Smart Shopping The Smart Way
With the current economic climate and prices seemingly at an all time high, “penny pinching” or just plain shopping around to get the best “bang for your buck” is commonsense.
Cheap buying tips
- Never pay retail price
Most stores will negotiate on prices, especially if you mention (very subtly) a competitor having better prices — often they are more than willing to bid against the competitor. - Don’t just shop around locally
Feel free to look around in furniture stores in your local area, online and in magazines. Once you’ve figured out exactly what you want, then embrace the internet and try even different states — different areas will tend to have cheaper prices at different times of the year. Naturally, if you purchase online or even at a store, factor in delivery charges into the full price of the merchandise to determine the best deal. - Keep a look out for clearance sales
January and July are typical periods of the year when stores look to get rid of their existing merchandise to make room for new ones. One caveat to beware of is that sometimes these sales come with no warranty nor customer service. - Beware of holiday sales
Often times holiday sales such as Thanksgiving and Christmas have come with excessive promotions and are disguised as the best times to buy. However, these big reductions sometimes come after the holiday markup has been applied — you may just end up paying the regular price or even more…the big promotions are pretty much to get you into the stores with spending on the brain. - Check online coupons
Most likely if you do a simple search at the many online coupons sites out there you will be able to find discounts, free gift or at least free shipping on your purchase — so utilize these to the fullest. Some of the popular ones are RetailMeNot and CouponCodes4u.
