IT’S MY MONEY | Labor Day Weekend is coming up and I have some shopping to do! I have a wedding to attend on Sunday and I need a dress, so I think I will hit the hysteria of Union Square on the weekend to see if I can find a deal.

I’ve heard from many experts that you should do a practice run online before a big shopping day. Here’s some sites I’ll be checking out to warm up my buying muscles:

• Amazon: 70% of more than 400 products for the home.
• Macy’s: Up to 50% off. I need some new black pumps!
• La Redoute: 50 % off tons of items. A friend turned me onto this catalog store while we were in college. Chic, but not cheap-looking clothes.

BITS & PIECES | My dear readers, I was on vacation last week in lovely Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. The week before that, I was spent a week in hot and humid Nashville, Tenn., for online journalism training. So keep an eye out for a better Shop Talk!

Now, I’m back in the East Bay and am excited about a few things:

• Cheap and chic retailer Steve & Barry’s opened its first Northern California store earlier this month at NewPark Mall in Newark. This store’s claim to fame is Bitten, a line of clothes designed by Sarah Jessica Parker.

• We are less than two weeks away from the debut of Very Vera by Vera Wang at Kohl’s. I have shopped at Kohl’s fewer than a handful of times in my life, but I might become a regular! The line is somewhat higher priced than the usual Kohl’s fare, so we’ll see if it’s a hit.

• While in Nashville, I worked on a n audio slideshow about the Hillsboro Shopping District. Who doesn’t love independent retailers? Check it out!

RETAIL DETAIL | I read in the New York Times this morning that Ann Taylor will develop a new chain to chase older, baby boomer shoppers.

It’s two current concepts, Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft, are geared toward 30s and 40s career women. And me. I’m wearing a gray and black wool Ann Taylor skirt as we speak and I’m 26. I started shopping there frequently a couple of years ago because they have awesome clearance sales and good staples like sophisticated solid tops, capri pants and blazers.

Ann Taylor is smart to reach out to a new demographic, although the baby boomer scene is getting a little crowded. Who isn’t reaching out to them? Boomers, but the way, are categorized as people born from 1946 to 1964. Gap made a foray into this market with Forth and Towne, an effort that tanked. Then again, that was Gap, which is tanking left and right. Maybe Ann Taylor can do a better job.

TIP JAR | I loved coupons when I was a kid. It was so exhilarating to get 50 cents off a bar of soap or box of popsicles. Since then, however, I’m too disorganized to keep coupons around, which is too bad since they seem more commonplace these days. Target and Safeway give them out with receipts. They come inside newspapers, catalogs, magazines, all kinds of publications! But again, who has the time and organization to clip, save and use them?
Well, forget all that. I just discovered a site called Retail Me Not that has compiled online coupons for a myriad of retailers. It’s like free money! Just watch out for expiration dates as some of the coupon codes I found were past due.