We should be moving into our new house this next week.
My wife informed me that she doesn’t think that our existing couches are “not contemporary” enough for our new home.
That presents several problems…
First, shopping for furniture is a huge task. Where do you go? Which brand is good? How well is it made? Etc., etc. The amount of research that I would have to do before I could shell out a thousand dollars with some degree of confidence that I wasn’t just throwing it away is overwhelming!
The second problem is that my wife enjoys spending money! She says that it would make her feel good to give a furniture store their 400% markup just so she could say it is new!
I am at the opposite end of the spectrum. I don’t inherently like spending money. I really like getting a great deal though. I like to find people who have decided that cannot live without the latest, greatest, newest and finest (“what everybody is getting these days!”). I then offer to buy their “old, outdated” really nice, barely used stuff that they paid WAY too much for not too long ago.
So, I retreated to familiar territory…ground that I know well…an area where I have experienced a reasonable degree of success in the past…Craig’s List!
After all, I found the two couches that we have used for the past three years there and they are still nice. They just look “too formal” for her taste.
It took me about an hour to find what I was looking for…
Barely used, high end couches in a fabric that she will love…Here is the ad.
My wife hates buying used stuff but she agreed to go with me to look at them.
As we drove up, she liked the $500-$700,000 neighborhood! She liked the house that they were in.
Then she looked at the couches themselves and I guess she liked them. I say that because she went down to the basement to look at an oriental rug…without me!
When we got home, I went online to see where this particular brand is sold. It turns out that the high end furniture store with the “in home design consultants” across the street from our apartment sells them.
I talked to one of the sales associates and learned that this couch and love-seat START at $3,000! We are paying $550!
She won’t admit it for awhile, but I think I did good with this one!
