Today I saw a sale on a computer part that was incredibly cheap. You could easily save about $300 if you bought the item compared to what other places are charging for it. Of course, the thing is that this is just one component of many that you would need to actually build a system. While I do intend to build a new system in the future, my thought is that better things will come out by. With that in mind, even though the price seems so good that the retail price probably still won’t be as cheap by the time I want to build one it seems more sensible to hold off.

It’s more for habit I guess too as I don’t want to get in a trend of continually justifying purchases simply because the price is so cheap. Isn’t that how people end up with a like a full closet of clothes that they never wear for example? As usual too I try to think whether or not I can easily sell the item to make a profit where if I did by it at least that way I am earning something and it is not going to waste. In this case I’m thinking when you resell things in a casual way people usually expect to buy things that are a lot cheaper than retail. So the profit won’t be as great.

I think non-perishable food items are the only real things that I would immediately jump on if the prices were great and knowing that I would consume them in the future for sure.

I noticed here recently that almost every Mcdonalds restaurant is offering free coffee to anyone and everyone everyday. My assumption is that they just launched a new brand of coffee and this way they can try to attract customers while potentially stealing them away from other big companies like Starbucks.

For myself I am not a coffee drinker and so this doesn’t affect me at all. What this made me think of is how this could easily get someone hooked on a product that you normally would have spent nothing on it. Eventually you will and it will add up as an extra expense. I actually avoid taking free stuff a lot in these types of scenarios if it’s a situation where a person wants you to try something you are unfamiliar with.

Example, I would be inclined to pass on an offer of say getting a free one month subscription for a magazine of some sort unless I was specifically looking to potentially subscribe to it ahead of time. Otherwise I find that you usually set yourself up to try and justify in introducing this new habit/product into your lifestyle.

Of course it must be working for businesses for them to continually provide offers like these. But if the goal is to save money then simply not being greedy is one way to continually train your habits from over indulging or having too much clutter.

Today I saw this computer accessory bundle at Best Buy’s site that had a whole load of stuff for about $9.99 as you can see here:

Essentially, you are getting a power bar, webcam, headphone, 1GB USB stick and some LCD wipes. The catch? It looks like for the most part it is very cheap and outdated products. I wouldn’t expect too much out of the webcam and headphones as an example. But this did bring up a point I thought. Let’s pretend you were in the market for like a webcam. In some ways you can say this is like paying $10 for a webcam and getting everything else for free. So in that sense it can be a good deal.

I was thinking too how a lot of the items in this bundle would simply get tossed in the storage space if I did buy the bundle. Call me crazy here, but if I wanted to buy say a webcam I would rather pay like $15 and buy a more modern day one. I know value wise it is probably not as good when you factor in everything, but I know it will just build up as like a collection of unused items.

For bundles like these if I don’t want or can find a use for at least 80% of the items I would usually not be inclined to get it despite the overall value. Why sacrifice the quality for the main item that I want just to get a bunch of other lower quality items I don’t really need? If you are in the market for most of the items though then of course it can be a good purchase.