You've got to spend money to make money. (Old post I forgot to publish)

My mom and dad always find ways to hide the fact that the recession has brought the smackdown on our budget.

Someone needs to explain the logic of this to me:

We somehow got a Cole Haan purse, Cole Haan boots, and a $75 gift card all for the price of $170.

Ok. My sister bought a beautiful Dooney and Bourke purse for my mom's birthday this year, but just not in the right color. My mom finally made the time to go to Stanford Shopping Center to simply exchange the bag for another color, but left with so much more. When she found that her purse was no longer in season, she decided to just get a store credit and buy something new. This is where the fun begins.

My mom found a gorgeous, black Cole Haan purse that she just HAD TO have [I will insert a picture here soon]. Yeah, it was $500. Her store credit was for about $298, so she was debating whether or not it was worth the difference. In the words of my grandmother, I told my mom "Just buy it now because it might not be there tomorrow." Didn't need to tell her twice.

Ok, so there's this thing with Filipinos that I don't understand, but totally love. For some reason, Filipinos feel like they need to give all other Filipinos discounts or any kind of extra benefit possible. Two years ago, I was at the McDonalds in the train station in Venice and the cashier just happened to be Filipino. Was it a coincidence that I got two extra orders of french fries with my meal? I think not.

Back to the story -- the cashier helping my mom was, you guessed it, Filipino. My dad and I didn't hear the entire conversation, but after one burst of laughter between the two, the cashier had somehow given my mom 10% off the bag AND knocked off an additional $100. So, if you tally it all up, with my mom's $300 store credit, $100 discount and the 10% off, my mom paid $70 + tax for a $500 purse.

WOW --> MOM

IT GETS BETTER. Ever since my mom won $5,000 on a slot machine in Vegas, she has enjoyed testing her luck. My mom wanted to buy my Christmas present today and wanted to see if she could hustle another sales clerk. I wanted a pair of boots and found a super cuties pair that I fell in love with [too lazy, insert picture later]. They were originally $175, but with my mother's magic, we purchased them for a mere $100. My mom basically distracted this really, really stressed out clerk and got him to take off 15% and then an additional 25% five minutes later. Insane.

Oh, but wait, IT GETS EVEN BETTER. The stressed out cashier manages to find a second to tell us that if we present our receipts at a certain counter, today, for every $100 we spent, we get a $15 gift card. On our receipts, some of the discounts didn't appear or something crazy because it said that altogether, we spent $500. I'll have to go over the numbers again. That means, yes, we got a $75 gift card. Of course we gave it to my dad to enjoy so he wouldn't feel left out. What's funny is that out of the three of us, he took the longest time to shop. What gender scripts?

Basically, I feel like we stole from Bloomingdale's but it was in such a fantastic manner that I don't even feel bad. All I can say is that my boots are AbFab, Bloomingdale's is stupid, and my mother is Robin Hood.