How to Save $100,000! (Part 2)
Image sourced by Markus Spiske @markusspiske
Welcome back!
Today we’ll share 7 more ways to save $100,000.
In Part 1 of this series, we revealed a powerful way to examine your buyer thinking, buyer behavior and spending behavior so you can make better decisions about your money, money management and building wealth. You can grab that here.
In this segment of this Budget and Grow Rich® moneysaving and wealth-building series, we’ll explore common buying habits and spending behavior – buyer behavior.
SO you can save more money and create greater cash flow, which you can use to pay down debt and invest to build wealth!
Like many people, I receive print catalogs from The Great Courses® published by The Teaching Company. It sure seems like one a week, begging me to buy.
The Great Courses® are lectures written and presented by college and university professors. They offer over 100 subjects. They’re very informative. The traditional format is each course contains four to six DVDs plus a companion printed guide. Loaded with information.
The company is closing out its DVD editions and switching to online (streaming). So they’re offering nice discounts to clear out its inventory.
Recently, they sent me several catalogs offering steep discounts – ~75% off – on the DVD format.
During Summer 2024, I received three or four catalogs. They pretty much wore me down but I held my resolve and didn’t make a purchase. I flipped through the catalogs, circling the Courses I wanted to purchase and set aside all the catalogs. I even made a list of the Courses I wanted to purchase. I identified six Great Courses to buy.
Two were “Life Lessons from the Great Books” and “Churchill” by Professor J. Rufus Fears of the University of Oklahoma. After watching the movie The Darkest Hour, learning more about Winston Churchill was high on my list. Another course was. . .
“How to View and Appreciate Great Movies”, by Professor Eric Williams, Ohio University. You Know how much I love the movies. And three courses on. . .
Personal Finance and Building Wealth.
All in, the total cost would have been $322.95 plus sales tax at 8% ($25.84) and a shipping & handling charge of $12. At retail prices, the grand total would have been $360.79, which would have been a show stopper for me. Too rich for my blood (bank account).
After waiting a few weeks, I finally decided I really wanted to purchase only the Course on the Great Movies Only. That cost $25 plus sales tax and shipping and handling. $39.95 in total.
Here’s how I saved $297.95 and more, Time and Time Again. And You Can Too:
Before you buy, WAIT. DON’T BUY Immediately. SIT and WAIT.
Create a “Waiting Period” or “Evaluation Period” before you purchase any nice-to-have or luxury items:
Sleep on it a day or two or three before you buy.
One week?
Two weeks?
Or some other cadence depending on the materiality of the purchase – how much the item costs; how often will you use the item; how much satisfaction will you get from owning the item. . . The break should be long enough that it allows your tendency to make an impulse buy, an impulse purchase, to die down, subside.
So rationality can come back into your buying analysis and buying decision.
Delete emails from merchants that are sales pitches! Click delete – Goodbye. Make it a habit.
Discard sales letters – also known as ‘Junk Mail’ upon receipt. Toss them into the ‘circular file’ ASAP.
If you don’t want to delete these promotional emails from merchants for whatever reason, create these emails in a separate, dedicated subdirectory. And resist the temptation to look!
Create a new email address to receive emails from merchants. This will unclog your primary email account and remove these promotions from sight. As they say, “Out of sight, out of mind.”
EVALUATE whether you will use the item enough to make it worth the purchase price. And remember, typically there is sales tax and often a shipping and handling charge too, in addition to the cost of the item(s).
Confirm whether you have enough money in the bank to fund the purchase now, without incurring credit card debt. If not, postpone the purchase or pass altogether.
After your waiting period. . .
Ask yourself whether you will use the item enough to justify the purchase price.
Decide whether you want to wait until ‘next month’, the month after that or even the month after that, to make the purchase.
Delete promotion emails and toss catalogs into the trash bin!
Before I ordered this latest batch of Great Courses, I decided to check my bookshelf.
Needless to say, I discovered three Great Courses, UNOPENED!
Plus, I had given one Course on self-publishing to my friend Stephanie who’s an author and self-publisher. A nice gift but not necessarily the highest and best use of my money.
A few months earlier, I had purchased the Great Course “How Railways Transformed the World”. The list price for the DVD format was $339.95 but the Course was on sale for $39.99.
That’s a great savings, BUT ONLY if I will use the product or service. So far I haven’t, but I plan to dive in soon!
And on my shelf, I also found “How to Dance”. The list price was also $339.95 but I recall that I paid $39.99 plus sales tax and shipping & handling. I don’t recall.
My logic was that since I was back on the dating scene, becoming a better dancer was a very good idea.
Worse, in fact I hadn’t even recalled purchasing “How to Dance”.
Given that the Course is gathering dust on my shelf, unopened, I highly doubt that my dance skills have improved one iota. Nope.
Both Courses nicely sit on my shelf, unopened, still in the shrink wrap gathering dust! Just Wonderful!
How many of these “whatevers” do you have lying around your house, unopened, unused or barely used?
Believe me, I have Plenty. Come on by and check out my vast collection of Great Courses and DVDs.
See you next week.
Arthur V.
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