The BudgeX Blog

Finding deals on things has been an addiction of mine since I was a teenager.  In middle school I used to have so much free stuff mailed to my house that my parents forced me to stop.  Several years later I still hold the same ideals I did back then, only now I am more experienced.  I have found deals on computers, leather chairs, televisions, and even cars among other things.  When I say “deals”, I’m talking 80%, 90%, and  sometimes even over 100% off the retail price for new items, purchased at normal stores.  The most recent deal I scored: Brand New Logitech Z-5500 5.1 Surround Sound speakers for $2.86. That’s two dollars and 86 cents.  People regularly ask me to find them a good deal on a certain product for them, and I’m always happy to do it.  How, you might ask?  It’s a combination of several sources, strategies, and skills which took me several years to master, and I’m going to teach you how.

Rule #1: Don’t Ever be Satisfied with the First Price you See

Bargain hunting is like accepting a challenge.  Whether you’re shopping online or in a store, browsing for hats or hard drives, always check the price of the item you are interested in at competing stores.  That’s what they’re there for.  There are a few other skills that you can practice to better judge what constitutes a good price which I’ll talk about later, but the general concept is to always challenge yourself to find a better deal than what’s in front of you.  Tell yourself that you can do better.  All in all it’s not that difficult– in many cases it is a lot of fun– and the best part about comparison shopping is that you never even have to leave your seat.

Rule #2: Always Check Online Before you Buy

I could write a book about how to utilize the Internet’s capabilities to find the holy grails of ridiculously good deals.  Instead, we’ll begin with the basics, then ease into advanced techniques.  Check search engine sites like Google and  Google Products (formerly Froogle) to see if other stores are selling the product you’re interested in for cheaper.  I tend to stay away from some comparison shopping sites like NexTag and BizRate, mainly because they sucked in the past and I never looked back.

The online research step takes the most amount of time, and realistically you can never truly “complete” this step.  You either get really tired of searching or decide that you can’t wait any longer to buy the product, and that’s how you continue.  It all depends on how much time you are willing and able to spend on your research, and as we saw in my previous post on the value of your time,  that’s worth exactly $0.  But not to worry, because I will soon teach you better techniques to streamline your online research to find the best price on the products you want, fast.

Today’s money-saving offer: HP USB Laser Mouse for FREE (After rebate).  We’ll start with small fish, then move up to bigger game.