Deal Hunting Costs A Lot

But it feels so good

If you are anything like me and countless others, you love a deal. There is satisfaction knowing you didn’t pay full price. You can get a discount a lot of ways, from rewards back to coupons to simply waiting for a lower price. It seems like there is no downside to getting a deal, but over time I’ve realized that there quite a high price to pay.

Incremental spending

There are deal websites that point out when something is on sale. I just checked the Slickdeals website and got sucked in for 15 minutes and forgot the reason I was there. Following such website will get you good deals, but you may end up with items which you did not have an intention to purchase. I will call that incremental spending. It is one thing if you were planning on buying a tent and then see a deal on the website. It’s different if you buy a tent because you got a deal. A better deal would be keeping your money. Marketing exists to try to increase the demand.

Planned spending

So, what if you really wanted a tent? Then you could use a price tracker that will do the work for you, so you don’t have to spend time continuously monitoring for deals. For flights I set alerts on Google Flights which will email me if there is a change in price. Another alternative is to simply buy the item and move on. You can do a quick search for what’s the best price and make a decision. Depending on the item this can be great advice because it is going to save you the time of checking again and again. You don’t want to be the person who is shopping at Costco, grab some socks and then pull out their phone and check five websites. It’s just not worth it.

The balance

If you just make the purchase then aren’t you trading your money for time? Yes, so at some point it is worth spending some time to get a better deal. You should take more time to make a higher value decision. If you are buying a car then it is possible that spending a few hours could save you $1000. That is worth your time, but it wouldn’t be worth a billionaire’s time. Meanwhile, spending an hour to save $2 on toothpaste doesn’t make sense. Where that line falls for you, only you can determine, but it is probably closer to the car purchase than the toiletries one. Based on how everyone acts and how huge a factor a tiny price difference is on shopping websites I’d say most people are focused on saving a few cents. Even I get wrapped up in using Amazon subscribe and save to save 5% which ends up being a dollar or two and forget to cancel. Yet, even for a car you can overdue it. My dad has been searching for a car for years. I don’t know if he’ll ever buy one. At this point the search is a hobby rather than driving it.