How To Shop Smart

Shopping Confusion

Many years ago, before I was born, when you needed to buy something you went to the store, bought what you needed and went home.  Occasionally you looked for sales or stores going out of business, but the buying process was simple.  Fast forward to today and being a consumer is more difficult and complicated than ever.  When you want to buy something you have the choice of doing it in person, over the phone, through a magazine or online.  If you buy something in person you get the satisfaction of having it right then, but you don’t always know if you got a good deal on it.  If you buy something online, you can usually search for a good price, but sometimes the item takes a while to get to you and you often have to pay shipping costs.  The question I want to pose to you is how do you know if you’re shopping the smartest way you can?

My husband and I pride ourselves on being thrifty and frugal with most things and try to never pay full price, except for some food items.  We do our grocery shopping at wholesale places, buy our furniture at thrift stores, through Craig’s List or from scratch and dent places, stock up on items when they’re highly discounted and only buy clothes that are at least 50% off.  This makes it so that we don’t always get exactly what we want, but we figure they’re all just things so it doesn’t matter anyway.  I’ve read some blogs on Couponbuzz that talk about the best times of year to buy certain items and I’ve added that to my list of frugalities.  I’ve recently tried to buy more fruit that’s in season to hopefully save on cost as well, but even with all my attempts, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing something important.

I searched and found a book at Borders called “The Consumer Bible: 1001 Ways to Shop Smart” by Mark Green.  This book is exactly what I was looking for.  In here are all the tried and tested strategies of what to buy when and where to save the most money.  I’m already doing some of the techniques, but now have a lot more to add to help me save even more money.  Some of the things aren’t possible for my current situation, but I’m applying whatever I can.  Here is my challenge to you:  Get the book, read it and start making a few changes at a time.  You may have to alter your lifestyle quite a bit, but in the end it will be for your good.  Good luck and try to shop smart!

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Tags: clothes, deals, food, frugal, groceries, sales, shop, shopping