With Halloween coming up at the end of the month and seeing all those candy for sale one thing that comes to my mind immediately is how the prices for these products drop like a rock the very next day. Essentially, businesses want to get rid of them since they are kind of holiday specific.

This is true for most other holidays as well. Some people even go a little further such as buying Christmas presents for people after the actual holiday as that is when people start returning items and similarly businesses want to get rid of excess inventory.

I guess food items are usually the cheapest in a post occasion day as they have best before dates and of course no one wants to buy expired food which is an even more reason to get rid of it faster before it becomes close to it.

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Recently I was talking to a friend who has a contract with a cell phone provider and his phone has this scratch on it which pretty bad. But, as soon as his contract runs out he can pretty much get another one either for free or at a heavy discount. Thing is, he is thinking of simply buying a new phone still just because of the scratch as he mentions that it is extremely annoying.

A lot of times too when people have the money available they would just plunk down the extra cash to buy new items simply because of some cosmetic damage even the product itself is working fine.
The question I always ask in these situations is whether the motivation arises from trying to impress others or if it genuinely affects the functionally. Example, a screen with big slash of some sort right across it might make the viewing experience too distracting which warrants a replacement.

For myself, I always have rule where if the damage is that bad to me but still meets my needs, then I can only buy a new one if I can find it for 20% of the original price that I paid for. So for example, if it is a $100 item that I paid for then that means I would only get the new one if I was able to get it for $20. That doesn’t necessarily mean the item itself has to be $20 now, but it could be that I would have to find a sale for the product at say $70 and then sell my old one for say $50.

As you can tell, that odds aren’t exactly with me in buying in a new one and so many times I just end up using the same item until it becomes truly broken or non usable. This way it gives you a good time to think about too as you may realize in the next few days that the damage isn’t really that bad at all and can bear with it.

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One remark that I have been hearing a lot lately is how people feel they have been mislead in life to borrow various forms of credit to purchase items and as a result they are in thousands of dollars of debt which seems impossible to pay off. Even on a business side, so many people are saying that they can’t maintain operations as a result of not being able to get enough credit.

Maybe I am one of few that think this way, but to me credit should simply be a form of convenience and not as an integral factor to either purchasing things or operating some kind of business. Similar to a credit card, if I don’t have say $100 in the bank already then I am not going to buy a $100 gizmo with the intentions that I will find a way to bring in that amount by the billing due date.

So just thinking about it, if you had no credit today how would you be? For myself, I know it would be kind of an annoyance such as having to carry money around, but for the most part everything would be pretty normal. While you may be to get things a lot faster by borrowing a lot of money, I usually prefer to have as less liabilities as possible.

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I was reading a quick article today that talked about how many multi billionaires are treating these current unstable market conditions as a great opportunity to invest in various companies for virtually nothing compared to what it would cost normally despite the negative opinions.

This can be so true in many ways even when it comes to starting some kind of business I thought. I know quite a few that began its operations during a time where everyone said it would be a suicidal time to do so and in the end they became a big player in the industry and are doing well.

One of the reasons they mentioned was that while everyone was afraid to do anything, even if there is less opportunity out there than normal if you are the only one doing anything then you can essentially get all the attention and business. Sure enough, that is what happened for them and as things in general got better they of course grew with it.

I guess this is one of those things where it is up to you to make something out of it as there is always an endless amount of opportunity to do something despite conditions that you may face. Kind of reminds me of that phrase where if you encounter a lemon then you may as well make the best of it and make lemonade.

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Recently there was this “Do Not Call List” program that was introduced for people who don’t want to be contacted by telemarketers. As expected, over a million people phoned in to be added on the list. With all this economy doom news going on and how jobs are going to vanish it was interesting to hear comments on how some people believe you shouldn’t add yourself to this list if you care about the economy.

The reasoning was that companies generate a lot of business through telemarketing. Not only would that mean less revenue for them, but telemarketing centers would employ less people as a result as well. I was just thinking how in cases like these most people would probably think of themselves first without a second thought.

For me personally I wouldn’t let economy factors influence me too much in these particular commercial situations because if people dislike the method so much then maybe it’s time to find new ways to market to people. Hence, maybe people will lose their jobs as telemarketers but I’m sure their skill set will be easily transferable to a new marketing method that is created to adapt to the situation. Otherwise it is kind of like having a fear of change as a reason to not want to go on.

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