Last week I took my fifteen year old son shopping for a suit for Pesach.

On the way there, we unexpectedly found traffic had come to almost a standstill. Soon we saw what the delay was.

I appreciated the entertaining sights on the way!

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For us, Pesach is the most expensive holiday of the year; last year I spent 5000 shekels on food and 5000 shekels on clothing. For you it might be a different time so you can apply this idea to whatever time of year. What I do to be prepared for the clothing expenses for the holiday is to set up what I call a reserve fund for it in advance (some people call them sinking funds but I dislike that terminology). What that means is I contribute over time until I have the full amount that I’ve budgeted for Pesach clothing shopping.

Having a reserve fund eliminates the burden of huge clothing expenditures in one month, and by the time I’m ready to do my shopping, the money is sitting in the account. This makes it feel like shopping for free!

Really, it takes away all the financial pressure that a person might feel when they need to come up with so much money in a short time period, to have the money already budgeted and set aside.

Last year I did my suit shopping through Mishnat Yosef; you could purchase a coupon for around 650 shekels (I don’t remember the exact price), to be redeemed for a suit up to 1190 shekels in a given store. If you wanted a more expensive suit – and all of my boys didn’t find what they wanted in the lower price range – then you could add on in fifty shekel increments for every hundred shekels the price increased. We got nice suits but we spent more than we would have with the local seller that we’ve bought from in the past, and I regretted not buying from him because I felt concerned when I realized how much business he must be losing to customers buying via Mishnat Yosef.

I told my boys that this year first we’d look to buy from the private store owner, and only if they couldn’t find what they wanted we’d look elsewhere. My eighteen year old commented that the suits we bought last year were higher quality since they were fifty percent wool (instead of rayon/poly/viscose blends), which was good feedback since I hadn’t paid much attention to what their suits were made of when I bought them. If it fit them well, looked good and the price was fair, I bought it.

We asked the store owner if he had suits that were fifty percent wool, but he didn’t. He did have 97 percent wool, though, which was even better! When he showed it to us, it turned out to be the same style suit that I bought for my 22 year old son for his wedding in September, but there were several different colors and styles and we found something really nice for my fifteen year old son.

We checked the available suits at the stores that the Mishnat Yosef vouchers are for to see what their selection was, and my son didn’t find any suits he liked as much as the one from the private seller. The suit vouchers this year are 680 shekels, plus another fifty shekels to add on to the next level up, so we would have spent 730 if we bought from them.

This seller’s prices are good, so we got a much better quality suit than buying through Mishnat Yosef. We spent only another 120 shekels for a higher quality suit from the private seller, and had the extra bonus of buying with my conscience and supporting a small business owner. I expect my son to get much more wear out of this suit, too.

The store owner asked me if I was buying the suit for an occasion so I explained that I’m buying for Pesach, since I don’t like to wait until close to the holidays. When I stepped out to take a call, the store owner told my son how smart his mother is to be shopping for Pesach now.

I bought a suit voucher from Mishnat Yosef for my son learning in Beitar, since I was able to give him my customer number and he can buy his suit at the store branch located there before he comes home for spring break. I asked him to buy it before Purim but I don’t know if he did it yet, and honestly, it’s for him so he can buy it when he wants. That leaves just my husband and my seventeen year old, who were going to go last week to the Tiberias store but something came up, so they’ll go next week instead.

I bought clothing and shoes for all of the younger kids about six weeks ago, as well as Shabbos shoes for a couple of the teens so they’re set. For myself, I’m not much of a shopper and have things I’m content to keep wearing from last year. If I find something, there’s money in the clothing reserve fund for it but it’s likely I won’t since I don’t plan on looking, in which case I’ll roll whatever money is left in the fund into something else – maybe it will go towards a suit for my twelve year old for his bar mitzva this summer.

Avivah