Creative tips and outside-the-box ideas for saving and making money in your personal life.
One of the best ways to get a great deal on something is to stack multiple offers. This can get tricky when retailers prohibit using multiple discounts, but when you get away with it, you can find yourself saving a lot of money. This was the case when I purchased myself a new laptop about two years ago.
The other day I booked a short last-minute cruise for a fun little weekend getaway. I’m a big fan of cruises ever since I took my first one last year and have noticed that if you’re flexible enough, you can really get a great deal that can often make it one of the cheapest vacations possible. In my search I came across a variety of choices and discovered that sometimes the best price isn’t always the best deal.
One of the great things about technology is that it can make our lives easier. We often find ourselves overwhelmed with the latest and greatest tech wonders, but without these tools at our disposal, we can only guess what the best choice is. By embracing technology and utilizing the resources around us, we can often make much more informed decisions. The internet has enabled some of the greatest minds to come together and create tools that can help us find what we are looking for faster and cheaper. One of my favorite tools for doing so is a little plugin called “Invisible Hand“.
One great thing about the internet is that is has opened a whole new world of price comparison shopping. No longer do you have to spend time travelling from store to store, or calling place after place just to find out how much something costs. Now, with the click of a few buttons, you have all of those comparison tools at your fingertips. This is especially beneficial for travelers when looking for flights or hotels. Kayak.com has been around for a while now and is one of my favorite tools for this job, so if you haven’t heard of it, sit back and let me give you a tour.
With technology moving so fast these days you may find yourself buying the latest and greatest new smart phone or tablet just about every other week. I’m a big fan of technology and embrace it like a good friend who’s here to make my life better in some way, but technology items are one of the hardest things to find great deals on because of the low margins. That being said, you can almost guarantee that no matter where you buy that next smart phone or tablet, you will be getting the best (or close to the best) price on it. So how do these retailers make any money selling this stuff you ask? With accessories of course.
For my first official blog post I thought I would start with something small to show that a good deal is a good deal no matter the savings. Many people place negotiations way outside of their comfort zone. It’s not easy to break from the norm and realize that you can get things cheaper just by asking, but this type of behavior is not what we’ve been conditioned to. Negotiating is a learned skill that we can nurture and grow like many other things we do in life and to excel at it you must practice without fear of rejection. So how do we break out of this comfort zone and into some serious deal-making territory? Simple. You start small.