How do you find reasonably priced, quality, long lasting clothing?
On the quality angle a big part of it is experience, but the biggest thing is careful observation.  You have to take a close, critical look at any article of clothing.  (This holds true for just about any purchase.) As far as finding them for reasonable prices it's the usual thing: sales and buying them second-hand. Finally, regarding maintenance: The idea that you should buy quality, long lasting clothes shouldn't go unchallenged. It's just not true for everybody. If you have a job or a lifestyle that makes it so your clothes are going to get worn out fast regardless of quality, buying expensive clothes doesn't make sense. With that said: look for heavier-feeling fabrics, avoid colors that will fade (or worse: bleed into your other clothes in the wash). Check the laundry instructions so you can see whether they're on the delicate end of the spectrum. Re: how to extend the life: avoid bleach. Even color safe bleach contains peroxide which can break down fabrics faster. Use resources like Consumer Reports and recommendations from like-minded friends to figure out brands which have a reputation for making quality clothes.  Then trust, but verify.   Ideally have a friend who sews a lot go with you on a clothing expedition if you don't know how to determine quality in clothing.  People who sew knew their fabrics, and this could be very helpful to you.  Start at places that are known for quality clothing, but make sure the reputation hasn't outlived reality.  I'd look for: Once you've identified places that you can trust, wait for sales at those stores.  I've found that shopping sales at department stores (or better, places like L. L. Bean) is cheaper than a discount retailer and much easier.  Even cheaper, go to a thrift store and look for those brands in timeless styles.  Your mileage will vary in terms of the what people throw out in your area.  Thrift stores work extremely well in high cost of living areas where people give away nearly new items. Are specific brand recommendations allowed? I'm a big fan of Lands' End. They have good quality clothing at reasonable prices in all the basic styles. They have great customer service and you con order online and avoid clothes shopping at the mall (which I hate). According to this http://shine.yahoo.com/event/financiallyfit/cheapest-days-to-shop-online-2301854/ Tuesday is the best day of the week to buy men's apparel. The best way to find good quality is to check the garment tag: What kind of material is it made of? Jersey 100% cotton or any 100% cotton is one of the best quality material for most casual clothing.  Then, you should touch it (designer step/touching). You will get better along the way. If you think you will like it, it may be a good quality. You should try it. and look for similar material when shopping. It does not matter the store where you shop, you should check the garment quality because even at the expensive stores you can find bad quality.  Quality in Stitch: you should check the the garment stitch, look at the top and underneath stitches, watch for good and consist stitching pattern. especially the sides and armholes underneath of the garment.    Style is something personal. Everybody has different style, but stores are classified by age targeting. If you can find a store that usually made your style, good quality material at reasonable price. you should consider shop there. Most of the time, it will cost a little bit more or much more. BUT CHEAP IS EXPENSIVE!! you end up spending more money at the end of the year. Reasonable means a fair price for both parties, You and the seller. Neither cheap or expensive.
For the CPI, there is actually federal employees whose job it is to visit various stores to collect the prices of specific items (boy's size-14 collared shirt made of 97 percent cotton).  Planet Money did a great podcast on this, actually following one of these people for a day. "Zero? Ten grand? Somewhere in the middle? It depends. Your stated salary, in U.S. dollars, would be high five-figures (~$88k). You certainly should not be starving, but with decent contributions toward savings and retirement, money can indeed be tight month-to-month at that salary level, especially since even in Cardiff you're probably paying more per square foot for your home than in most U.S. markets (EDIT: actually, 3-bedroom apartments in Cardiff, according to Numbeo, range from £750-850, which is US$1200-$1300, and for that many bedrooms you'd be hard-pressed to find that kind of deal in a good infield neighborhood of the DFW Metro, and good luck getting anywhere close to downtown New York, LA, Miami, Chicago etc for that price. What job do you do, and how are you expected to dress for it? Depending on where you shop and what you buy, a quality dress shirt and dress slacks will cost between US$50-$75 each (assuming real costs are similar for the same brands between US and UK, that's £30-£50 per shirt and pair of pants for quality brands). I maintain about a weeks' wardrobe at this level of dress (my job allows me to wear much cheaper polos and khakis most days and I have about 2 weeks' wardrobe of those) and I typically have to replace due to wear or staining, on average, 2 of these outfits a year (I'm hard on clothes and my waistline is expanding). Adding in 3 ""business casual"" outfits each year, plus casual outfits, shoes, socks, unmentionables and miscellany, call it maybe $600(£400)/year in wardrobe. That doesn't generally get metered out as a monthly allowance (the monthly