Miss Frugal loves her designer makes but my purse doesn’t like paying for them!
We have a rule where I pay for her basics and she tops it up with her own pocketmoney if she wants something more expensive. So, for example, if she needs a pair of jeans then I’ll give her what I think is a reasonable amount for a pair of jeans and she can either buy a middle of the road brand or she can add money to what I’ve given her to buy a more expensive pair.
As an example, she’s been after some Top Shop jeans for ages but at £42 a pair, I’m really reluctant to buy them for her as I know she can get two pairs from Matalan and still have change from that amount. She loves the fit and style of the Matalan jeans but I suspect she wanted the Topshop ones simply because they’re Topshop.
She needed some new jeans last week as she’s had a mini growth spurt and after lots of umming and aahing she finally decided to put £20 towards them so we went along and she tried on about 10 pairs – none of them fit as nice as the cheaper ones from Matalan so we ended up leaving the Topshop ones and buying the ones from Matalan instead.
Actually that’s not a good example at all as she never ended up getting the jeans! Her Ralph Lauren Polo shirts are a better example, they’re about £20 each at the York designer outlet shop so last week we went halves on a couple for her.
I want her to learn the value of money and not to be designer label mad but at the same time, she’s a teenager and she does love to look stylish so I need to balance what I want and what she wants. 😉
As well as this little agreement, we also enjoy a wander around the charity shops in town where she enjoys hunting through the racks looking for the labels that she approves of although every now and again, she’ll actually pick out something that doesn’t have a designer label!
Yesterday was one of those days.
She found a knitted dress reduced to 99p on the sale rack in Age UK and on the way to the till to buy it, a pair of super high shoes caught her eye. I’d normally say a big no to shoes like that but they were in the shoe sale and were reduced to £2 so even though I don’t think she’ll ever wear them, she swears she will so we bought them too.
The dress is great quality and feels so soft although she’s not 100% sure about the white frills that go over the shoulders so we *may* possibly try and do something with them. I hope she decides to leave it as it is though as I think it looks really good on her. I’m pretty sure that the shoes won’t see the light of day again but with a pair of (much flatter) black boots I think she’ll wear the dress quite a bit!
Not bad for 99p, is it?
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