I am doing online Black Friday shopping today, and soon I will take a break to make a Leftovers Bowl: cut-up turkey followed by gravy followed by corn followed by mashed potatoes, microwaved; side bowl of cranberry sauce; also a dinner roll.
But I have just made a VERY SATISFYING purchase, and I want to tell you about it. A couple of my children have put items from Good Store on their wish list: this is a store started by John and Hank Green, and it is sustainably-sourced and fair-trade and 100%-proceeds-to-charity (ELEVEN MILLION dollars donated so far). Here’s more about how the store began and how cool it is, if you want to read more (and also see how cute they are).
But I don’t mind telling you that I struggled with the prices in spite of myself: I KNOW it costs more to buy good and ethical things, I KNOW it costs more to be a small good store instead of a giant evil conglomerate—and nevertheless I struggle. Edward wants the socks, but I see a single pair of socks for $15, and I KNOW that is a righteous choice and that the price supports not only charities but artists—but I just saw a three-pack of decorated socks marked down to $9 at Old Navy, so. Or, like, Henry wants to try the coffee. It’s ethically-sourced AND supports charity—but it’s $25 for a 12-ounce bag, and I usually buy 10 ounces of Café Bustelo for $6, on sale for $5, which would be $6.00-7.20 for a comparable 12 ounces. I am not always thrifty, but I am overall financially-careful, and it leads me in directions both valuable and not.
In this case, it led me to a struggle with prices, EVEN THOUGH these were the items on the kids’ wish lists and EVEN THOUGH the money would go to good products and to charity and EVEN THOUGH I wanted to support/encourage all those things! But two bags of coffee for FIFTY DOLLARS?? That’s a huge percentage of the child’s gift budget! A 6-pair sock subscription for SEVENTY-FIVE dollars?? That’s Main Gift money!!
It turns out all I needed was a sale. For Black Friday there is a GIVEGOOD25 code that takes 25% off—AND I used it multiple times, AND I used it for a sock subscription, AND I used it on a bundle (if you buy multiple things in a “bundle,” you get 10% off). I had not expected it to apply to subscriptions or bundles. So I still spent a fair amount of money, but I felt MUCH MUCH BETTER about it. Here is what I bought, if you are interested:
I bought Edward a 6-month sock subscription, plus I bought two MORE individual pairs of socks (cat and mushrooms/crystals) so that I could wrap those with a card mentioning the subscription. The subscription ($75) plus two pairs ($30) should have cost $105, but instead cost $78.75. I’m not saying that’s inexpensive; I’m saying it came back across my Well Worth It threshold.
(image from good.store)
I bought Henry the Coffee Lover’s gift set, which is a bag of coffee plus a travel mug; this was a fun discovery because I already had the coffee ($25) and the mug ($30) in my cart for him, so this saved $5 even before the 25% off. I’d wanted to get him TWO bags of coffee so he could try both flavors, but I also wanted to buy a bag of coffee for someone else, so then I bundled two more bags of coffee, which saved 10% (another $5 before the 25% off). Just Henry’s portion would have been $50 for the two coffees plus $30 for the travel mug, $80 in all—but with the coffee/mug bundle saving $5, and the two-coffee bundle saving another $5 ($2.50 of which applies to Henry’s gift), and then the 25% off, it came to $54.38, assuming I have had enough coffee to handle that math. Again: I am well aware this is Expensive. But the discounts took it into my Willing range.
(image from good.store)
And I bought the vinyl sticker set, which I will cut up so that Edward can have the sock-wearing Dots and Henry can have the coffee-drinking Dots. $6 turned into $4.50, but I would have been happy to spend the $6.
(image from good.store)
I feel almost high about this. Sometimes what I really need is to get over the hurdle of making my first purchase, and I REALLY DO want to support this company, ESPECIALLY since my children want to support it with their gift budgets.
There was an opportunity to sign up for a link to give people $10 off if it was their first time making a purchase (it also gives me “dots,” which seem to be store credit for future purchases, which will help me get over the hurdle the next time I want to shop when there ISN’T a Black Friday sale—not that that’s YOUR job to remove that hurdle, I’m just saying it’s a nice byproduct); I don’t know if it can be combined with the 25% off, but if you’re going to make a purchase anyway, try it and see if it works and let us know: https://oken.do/vr4xphy9
I had gotten my husband the sock subscription before and just ordered it again for his birthday, because they had worn out. We get the coffee delivered. I am trying some of the cleaning products this year. I’m a big fan.
We also try to be thrifty, but this is an easy switch for me to make. I think of it as this is what these things *should* cost, even though I can get it cheaper elsewhere. There are reasons – usually bad reasons – about why those items can be that much cheaper elsewhere. It’s a hard balance, though, and I really get that.
Thanks for this. I needed some replacement brush heads for my dish brush. These were the same price as the other store and then I got 25% off. Sweet.
I’ve been wanting to try their coffee but I didn’t want to start out with a subscription. I just hadn’t gotten around to checking to see if you could get single bags. So thank you for doing my research for me. I’ll try your link to get the Coffee Lover’s bundle.
So it turns out you can’t use the Friend Recommends $10 off discount AND the GiveGood25 discount at the same time. I used the GiveGood discount this time. But if I decide to try a subscription I’ll come back and try your code.
I absolutely adore the Green brothers and The Good store! My daughter had the sock subscription for a year and it was a ton of fun, although to be honest some of the prints weren’t really to my taste. After a year she had plenty of fun socks so we switched to the fancy soap club. As you said it’s not a frugal choice, but I just consider it part of my chairitable budget vs. a household good.
Damn I really hope the Green brothers don’t turn out to be sacrificing kittens in a Satanic cult or something, because they are so awesome. It IS really cool that your kids want part of their gift budget to go for this. And I feel the same way about wanting to pay more for ethical choices but “yikes, THAT much more?”
I really love the stuff I get from good store – I have three subscriptions (socks, tea, and dishwasher tabs). For me, I look at the higher price as a monthly charitable donation. They do a good job being really transparent where the funds are going and partner with local organizations so the changes are more systemic (not just building a hospital, but building roads and a training program for local residents to staff the hospital and associated clinics).