amount would barely buy a single dress shirt or pair of slacks), but if you're socking away a savings account and buying new clothes to replace old as you can afford them it's a good average. I generally splurge in months when the utilities companies give me a break and when I get ""extra"" paychecks (26/year means two months have 3 checks, effectively giving me a ""free"" check that neither pays the mortgage nor the other major bills). Now, that's just to maintain my own wardrobe at a level of dress that won't get me fired. My wife currently stays home, but when she worked she outspent me, and her work clothes were basic black. To outright replace all the clothes I wear regularly with brand-new stuff off the rack would easily cost a grand, and that's for the average U.S. software dev who doesn't go out and meet other business types on a daily basis. If I needed to show up for work in a suit and tie daily, I'd need a two-week rotation of them, plus dress shirts, and even at the low end of about $350 (£225) per suit, $400 (£275) with dress shirt and tie, for something you won't be embarrassed to wear, we're talking $4000 (£2600) to replace and $800 (£520) per year to update 2 a year, not counting what I wear underneath or on the weekends. And if I wore suits I'd probably have to update the styles more often than that, so just go ahead and double it and I turn over my wardrobe once every 5 years. None of this includes laundering costs, which increase sharply when you're taking suits to the cleaners weekly versus just throwing a bunch of cotton-poly in the washing machine. What hobbies or other entertainment interests do you and your wife have? A movie ticket in the U.S. varies between $7-$15 depending on the size of the screen and 2D vs 3D screenings. My wife and I currently average less than one theater visit a month, but if you took in a flick each weekend with your wife, with a decent $50 dinner out, that's between $260-$420 (£165-270) monthly in entertainment expenses. Not counting babysitting for the little one (the going rate in the US is between $10 and $20 an hour for at-home child-sitting depending on who you hire and for how long, how often). Worst-case, without babysitting that's less than 5% of your gross income, but possibly more than 10% of your take-home depending on UK effective income tax rates (your marginal rate is 40% according to the HMRC, unless you find a way to deduct about £30k of your income). That's just the traditional American date night, which is just one possible interest. Playing organized sports is more or less expensive depending on the sport. Soccer (sorry, football) just needs a well-kept field, two goals and and a ball. Golf, while not really needing much more when you say it that way, can cost thousands of dollars or pounds a month to play with the best equipment at the best courses. Hockey requires head-to-toe padding/armor, skates, sticks, and ice time. American football typically isn't an amateur sport for adults and has virtually no audience in Europe, but in the right places in the U.S., beginning in just a couple years you'd be kitting your son out head-to-toe not dissimilar to hockey (minus sticks) and at a similar cost, and would keep that up at least halfway through high school. I've played them all at varying amateur levels, and with the possible exception of soccer they all get expensive when you really get interested in them. How much do you eat, and of what?. My family of three's monthly grocery budget is about $300-$400 (£190-£260) depending on what we buy and how we buy it. Americans have big refrigerators (often more than one; there's three in my house of varying sizes), we buy in bulk as needed every week to two weeks, we refrigerate or freeze a lot of what we buy, and we eat and drink a lot of high-fructose corn-syrup-based crap that's excise-taxed into non-existence in most other countries. I don't have real-world experience living and grocery-shopping in Europe, but I do know that most shopping is done more often, in smaller quantities, and for more real food. You might expect to spend £325 ($500) or more monthly, in fits and starts every few days, but as I said you'd probably know better than me what you're buying and what it's costing. To educate myself, I went to mysupermarket.co.uk, which has what I assume are typical UK food prices (mostly from Tesco), and it's a real eye-opener. In the U.S., alcohol is much more expensive for equal volume than almost any other drink except designer coffee and energy drinks, and we refrigerate the heck out of everything anyway, so a low-budget food approach in the U.S. generally means nixing beer and wine in favor of milk, fruit juices, sodas and Kool-Aid (or just plain ol' tap water). A quick search on MySupermarkets shows that wine prices average a little cheaper, accounting for the exchange rate, as in the States (that varies widely even in the U.S., as local and state taxes for beer, wine and spirits all differ). Beer is similarly slightly cheaper across the board, especially for brands local to the British Isles (and even the Coors Lite crap we're apparently shipping over to you is more expensive here than there), but in contrast, milk by the gallon (4L) seems to be virtually unheard of in the UK, and your half-gallon/2-liter jugs are just a few pence cheaper than our going rate for a gallon (unless you buy ""organic"" in the US, which carries about a 100% markup). Juices are also about double the price depending on what you're buying (a quart of ""Innocent"" OJ, roughly equivalent in presentation to the U.S. brand ""Simply Orange"", is £3 while Simply Orange is about the same price in USD for 2 quarts), and U.S.