Walking down any Dutch shopping street, you will be hard-pressed to find exclusive boutiques. Rather you will find shop after shop of budget stores such as Xenos, Blokker, and those non-descript “everything-for-a-euro” type bargain stores.

It might seem to be stinginess, but it is not quite like that. They just like to get the most value for their money that they can. The Dutch are famous for their thriftiness.

This also means that the most effective way to get the Dutch to actually buy things is to put them on sale, so Dutch shops are always filled with discounts and sale items. Every week, it seems as if they try and push several trees worth of advertising brochures through our mailbox.

The upside to all of this, is that it is very easy to get good deals on just about everything here in the Netherlands. I certainly cannot complain about it at all.

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