Avoid desperation shopping whenever you can or you may find yourself spending a lot more money than you need to spend or want to spend. When you shop in desperation, your choices and how much you are going to pay can be pretty limited.
How do most people shop for items that they need? Well, usually the need arises and they go shopping. Whether it is an appliance that has broken down or a sudden growth spurt by one of our children, most people tend to run out quickly and solve the problem by shopping.
If you avoid this panicked running out immediately thing, you’ll save money. Here is how.
For some things you can anticipate your needs and buy ahead when you get the opportunity to do so at a discounted or cheap price. For example, with children’s clothing, you can shop the clearance sections at the end of each season and buy the next size ahead. This way, you can get 70 percent off (or more), store the clothes and have them ready when they are needed.
While the same strategy may not apply with my other example, the broken appliance, there are still ways to save. This happened to us recently with our stove blowing up. We took some time to do some research and took advantage of two stackable sales to get a good price. The result was that we have to wait a few weeks before we can have the stove, but we saved a lot of money for this inconvenience. Meanwhile, we have been getting by with the slow cooker and toaster oven that we already own.
When our washing machine died, we were blessed to do a couple of loads of wash in a friend’s washer while we searched for a used one to replace it.
When you find yourself ready to do a little desperation shopping, first stop and take a deep breath. Can you get along using some other solution? Do you already have something that might work instead? can you find ways of getting what you need for a discounted price? Asking yourself these questions may just get you out of desperation mode and back to saving.