Unemployment has finally allowed me to “come out” as a world class cheapskate, and the recession has made my long held predilection for thrift fashionable. I have lots of company now too, and not just from fellow layoff victims and those with normally low or fixed incomes. A recent “New York Times” story, for example, highlighted upper and upper middle class employed folks who finally feel comfortable admitting their passion for penny pinching  It suggested that in 2009 “keeping up with the Jones’” may mean bargain hunting as well as your neighbors, and not driving as big a car as they do.

You’ll always see articles and advice suggesting saving by going to big box stores like Costco, but for city folks without cars or lots of storage space shopping from bulk warehouses isn’t always practical. The last time I tried to stock up at Costco the price of car service negated much of my cost saving. Here are some of my favorite pedestrian friendly destinations and brands for maximum bang for the buck; I loved many of them before I was a 405er, and my affection is only growing.

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Ed. note: Welcome to the latest installment of “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals,” a column by a laid-off recruiting manager in New York. Prior columns are collected [here]. You can reach Janet Raiffa via LinkedIn, leaving a comment here, or emailing 405club@gmail.com.

After I was laid off in March I quickly realized that my job search would be different than the one I’d engaged in only the year before, and all the other job searches I’d undertaken in two decades as a recruiter.  A significant number of my former colleagues were out of work, and senior level jobs in the industries I had experience in – consulting, law, and banking – were increasingly hard to find, and still undergoing contraction. I knew I’d have to take on some part-time work to fill the days between interviews, and I was lucky to find a wide variety of odd jobs that kept my spirits up even if they didn’t exactly fill my bank account. I “babysat” for the bird of parents whose children I’d minded years ago, I dodged flying clothing while doing a retail stint at a sample sale, I cater-waitered for a comfort food entrepreneur, I petitioned for a Democratic candidate for District Attorney, served as a guinea pig for psych and science experiments at Columbia, and hit the streets to cast shopaholic women for a reality television show.  Some of the jobs made me feel like I was back in college again and that all my years of professional experience had been mysteriously dissolved, and others proved valuable largely because the manual tasks involved helped me burn more calories than I ever had while working at a desk job.  Of all these short-term gigs, the one that I’ve been doing the longest and still find the amusing is my job as a trailer-checker – a marketing research associate who gets paid to go to the movies.

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