-brand ""fizzy drinks"" are similarly at a premium (£1.98 - over $3 - for a 2-liter bottle of Coca-Cola). With the general preference for room-temperature alcohol in Europe giving a big advantage to the longer unrefrigerated shelf lives of beer and wine, I'm going to guess you guys drink more alcohol and water with dinner than Americans. Beef is cheaper in the U.S., depending on where you are and what you're buying; prices for store-brand ground beef (you guys call it ""minced"") of the grade we'd use for hamburgers and sauces is about £6 per kilo in the UK, which works out to about $4.20/lb, when we're paying closer to $3/lb in most cities. I actually can't remember the last time I bought fresh chicken on the bone, but the average price I'm seeing in the UK is £10/kg ($7/lb) which sounds pretty steep. Anyway, it sounds like shopping for American tastes in the UK would cost, on average, between 25-30% more than here in the US, so applying that to my own family's food budget, you could easily justify spending £335 a month on food." Given the universal crisis and how difficult it’s to gross money these days, people are reconsidering allowances and wise money management. Louis vuitton online sale are virtually each where, however sadly, only a certain folks are able to purchase them with the costly rate tags that come along with them. But, designer bargains really are the stuffs to scout for when it’s the matter of new designer fashion at a much more reasonable. Get ready to impress people around you. Just opt for Men’s linen vests that never go out of fashion&amp; make you look smart every time you wear them. Go for smart, casual tailored look this summer. There are a number of choices available, reflect your best style with Men’s linen vest. Smart. Add in daily necessities like toothpaste, disposable razors and toilet paper and you've got Walmart and Costco by the balls.   Most people are spending their money on consumables and are much more conservative these days. If I were them I'd stick to food and the daily needs and not even bother with clothing and furniture and such. Keep it simple I think. In and out. Years ago, Costco had amazing quality made in italy wool pants. The quality to price ratio was unbelievable. They stopped getting them from the italian manufacturer and they suck now. I imagine that Costco did what you were talking about. In the end, it was bad for the customer. You're missing out by not buying shirts online. I guess it depends on the type of shirt, but I'll never buy a men's dress shirt in a store again outside of an emergency. In store shirts are always crazy expensive, poor quality, and a terrible fit.  Online I can get the precise size, fabric, and construction I want, for about a third cheaper than in store. "Best strategy that has worked for me is to remember first of all that you hardly ever need anything ""right now"". Try this: if you see something you want to buy, leave it for at least two weeks, better yet a month. If after that time you have hardly thought about it, then you almost certainly don't need it. But if you've thought quite a lot about owning it and how it will be beneficial, then perhaps it's worth picking up. You will probably find that a small percentage of things you'd like to buy make it through that screening period." I speak as a person without kids, but I'll give this a shot anyway, using my memory of the perspective I had when I was a kid.  My advice is, if the kids are young enough to not care much, don't be afraid of the thrift store.  My parents got a bunch of clothes from the thrift store as I was growing up (around elementary school age) and I didn't care at all.  When I got to be older, (middle school age) shopping at Target and K-mart didn't seem bad either.  By the time the kids are old enough to really care beyond, they are probably old enough to get their own part-time jobs and get their own clothing. I however, am probably naive, as I still care little for such things, and judging from popular culture, most care about them a great deal. Fining fitting plus size clothes for men can be quite a frustrating process. Most stores will only stock regular sizes for clothes. However, there are options that a plus size wearer can pursue. For years XXLLENT have pride in producing well made large men's plus size clothing for big and curvy men. With our “Budget Closeouts” you can save a lot of money as we are agents and Buy closeout Apparel have a more affordable Towels and Bath items than other closeout sources. 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Additionally you might find it hard to keep your job or get a new one if the economy turns bad, and in an extreme ""no deal"" scenario you might find yourself forced to leave - though I think that's very unlikely. House prices could also collapse leaving you in ""negative equity"". If you're planning on staying in the same location in the UK for a long time, a house tends to be a worthwhile investment, particularly as you always need somewhere to live, so owning it is a ""hedge"" against prices rising. Even if prices do fall, you do still have somewhere to live. If you're planning on going back to your home country at some point, that reduces the value of owning a house. If you want to reduce your risk, consider getting a mortgage with a long-term fixed rate. There are some available for 10 years, which I'd hope would be enough to get us over most of the Brexit volatility."