I had a funny conversation with a person who seems to always buy something when she goes out as if it was some kind of daily routine. She mentioned that a big reason for this was that when she has to spend money to go to places such as using the car or buying a public transit ticket, it just felt weird to not actually buy something afterwards.

For myself, I think I usually carry that mentality beforehand such as if it takes a lot of travel time then I want to make sure before that I intend to buy X amount of goods to warrant the travel. Can’t imagine how many useless things I would have bought over the years if I always had to buy something though.

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Usually the natural instinct to see if you are getting a good deal on a product or to see if you can possibly get the item for cheaper one would only compare the original labeled price to the marked sale price.

Another good thing to keep in mind though is to keep an eye out for the last digit of the sale prices as many times retailers use this as a way to identify products that are on say clearance which should give you a better idea if it could get cheaper or not. From my personal experience, most retailers that end its price tag with a “7” it usually means the product is on clearance. For example, $19.97, $4.97, 808.97 and so fourth.

Nowadays whenever I see items tagged like that it tends to make me gander more on whether or not I should get it, assuming I needed it, as oppose to looking at those how much you save signs.

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While in many ways this may sound like the worst idea when it comes to saving money, for a lot of things just buying what you need today as oppose to the value of your purchase can save you money in many ways.

For example, before I saw a 4 gig USB memory stick for about $26 with the 8 gig model costing about $47. So based on value the 8 gig model would have been the better purchase value wise if you think about it. Instead though, all I really needed was the 4 gig and so I decided to go with that one and for these items in particular I know that they drop like a rock.

Sure enough, just recently I saw the 8 gig model on sale for a price of about $18. So thinking about it, if I really wanted to I could now buy that model on top of having the one I already own for the same price I would have paid before if I bought the higher model.

That goes to show you that sometimes it’s not always about buying what gives you the best value necessarily to save money as just getting what you need is something to consider as well.

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This year I noticed for a lot of back to school advertisement sales there are so many stores mentioning that certain products are environmentally friendly. Usually most of the green items are a little more expensive which makes some people a little weary in buying them.

These are one of those things that I usually don’t mind spending some extra money for as I guess I feel the need to contribute in being green friendly. The only bad thing about it is that I am usually not too knowledgeable about what exactly is so green about every product compared to others and so I would be more susceptible to paying extra for something that I am not really sure about.

I guess it is like buying these food items that say they are packed with things that are suppose to be good for you and so you are simply going by what the front label says. Example, if I see a electronic equipment with some kind of green friendly label I can usually assume it has something to do with power consumption. Start getting into things like a shoe and I wouldn’t know the specifics as to what makes that one “green friendly”.

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There was this report I was watching on how some people are already trying to find the right Christmas gifts for their kids and that stores are already pre-telling customers what they think the hot items are. As a result, there are apparently a lot of people buying those items.

For myself, I usually don’t pay too much attention to top ten lists if it was published from say the retailer themselves as most likely they are trying to bundle up items that while may be good, it usually means a lot of profit too.

I usually trust consumer reviews personally as I guess the opinions are usually a bit more genuine and not to mention it will help you save money as oppose to buying purely on some hype.

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