Comments on: It’s Only a Deal If…

By: Festival of Frugality: Singles Awareness Edition â€” Broke Grad Student

Festival of Frugality: Singles Awareness Edition â€” Broke Grad Student — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 12:05:58 +0000

[...] lays out some guidelines to determine whether or not you’re really getting a deal in It’s Only a Deal If… at No Debt [...]

By: Start-Up

Start-Up — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 19:43:40 +0000

I absolutely agree that it’s only a deal if it’s the cheapest that you can find it, not because it’s on sale. The circuit city liquidations are great examples. I haven’t bought a thing at these circuit city liquidations even though I’m continuously on the lookout for deals on electronics and movies. These liquidations that gave anywhere from 10% to 50% off didn’t provide me the savings that I can find on slickdeals.net (my favorite deal site).

By: Steve in Denmark

Steve in Denmark — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 09:06:15 +0000

@Kevin.

To be fair to us both: We have joint accounts (one ‘main’ one into which our wages are paid and bills are paid from. A second is our ‘day-to-day’ or ‘Entertainment Food Travel’ account, into which the main account pays a set amount every two weeks (so we don’t spend it all in one go!), so we live from the second account). Our budget(ing) includes a monthly ‘allowance’ of 500 Kroner each. We can choose to spend it (obviously you can’t spend more than you have left that month) or save up. I saved mine up for several months.

Just after Christmas, the UK economy (I’m originally from England) went really bad and the Pound dropped to around 7.75 Dkk. So I dived in and ‘saved’ (against going to downtown Ã…rhus and buying it) around 600Dkk. I got it off Amazon.co.uk and because it was delivered inside the UK (to my parents’ in Wales) I also got free postage. My Dad then forwarded it on to me here in Denmark, at a cost of about Â£7.00. Not a bad bit of business, if you ask me.

I’m also a student (again) now – learning my job better, so I can go up several pay grades by the end of the year – and I’m off down town now to buy the new iWork software (it’s all allowed for in the Budget!) at 8% discount, using my new Student Discount Card. Sweet.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:30:49 +0000

@Bob: Oh I completely agree. I’ve been able to control myself very well, but I definitely feel the tug of want, want, want.

@Steve: …wow. Nice My wife reads this blog so I won’t comment further!

By: Steve in Denmark

Steve in Denmark — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 17:22:14 +0000

That’s what wives were invented for: To say ‘Steve, do you really NEED another iPod, when you’ve got 5 already?’.

Wives thereby serve (yet) another purpose…by asking tricky questions like that, you get great mental exercise trying to think of an unanswerable answer.

“But…erm, this one’s new!” “And, if I buy it in the UK, and my Dad sends it here, with the exchange rate – I’ll actually SAVE money!”

She fell for it…I mean; she agreed with me.

By: Bob B

Bob B — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 15:16:30 +0000

It is so difficult passing up on those shiny items when you are a techo-geek. That is where the opposable thumbs come in handy, to grab them from the other hand and put it back on the shelf!

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:02:59 +0000

@tom: What we love about Publix is if they run a BOGO sale, if you only buy one, it is still 50% off. So if it is something you won’t use two of before it goes bad or something like that, you still get the deal.

By: tom

tom — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:00:15 +0000

speaking of “you paid a smaller price than you would normally pay”

I can relate this to whenever there are sales, say at the local grocery store. I see so many people doing this.
Say a product is 6 bucks but not it costs 4 bucks. so what do people do, they buy 2 of them and end up spending 8 bucks.

Now if you actually need it then it may be a bargain for you, but if you are just buying because its on sale and cheap, well there we have a problem