I was talking to a person who was in the business of selling properties and one thing he was surprised about is how people do not try to get backup buyers incase the original buyer fails to buy the property. For example, if someone already signs a contract and places a deposit with the intent of buying the property there still is a chance that they will back out and therefore it won’t get sold. He was saying how most people would just keep waiting for the buyer to pay the remaining balance as oppose to continually trying to find more potential buyers until the actual place is sold.

According to him, in his field he sees so many people try to back out of deals that you just lose so much time and money from waiting and getting no results if the person backs out. I suppose that can be relatable to other fields as well. In the larger perspective it’s almost like comparing people who run their own business and having a particular quota they would like to make.

It’s risky if your goal was to make say $10,000 a month and then once you potentially find that customer you just stop trying to find new ones as you just assume that the deal will go through. So if the deal goes sour you have just essentially lost all that time and money. It’s always good to have backups and not resting until your deal actually goes through.

For one of my utility services I have been holding off from signing up for a different package as there are supposed to be new competitors and market offerings which will drive the prices down. For this one in particular it has been about five months already and nothing new has happened yet. Therefore, I have essentially lost a few dollars over the past months by staying on my current plans instead of switching and committing to an existing plan that is cheaper.

It’s almost like playing the stock market or something as if the new companies do launch then I could probably save about 30% than what I currently pay. However, committing to those contracts will of course strip away that potential benefit. I know some people usually wait it out even if there are better deals with competitors. In that sense, they would always just get what is cheaper currently which is more stable I suppose you can say.

I usually find that waiting it out does net more savings though as usually the amount you save is substantial enough to warrant the extra amount you are currently paying. It’s just so tempting at times to just get what is cheaper immediately instead of waiting for the market to settle. Of course, if I know the market probably won’t change for at least a year then I usually would just commit to what is best currently.

I’m surprised that more people didn’t do this to try and save money. Usually when we want to buy something we go to a retail store that carries various products from other manufacturers. But surprisingly most people don’t ever think to try and buy the items from the manufacturers directly. In many cases you can find a lot of inexpensive deals as the company can essentially unload its products without the need of the middleman.

For example, today I got a notice about the company Canon that is selling a bunch of its products at heavily discounted price such as a camera that normally sells within the four figure range get dropped down to a mid three figure one. Sure enough if you go to their official site it looks like a regular e-commerce shopping site in many ways too. But most people who are specifically looking for their products would instead go to say a large online retailer first instead. There can be a lot of deals you are missing out by not checking the manufacturer’s site.

Over the past month I have heard from a couple of people on how they wanted to get professional services for free as they currently could not afford the cost of hiring someone to do the job. The thing that bugged me a little was how they say they had no money yet you see them doing things such as spending hundreds of dollars on cigarettes or having no reserve in spending a ton of money dining out.

Whenever people ask me to do things for free with the reason being that they have no money I usually automatically assume that they do actually have money. It’s just that they chose to spend it a certain way and don’t value your efforts as much, so to speak, so they assume that they can save money by buttering you up instead.

In my opinion, it can actually be good to not do things for free if you are specifically trying to help someone become better with money. This way it forces them to have to actually stop doing irresponsible things with their finances as you won’t be their easy way out. Not only that, too many times people say things like how they are poor to intentionally get you to drop your prices as they want a deal. I heard so many times where people claim that they are poor and yet the next day you see them driving an expensive car.

It’s usually only the people who immediately approach you for a say a bartering trade of sort that are more genuine I’d say. People usually say nothing is truly free. Unless they are specifically a charity of sort, for professional services it’s only fair that you get something out of it too.

Today I was talking to a person who said that her friend was so excited to get such a great deal for a pair of tickets to the Olympic gold medal hockey game. The price? $15,000. Yes, we are talking five figures here. Apparently she thought it was such a good deal as people are reselling them for as much as $25,000 that I have seen.

This is actually monitored through the official Olympic channel too. So it’s not like a deal where some is trying to scalp their ticket through under the table means. These are one of those purchases that I would have to think like a hundred times before doing it. As a result, most likely I wouldn’t. It’s almost like wanting to buy the latest gadget where the supply is so limited that end consumers simply resell the ones they bought for a profit.

For myself I don’t look at the price compared to what everyone else is selling it for but rather the cost of the item without the insane markups. You just feel a little silly paying so much extra dollars I’d say. Would watching it on say TV be that bad for example if it meant saving $15,000? Unless you have an extreme amount of disposable income that is.