Everything I Need to Know About Shopping I Learned From My Mother

Two of the best skills I have in life I learned from my mother. One – always look for the rack that says “SALE” on it. Two – how to do sale math.

My mom once told me a story about shopping when my brother and I were pretty little. After entering the department store, I told my brother that we had to find the racks that had S-A-L-E on them. That lesson went down pretty easy. The next lesson was slightly more intimidating.

Growing up, math was not my strong suit. In fact, I sucked at it. So I remember being super annoyed while shopping with my mother and her deciding to teach me how to figure out the sale price of an item when it only had the 25% off sign on the rack. Really Mom? I have to suck at math all week long in school and now you’re trying to make me do it on the weekend too?

As it turns out, sale math is not that difficult. And the little tricks she taught me have served me well throughout my life. Of course, I still calculate sale prices using elementary school math. I figure out what 10% off would be, because all you have to do is move a decimal, and double or triple accordingly. Yes, I could do 30% in my head but it is so much easier elementary school style.

To this day, I have no idea what time Train A and B will meet when they leave their respective stations going some unknown mph. I remember nothing from calculus and couldn’t calculate the sine of something if I had a gun to my head. I can however, do sale math like a champ.