Something About Nothing, by Julie Seedorf

My wallet is getting fatter. Unfortunately it isn’t getting fatter with money or even credit cards. It is getting fatter with all those rewards cards that we have to carry to get rewards when we visit a business.

Don’t get me wrong, reward people, I love my rewards cards. I must admit my life was a little simpler when I didn’t reap the rewards of my shopping.

It seems every business is jumping on the rewards-card bandwagon. There are Hy-Vee Gas cards, Panera rewards, Shopko rewards, Cherry Berry rewards, Pizza Ranch rewards, Pet-Co rewards, Office Max rewards; and those are only a few of the many.

There are times when I have to stop and remember where I am when checking out. Yes, I occasionally do forget where I am, in the I need that frenzy of shopping. I get to the register, dump my products onto the little conveyer belt that moves the items closer to the cashier and then I fumble in my purse to find the right card. Of course, while I am fumbling and digging through my billfold I almost and sometimes do, drop it on the floor.

The solution would be to be prepared by digging out my card before I get to the register but what fun would that be? It would not give those shoppers coming behind me the excuse to check their cellphone, talk to the person behind them or glare at me for holding up the line.

Things are made a little simpler when it comes to coupons; we don’t always have to have to the paper coupon anymore. We can store the coupon on our cellphone. Of course, that means that not only do we have to pull our rewards cards out, we have to hold our cellphone and get it to the place on our phone where we have the coupons. The people behind me always love that.

Some stores are making it easier if you are a prepared and organized person. I actually don’t know too many of those. If you are an organized person, you can go to the store’s website and put the store coupon on your rewards card. That does make it simpler.

Let’s add being a senior citizen to the mix. Senior citizens at many places get senior citizen discounts. Some are widely advertised where others are kept under wraps. You have to know what stores have senior citizen discounts and then you have to ask for them when you are at the checkout. You also have to know in many stores, what day they cater to senior citizens. There is also another little catch.

Some chains of stores don’t have the same senior citizen policy in every store. The days differ, and in one case I have found that the liquor store offers a senior citizens discount, but the actual other store connected doesn’t.

I am tired writing this. Being a smart consumer these days is tricky. One day I was shopping with my daughter. A sale of something that I needed didn’t start until two hours later. We were in the store at the wrong time and had to be home in another community before the sale started.

I was disappointed but accepting. My daughter pulls out her cellphone, finds the ad on the phone and calls and finds a clerk in the store. She asks if there is any way we could get the discount early since we couldn’t be there at 3 p.m.

The clerk said they would check and came back and said it was in the system already so they would honor the sale. We should show the clerk the ad and tell them they said it was fine to honor it early. We checked out, and I got the sale price. I would have never thought of that in my old age. Shopping used to be simpler.

That is my point. Life is getting challenging for those of us with an older brain. Shopping now is somewhat of a puzzle that we have to put together to get our perks and our prices. If you have the time — and senior citizens are supposed to have the time — then its fun.

Younger people pick up on this easier, but families with young children don’t have the time. Of course, they don’t have to search out senior citizen discounts, but with their lives on fast forward all of the time, keeping track of all the rewards if they want the perks can be mind-boggling.

I liked it when J.C. Penney cut its prices and did away with sales. Their prices were wonderful, and it was great shopping in the stores. Unfortunately, many consumers didn’t feel that way and J.C. Penney lost money. We are programmed to go for the deal.

I can’t wait to see what the stores think up for us in the future. I am researching the hidden senior citizen discounts in preparation for an article later on to aid seniors in finding their way through the discount maze.

But I should warn you, the last time I was in a maze, a corn maze, I needed to be rescued. If you don’t hear from me during my research you will know I am hopelessly lost under the pile of reward cards. Listen for my call for help and rescue me.

 

Wells resident Julie Seedorf’s column appears every Monday. Send email to her at thecolumn@bevcomm.net. Her Facebook page is www.facebook.com/sprinklednotes.