CheapJAP

Splurgy Poo

The Best Handbag Ever

Nothing warms a true JAP’s heart like a big, buttery, beautiful (and alliteration friendly!) leather handbag. Tragically, bags of this caliber cannot be faked. Ever. You also can’t beg your parentals for one more than once a year. This leaves us Cheap JAPs in dire straits.

I abused Daddy’s Amex for the bulk of my undergraduate career and was issued a grave warning toward the end of my junior year: The credit card was to be used FOR ESSENTIALS ONLY. This meant groceries, toiletries and the occasional bar tab. If he saw one more charge from Active Endeavors, he was going to kill me via No Cartier Watch for Graduation. That gorgeous, all-purpose, $550 Botkier bag I’d been dying for would have to wait.

Patience has never been one of my virtues. I couldn’t wait the requisite two months it would take Daddy to forget he’d issued the warning, and I couldn’t just sit there while my fellow JAPs toyed with and contemplated buying my bag. So I did something utterly perverse, something completely foreign to the majority of college-aged JAPs. I got a part-time waitressing job.

In a few weeks, I’d served enough burgers and pints to afford the bag. I paid for the Botkier with $550 in cash, under the wary eyes of a salesgirl who definitely thought I was a stripper as I counted out the final $1s. The Botkier bag wasn’t just mine - it was mine with my own money - and that was pretty effing cool.

My point? If you’ve got your eye on something as obscenely priced and as perilous to your shopping budget as this Botkier bag, don’t do something stupid and lazy like apply for a credit card - you’ll be $5000 in debt by next week. Get off your ass and get a part-time job. A friend of mine does coat check at Babbo once a week and walks with at least $250 every time. It’s worth Tivoing Gossip Girl if your part-time gig lets you shop like Blair!