rather than just replacing your old one in most areas if the old one doesn’t follow current guidelines. But if you are thinking of replacing a toilet yourself for purely economic reasons, consider these payback periods.

The cheapest toilets run about $70. Anything you spend beyond that you can’t justify by pointing at water savings (the cheap-o Crane toilets-in-a-box are perfectly capable now, unlike 10 years ago) but just because you want to spend more money on a toilet that you either like better or think will work better. My advice is to go with Toto or Caroma if you’re into performance, and buy Kohler only if you really like the style. And don’y say, “But look at all the money we’ll save…” You’ll save more by buying the Crane. What you spend beyond that is justified by wanting something prettier or with a super-high-tech-anti-marking coating or something like that. It’s a frill, which is fine as long as you admit it.

If there is one toilet in the house, it will take:

10 years for the savings to equal the cost for the well water family
4 months for the CA family
2 years for the Beaumont family

If there are two toilets, it will take:

20 years for the well water family
8 months for the CA family
4 years for the Beaumont family

If there are three toilets, it will take:

30 years for the well water family
1 year for the CA family
6 years for the Beaumont family

If there are four toilets, it will take:

40 years for the well water family
1.33 years for the CA family
8 years for the Beaumont family

Of course, not all toilets are used to the same degree. So while it would make financial sense to replace all four toilets in the CA house, it might be better to replace the two (out of four) most heavily used ones in the Beaumont house with a payback time of, say, six years and leave the other two alone.

What about me? Well, I have four toilets in my well-water house. Three of them will be replaced when I remodel the bathrooms they’re in–not just because I have to but because they are blue, yellow, and mustard-colored. The fourth is white and is used maybe ten times a year. I’m leaving it well enough alone!

What if you’re on a well but you want to make the very best environmental decision, rather than an economic one? Even then things get mess. You’re using very little additional energy to put that water through your pipes, and it’s very hard to quantify what, if any, damage you might possibly be doing by putting the water into a well maintained septic field. Additionally, you have to consider that a new toilet has some very definite energy and material environmental costs associated with it in its production and shipping. I’d bet that your best choice, environmentally speaking, would be to leave the toilets you have until they suffer damage. But quantifying that sort of thing will be highly individual according to the circumstances–and devilishly difficult, as well.