A Time to Scrimp, a Time to Splurge
Sarah Gray Miller’s rolled-to-mid-calf jeans are from Goodwill. Her red-and-white side-tie blouse is from Express. Her watch is from Wal-Mart.
The two mint-green visitor’s chairs opposite her desk were $5, lawn chairs in a former life that she stripped and painted. Her desk was $100 at a junk shop. She plucked the end table from garbage in Brooklyn.
The iBook laptop is the most expensive item in her office.
Gray emphatically sprinkles bargain information throughout her conversation. Mention you like her hat, and it prompts: “One dollar from Salvation Army!” She has a knack for making other people’s junk look cool.
Miller, 31, embodies the spirit of Budget Living, the new magazine of which she is editor in chief. So does her staff. The magazine’s 23rd-floor office at Madison Avenue and 42nd Street is like a shabby-chic art gallery. There is a light green distressed fireplace frame with a similar colored table in the open conference area. It’s surrounded by chairs swathed in white slipcovers. A shelf in the entryway holds budget-themed vintage board games and books such as “Budget: A Consumer Math Game” and “How to Buy the Best for Less: Champagne Living on a Beer Budget.” Everything there was found on EBay.
Budget Living hopes to help you find cheap chic by doing all the detective work. It’s a lifestyle magazine that promises stylish products at savvy prices. Each bimonthly issue covers fashion, travel, entertaining, interior design and personal finance.
“This is not about cheaping out on everything you own,” Miller said. “It’s about knowing when to splurge and when to save. It’s not a bargain if it looks poor.”
It couldn’t come at a better time. Set to hit newsstands on Oct. 8, Budget Living is getting attention because of its serendipitous launch during an economic downturn. Gray and Budget Living’s publisher, Donald E. Welsh, (he started Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel) are counting on tighter wallets to bolster circulation.
“The economy was a coincidence,” Miller said. “Don was moving forward with this before the economy slowed down. This trend toward great design with great prices was happening before.”
Think Ikea, Old Navy, Southwest, Target and HGTV’s “Trading Spaces.”
“They’ll make the cover price [$3.95] back in five minutes,” Miller said. “Everyone loves a bargain. But it’s a lot of work to go out and find them. We’ve picked through all the merchandise and done all the legwork.”
The concept was developed before Sept. 11, and in the initial months after the terrorist attacks, it was difficult to persuade anyone to buy magazine ads.
“But as the economy got worse, the concept for the magazine got better,” said Eric Rayman, Budget Living president.
Rayman estimates there will be more than 50 pages of ads in the 140-page first issue. Rayman said Welsh raised between $5 million and $10 million to start the magazine with an initial circulation of 300,000.
In a quest to find the most fashionable jeans at the least expensive price, the staff bought $17 Route 66 jeans at Kmart and wore them to a New York City bar. Once there, they polled patrons about how much they thought the jeans cost. The average response: $100. That thrilled Miller.
Among the regular features are D.I.Y. (do it yourself), explaining doable home projects. The Goods, a shopping section, showcases several examples of one item at one price point. A collecting page highlights the next about-to-be-collectible, still at reasonable prices. The Check Out section sends a professional shopping with $100 and explains what to splurge on and what you can skimp on. For example, a hairdresser answers the question: Are you supposed to use cheap shampoo and an expensive hairbrush?
“I’m a total budget shopper,” Miller said. “I can never help but tell everyone what everything costs. My mother’s always like, ‘You don’t have to tell everyone that you only paid $30 for that dress.’ But I can’t help it.”
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Tara Weiss writes for the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.
