The Shopping Trip to End All Shopping Trips!

6AM. I wake up thinking “Awww yeah, it’s Saturday and I can sleep in!”.
1 second later I realize this is a false statement as we are headed to the States for the shopping trip!

We load up the car, pick up Trish and Krista who have brought baked goods (key note: bring ladies on future road trips) and we were off.

We headed towards Ogdensburg as we heard the Thousand Islands border crossing could be a little insane as it is on an Interstate highway. We waited a whole 5 cars and passed through with no issues. That’s right, they did not confiscate my apple!

After some mixed up directions by Mike in which we bickered like an old married couple (which left Krista and Trish in stitches in the back seat) and some very random selections for songs that Trish compiled, we ended up in Waterloo NY where there were some outlet stores to peruse. Mike and I weren’t expecting much from this place but we were pleasantly surprised.

Before I forget, there were a TON of Ontario license plates on the way down. I also saw Phil in the parking lot commenting on my car and we had a good laugh at the amount of people that were here shopping.

First stop, Krista’s all time favourite store – J.Crew. At that very moment, I knew that the credit card would get warm from use today as there were incredible deals to be had. I mean, everywhere I looked there were signs that said 30% off, 40% off, 50% off!!! I couldn’t really fathom it. So I just loaded up my arms and let the inner spirit take me away. I am not much of a shopper but I now realize that it is due to my frugal nature. But once I see these sales, I can’t really justify not picking up a sweater. I was telling Mom that we were in the Gap and Krista had picked up a pair of pants that I may want and I perused them until she told me they were $15 in which I stopped wasting my time at looking at them, and said “Sold.”

After getting some Arby’s in the packed lunchroom, we went wild and came out on top in terms of deals. Around 3:30 we figured we had seen everything and we had a trunkful of merchandise so we decided to head out to Syracuse. Matt, Karilee and Maria were still shopping in the Outlet shops so we left them there (not that we were hanging out that much anyhow. Everyone was doing their own thing.)

After some mixed up directions to get to the mall, we finally arrived at the Carousel mall (one of the darkest, cavernous malls I’ve ever seen) and hit up Circuit City for some electronics goodness (Mike picked up a camera and I picked up a great Christmas item for a good price!). I must admit that I was very disappointed that I did not see any signs saying 50% off at any point. It made me not want to purchase anything!

We postponed dinner to get our shopping done. I would say that the mission to the States was a success as I am 80% done my Christmas shopping and I managed to save quite a bit of money. Saving money equals more gifts for you people. We were getting very tired of shopping by around 8PM so we headed out to Fresno’s for a lovely dinner. Let me point out that I also love the US for the cheap meals. Seven of us ate for $97 and they were good meals. You can’t get that in Canada.

We then headed out around 11PM and while we were tired, we vowed to keep each other awake while listening to some more random songs by Trish. The killer lineup came from the songs ‘I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred, followed by “Let’s Get it On” by Al Green. Classic combo right there.

We hit the border and after proclaiming we had $1400 to declare, the border agent didn’t bat an eye when telling us that we would have to head inside. After paying the applicable taxes, we headed for home and retired for the night.

Here’s a rundown of some of the deals encountered:

• Mystery Christmas Gift for Someone – In Canada, $130. In the States, $80. Savings = $50
• The McCartney Years 3DVD Set – In Canada, $30. In the States, $19. Savings = $11.
• Sweater from J Crew – At the regular store in the US, $59.50. At the outlet, $29.70. Savings = $29.80
• Jacket from J Crew – At the regular store in the US, $88. At the outlet, $53. Savings = $35.
• Sweater from B. Republic – In Canada, $100. In the States, 25.49. Savings = $74.51!!! Krista confirmed this as she went to B. Republic and saw the sweater yesterday. Let us also point out that some boots that Trish and her purchased at NineWest were $60 as opposed to $180 in Canada.

I created a spreadsheet to analyze all this information to see if I really saved on a lot of things. While I had to arbitrarily enter some values on some items because I haven’t seen the actual price in Canada yet, I would have to say that I saved $268 on the clothing alone and $85 on the Christmas gifts I purchased. If you want that in a percentage, wow. I just figured it out.

In terms of clothing, I saved 106% comparing to purchasing it in Canada.
In terms of the Christmas gifts – 29.2%

Not too shabby.
All in all, I was amazed with the savings at the Outlet mall alone. I have vowed never to purchase clothing in Canada again while this Outlet mall exists! I am already planning a trip in the Spring/Summer.

Some other notes:

• If there were no outlet malls, there were quite a few items that I would not have saved money on, such as CDs, DVDs. This surprised me. In fact, without doing research, I ended up losing $1.25 on one item I purchased (after figuring out all the taxes and whatnot).
• You can still get some good deals but you have to do your research. The mystery Christmas gift listed above was an ideal example as I had to log onto the internet and do some research.
• We definitely didn’t feel any border wait times but at the same time, hitting the border at 1AM probably helped out.