One of My Favorite Holidays
For those of you who missed it, this weeked was one of my favorite holidays. It is likely not on your calendar, unless you wrote it on there yourself. But it is a wonderfully festive time of year for those of us in the great state of Texas.

The first weekend in August brings about the Tax Free Holiday Weekend. Folks, this is a great, magnificent, exciting event. Stores all over the state participate by removing the state sales tax on purchases of clothes and shoes which cost less than $100 each. Do you see how exciting this is??? If I buy 4 pairs of shoes at $99.99 each, I pay no tax! It's incredible!

I look forward to this day with great anticipation. Not only is there no tax, but most stores smartly run everything on sale, to further entice shoppers to spend tax-free money in their stores. It's a beautiful thing. It all comes together to benefit me, and that's the most important thing. In the world.

I wait for this day to buy one item in particular: my annual pair of New Balance running shoes. These are not cheap shoes, so in order to allow myself to wear this kind of shoe, I have to be discriminatory in how and when I purchase them, so as to get the best value. I make these shoes last a long time, to get my money's worth. This year it had actually been two years since I purchased my last pair, so I had been waiting for this day for several months, holding out for the tax-free and hoping for a sale, to reward myself with a new pair of running shoes.

The trick is to go early. The sale takes place during Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. But if you wait til Saturday or Sunday, you run into the parents and kids mega-shopping for school clothes. I want none of that. I know what I want, and I want to get in, find the shoes, make sure they fit, and get out before the mobs ensue.

It was another successful tax-free shopping spree for me this year. I went Friday after work, found the shoes I wanted, and got out without even waiting in a checkout line. The shoes were even on sale, as I'd hoped. I saved a lot of money. It was a truly blessed event.

Praise be to those who invented the Tax-Free Holiday Weekend. Reason enough to justify living in Texas.

C.T.