Fantasy Shopping Spree

Ok, ladies, have you heard of Fantasy Football? Well, from what I understand, guys get together and “draft” various NFL players that they would like to put on a dream team. Then throughout the season they keep track of the stats from each player and somehow determine which team “wins” based on the team’s combined stats...or something like that. What do they win? I guess some play for money but some just play for the glory of saying they won something. Sounds fun, huh?

Well, I have come up with an idea for an equally pointless and stereotypical pastime for women. I call it Fantasy Shopping Spree. This is how it works.

Keep in mind we are not actually buying anything at all.

First of all we have to make a list of our “dream wardrobe” or “dream shopping spree.” We obviously cannot shop for an entire fake new wardrobe because that would take way too much time and effort. For consistency, we all must have the same basic framework to our list. Our list will include 16 items. The list should include:

· 2 pairs of slacks
· 1 skirt
· 3 blouses or tops (whatever you want to call them)
· 1 dress
· 2 pairs of jeans
· 3 pairs of shoes (casual or dress, your choice)
· 2 bags
· 2 jewelry items

Make up and hair accessories are not included in this particular shopping experience. I do not consider those things to be part of a wardrobe and since I am making up the game, what I say goes.

Ok, so this is what we do. At the beginning of a season, i.e., fall, winter, etc., we get together and decide on particular items to fill our lists. But you must do your research prior to the “draft.” This is where it gets a little tricky. Pick specific items according to brand and store location. You must pick items that are regularly priced at the beginning of the season. No one person can choose the exact same item, even if they are different sizes.

The object of our little game is to track the prices of our specific items once a week to see if the average price at the end of the season is lower than the price it started out to be. So you want to pick stores that often put things on sale. The price range of the clothing doesn’t really matter because we are tracking the price decrease and it will be a percentage at the end. Your clothes can be chosen from various stores.

This is an example of how you determine the “stat” for a particular piece of clothing. The original price of a pair of jeans is $45.00. The tracking of those jeans once per week for 12 weeks leads to an average price of $32.00 (each weekly price divided by 12). We would then divide 32 by 45 to get approximately .71. The lower the price, the lower the percentage. At the end of our fake shopping season, we would have a percentage for each item of clothing on our list. We will then add up all our percents and divide that by the total number of items on our list, in our case, 16 items. The person with the lowest percentage at the end is the winner!

The winner doesn’t win anything at all.