Comments on: Buying it now vs. saving money

By: Yolanda

Yolanda — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:00:37 +0000

“At what point do you say it’s all right to buy in the store? Less than $50 more? $100? Or do you plan enough that you always have time to search for price?”

I always do comparison shopping first tru the internet for most of the stuff I need, even when it’s really important and I have to get it right away – I mean, how long does it take to compare prices in the internet? Less than 10 minutes but the dollars you can save can be huge! But especially for items that I feel is not really a NEED, I try to put it off until I have saved enough money to buy it.

Yolanda
http://www.findmypaydayloan.com

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 11:06:05 +0000

I never buy in a brick-and-mortar store unless one of four conditions applies:

1. I need it urgently. Too soon for FedEx. This is rare, and usually only applies to purchases that I’ll later be able to write off my income taxes as business expenses.

2. I need to evaluate its suitability for the task at hand, and the available online data is insufficient. Mostly this applies to clothes.

3. It’s heavy. So heavy that shipping charges are excessively high. This is a category I created specifically to explain why I buy my UPSen at brick-and-mortar stores.

4. The online retailer has a tax nexus in Illinois (and thus is required to charge obscene taxes on any purchase shipped to an address in Chicago), and I can get the same item across the border in Indiana. I’ll pay a substantial premium in sticker price in order to pay less in tax. But this category is about to be rendered moot, since I’m primarily living in Indiana now, and my Chicago address stops being good at the end of the month.

Other than in those four sorts of cases, I buy everything online, when I can find it online.

By: samerwriter

samerwriter — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:15:42 +0000

It depends on the item and how urgently I need it, but generally if I can buy locally for about 10% more than the online price, I’ll choose the local retailer.

Of course generally finding out what the local price is requires driving around and shopping. That’s a pain, so if I don’t need something right away I usually buy it online without worrying about the online price.

One great find is that Performance Bicycle will match any price, online or brick & mortar, even after a sale.

So if I need a bunch of bike stuff, I go buy it all from Performance. Then I go home, find the best online prices for each of those items, and next time I’m at Performance I do a price match. I can generally get bike parts at about 50% off retail this way.