Saving on Shopping
Intro
In a bid to put some of my knowledge of the financial industry to good, practical use, I’ve devised some handy hints and tips you can use to save big on shopping. Shopping in some or other form pretty much rules our entire lives, so you might as well master the art of doing it right. My touching on how to do it right swiftly brings into focus the first of these handy hints, which is determining the purpose of shopping. Why do you buy the stuff you buy? Why do you spend money on whatever it is you do indeed spend money on?
Determining the purpose of a purchase
The key to saving on your shopping resides in your ability to separate value from price. If you have an itch to buy something then that inkling to make a purchase is probably driven by frivolity. The guys might be happy to learn that when we take forever having disappeared into some shopping mall somewhere, it doesn’t always mean we’re looking to buy every single thing on the shelves on impulse. Sure, we’ll perhaps always have to deal with the “But how many shoes and handbags do you have?” question, but it really isn’t always about impulse-buying. Sometimes we disappear for hours while shopping because we’re hunting the best deal, comparing and contrasting prices against the value offered.
Every time you feel you want to buy something, ask yourself one question – “Why do I want to buy this?”
There’s also nothing wrong with spoiling yourself and spending your hard-earned money on things you want in addition to the things you need. The aim is just not to spend aimlessly – not to spend more money than the value you get. Just because something is indicated to be part of a 70% off sale, it doesn’t mean you suddenly have to have it and in actual fact it doesn’t necessarily mean you would have really paid 70% more for it.
The most profound reason as to why it’s important to determine the purpose of a purchase as a means through which to save on shopping though is that of the fact that you can subsequently apply some smarts. For instance, if I’m a web developer, just for example, and I’d surely love the latest design in a certain designer hand-bag, paying an arm and a leg and then having to deal with the debt-repayment consequences thereof is probably not the smartest route to take when I could rather perhaps offer up my services as a web developer to the designer or retailer in exchange for that item I so badly want.
When you know the purpose of a purchase then you give yourself a great base from which to save big on shopping.
Segmenting purchases – urgent and non-urgent purchases
This applies mostly to those things in your life which you purchase regularly, but either way it’s important to segment your purchases. Differentiate between urgent purchases and those which you can wait a while for. This is one of the easiest and oldest tricks in the book to deploy in order to amass some of the biggest savings which are essentially up for grabs to anyone who makes the effort to bide their time.
Do you really need to stand in line, camping outside the store so that you can be one of the first people to get your hands on the new iPhone, for example?
Mastering the art of finding the best deals
Mix and match it up with your shopping sources and you’re halfway towards mastering the art of uncovering the best deal. By mix and matching it up I’m referring to browsing both physically and online and I really never thought the day would come when some of us do most if not all of our shopping online. Sometimes there are great deals to be had in-store, especially when it comes to consumer goods like electronics and fashion, but on the other hand browsing online to do price comparisons and to check out reviews alongside browsing the best deals is made quicker by virtue of the fact that it’s all done with the click of a mouse button.
If you use deals sites to find the best deals then signup as a member, but make sure to check those same sites using a different device with which you haven’t signed up. The reason for this is that sometimes the vendors use cookies to determine whether or not you’re a proven buyer, in which case they first hit you with higher offers before giving you some of the better deals as you want them.
Success stories
Julia Moore
Olivia Holmes
Maria Anna
Roberto Lopez