I’m always on the lookout for ways to cut costs in my expenses. I’ve scrapped Time Warner cable for Hulu, I wait the extra week or two to buy my books used off Amazon.com, and I’m on several lists for free haircuts with student stylists at places like Bumble and Bumble and Aveda.
But there are occasions where the bottom dollar comes with a higher cost. Even occasionally, those free haircuts can necessitate another $50 spent with a pro for damage repair (or, at the very least, some extra elastics to keep your hair tied back as it grows out). This month, we examine some of the instances in which it’s OK—even better—to splurge a bit in order to guarantee that there are no future hidden costs. Read on for the perils of NYU’s dental school, DIY taxes, and more.
Chew on This
For those who have had fillings, the pain of a cavity is familiar: sensitivity to ice and sugar can be debilitating after a few run-ins with some sweetened ice tea. However, with dental insurance even rarer in this country than basic health care, the prospect of paying upwards of $1,000 to get essential cleaning, X-rays, and a filling recently made the idea of buying a bottle of Anbesol and hoping for the best a more palatable, albeit more painful, option to me.
NYU’s College of Dentistry offers an alternative for New Yorkers in need of some teeth TLC, that at first glance seems like a great deal. X-rays and fillings cost under $100 each and cleanings run $60. For that price, however, there is a significant catch.
When I arrived at NYU on a Wednesday afternoon at my appointed time, I sat for about 45 minutes and was almost lost in a shift-switch at the front desk before being taken in by a student not much older than I who approached the dental chair with a deer-in-headlights look. Rather than a private room, I was shown to one of dozens of cubicles on the floor and seated in a chair—and then proceeded to wait another hour. Dr. Deer finally came back and listened to my description of the pain and said he doubted it was a cavity, poked around for a few minutes, and disappeared again for another 20 or so minutes. Upon his final return, he told me to call to schedule another appointment for my X-rays as I happened to drop in on a busy day—but my subsequent calls went unreturned. With no real dental work done, NYU still managed to clean me out $100.
As an alternative, seek out home practices on the fringes (or in the boroughs) of your home base. For New Yorkers, Queens and Brooklyn are teeming with certified and licensed dentists whose prices are only slightly more than the students at NYU. What’s more, they’ve already graduated and are professionals.
Clerical Errors
Once your taxes become more complicated than entering numbers from little boxes on one standard W-2, you should stop doing your own taxes. Chances are you studied music, not accounting, at school—and just like one slip-up in technique could cost you a job (or worse), one of the myriad easy-to-make accounting mistakes could cost you dearly with the IRS.
As a freelancer, your taxes are more complicated than those who work a standard 9-to-5 (and even then, those can get pretty hairy). Online software was not built for people like us. What’s more, if you’re only doing your taxes annually, that means there are 11 or so other months in which you’re not thinking about taxes.
So, say it with me: “Get. An. Accountant.” And get one that knows how to work with freelancers. It can also pay to cultivate a long-term relationship with one accountant. My CPA has seen me through job changes, 1099 work completed in six different states, unemployment, and enough receipts to wallpaper the Chrysler Building. We have our annual routine down to a science, and while he may not get me as big a refund as others may say they can do he gets me an honest one. And in the case of an audit, he’s got my back.
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t also have a handle on your financial relationship with Uncle Sam. Be meticulous with your receipts and paychecks, look over your returns, and ask as many questions as you need.
Dumpster Diving Takes a Dive
Yes, a lot of people swear by this. There are even groups of Freegans in New York who will take you on a tour through the city’s best dumpsters, and several films explore this zero-waste lifestyle. If you want to be zero waste when it comes to food, however, plant a windowsill garden.
Dumpster diving has a questionable legality, which means that you can’t ask the Le Pain Quotidien or Whole Foods that owned the refuse you’re scavenging for why it’s been tossed. There may be an E. coli outbreak you haven’t heard about or a contamination of the kitchen that baked your throwaway bagels. And, at the risk of sounding like your mother, you don’t know where that stuff has been. Even sealed items aren’t impervious to all elements, and once food is tossed into a dumpster, there are a lot of elements at play. Trash is just that: trash.
If your budget is crunched to the point where you have concerns about the source of your next meal, food stamps are a viable option. Going the route of buying Perrier with your EBT card isn’t the most productive use of the government’s money, but you can use stamps at stores that sell organic and even—gasp!—gourmet products so you can still eat right.
Supplement Your Budget with Something Else
Even CVS seems to be an extravagance when you’re looking for daily vitamin supplements, Echinacea, or allergy relief for under $5. However, while generic meds are an appropriate alternative to big-name ones (Zyrtec and ceterizine hydrochloride quite literally go down the same), supplements are not subject to as harsh restrictions as the FDA holds over prescriptions and OTC medications.
Many off-brand multivitamins and supplements inaccurately represent the levels of certain nutrients on their bottles. On the flip side, they can contain too much and be equally—if not more—harmful to you in the long run. Cheaper brands (and this also applies to items like toothpaste, cosmetics, and lotions) are also able to cut their costs by skipping listed ingredients, omitting others that would otherwise deter sales, and produce their items in areas rife with potential for contamination. You could be unwittingly ingesting everything from lead to bacteria to pesticides to mercury.
Craigslist Miss
I feel like a hypocrite saying this, because when I moved across the country (and back), I sold most of my furniture and other possessions that I didn’t wish to ship on this website. To my knowledge, none of the folks who bought my bass clarinet, bookshelves, or baking pans had any issues with their purchases. I undercharged everything in a desperate fit to have my apartments ready by move-out day, and I was meticulous with my listings to ensure that the myriad of folks who came to my doorstep with a wad of cash knew what they were getting.
Sadly, that’s not always the case with Craigslisters. There have been times that my husband and I, ready to drop the Jacksons on a discounted Pottery Barn desk or claimed-to-be-unused refrigerator have, upon some careful inspection, discovered issues that steer us toward the warrantied, untouched stores from whence they came. (Or, in the case of Pottery Barn, to IKEA.)
I have one other compelling argument to avoid buying your bed frame at a steep markdown from a seemingly normal-looking person who lives in Brooklyn: bedbugs. Recently, in search of an IKEA credenza that wasn’t available in any of the New York or New Jersey outlets, I found a listing online from a woman in Gramercy Park for the same piece of furniture at half the cost of going to Connecticut and having them ship. After hearing back from the seller, I Facebook-stalked her to conclude that she seemed on the up and up. When we hammered out a time and pickup location, I sent her the blunt question that all New Yorkers hate to ask: Has your apartment had any issues with bedbugs? What I received back was a curt e-mail telling me I should be ashamed of myself for insinuating that she would withhold that information, and after a quick check on bedbugregistry.com, we confirmed that her building had reported an incident. IKEA New Haven is due to arrive this week.
