Being a Smart Buyer

To be a good buyer, you need to be a conscious buyer. In this case, conscious means being aware of things.

• The first thing you have to know, and have are limits.

  Limits are the extreme and minium amounts you wish to spend. In this case, the minium and extreme amount will be about the money you have. You should tell yourself what your limits are for your money every day and especially when you want to buy something. By giving yourself limits you are aware of the amount of money you have left. Your limits may vary from week to week, depending on the season and things you need. For instance, around the holidays you may need to stretch your limits. This only means you will give yourself more leaway about spending more money. But before you stretch your limits, check and see what your parents think, and if they approve of your limit.

• One of the next things you need to be conscious of is deals!

  Some stores may be in your favor, others may not. They could be out to trick you or rip you off. (Only meaning taking money you shouldn't have to pay.) First of all, you need to shop around, get different prices on the same things. This is quite time consuming, but it does work to help you save money. One common and easy ways to search for deals and prices is by calling different stores. By calling different stores you get a price range. The price range is the limits a product is selling for. When calling, you may get a high price on an item, and then a low price on the same item. Here is an example of two ads we found for the same item one the same day in different advertisements.

Being smart with money is a fundamental. You need to learn the tricks of sales. Here's an example of what I mean. Would you rather take $2 off of a $10.00 purchase or 30% off a $10.00 purchase. Your first choice probably was the first one. But the truth is 30% off, is a much better deal. It would take the purchase down to $7.00. So don't be impulsive, stop to take a look at the other deal.

Another thing to look for is how stores are competitive, learn to use this to your advantage. For example, store A has the toy truck for $2.99 in its catalog. Store B has the toy truck for $3.99 in its store. Now which one are you going to buy, of course A . Now what if the B store says to you, bring store A's catalog to our store and we will match that price and also take off an extra 15%, you now save $.45 bringing your total to $2.54. So you see the stores are very competitive, so use it to your advantage. Most of them will match prices if you can bring in the ad. To calculate a percentage you take your first number for example to find 15% of $3.00 you multiply $3.00 by .15. To do this just take off the percentage sign and slide the decimal two spots over to the left, so you are putting the decimal in front of the percentage number. So it would be $3.00 X .15= .45 that is how you calculate a percentage.