Frugal Fridays: Ask around before paying full price
Today's Frugal Friday tip comes from my husband: When you are in the market for a bigger ticketed item, ask around before buying new.
This might seem like something simple, but it saved us around $350 this past week.
You see, since we moved to a real house, with a real yard, we needed to buy a lawn mower for said yard. However, has anyone tried buying a lawn mower in April? At least in these parts, it's not a good time. Not only do stores not have any decent sales on them right now since it's probably their top buying season, garage sales are still few and far between.
But that didn't deter my husband from deciding he could do better than the $169 price we were looking at paying for the bare minimum mower from a local store. Instead, he started asking around. And I don't mean he just mentioned it once or twice, he asked almost everyone we know or came in contact with if they knew of anyone who had a mower they were looking to get rid of.
What do you know? His persistence paid off big time. A woman from our church (whom, by the way, I would have never guessed knew anything about mowers and would therefore have never thought to ask - good thing Jesse doesn't think like me!) has a neighbor who has a friend who fixes up mowers. She put us in touch with this man and Jesse got his mower alright. Only he didn't get some inexpensive $169 mower. He got a Craftman self-propelled mower worth around $400 which is in excellent condition and only a few years old and not hardly used at all (a belt had come off and the owner - obviously not a very frugal man - decided to replace it rather than bother with changing the belt!).
And get this, he paid $50 for the mower.
Needless to say, I was very impressed. We had already set aside money to pay for what we were thinking was going to be a $200 mower so the extra money went straight into our savings. Woohoo!
So the moral of the story: Never underestimate the savings you could reap by asking around before you go pay full price for something.
As an aside, we were also planning to buy a weed-eater and had priced these at around $50-$70 new in the store. It looks like this man is going to be able to get one for us for $10! More money to put into savings! God is good.
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posted by Crystal Paine at 12:12 PM
15 Comments:
Wow! Great deal on the mower.
Hi Crystal! My post was similar to yours, we waited for a long time and then asked for a lower price.
What fun! Have a wonderful weekend!
What a fantastic example of God's provision in meeting needs! Jesse was shrewd to wait for a better deal rather than buy on impulse. Super neat. Thanks for sharing.
Way to go on the huge savings!! We'll definitely have to try this next time we need a big ticket item (hopefully a long time from now). :)
We got ours in a similar way except dh picked it from teh side of the road and fixed it himself (had bad gas in it so he drained the gas put in a new spark plug a viola a new mower!!!) He gets us all kinds of "new" stuff this way! I love my frugal, handy hubby!
This type of thing has happened many times for us before and it sure was a blessing. We rarely pay full price for any big purchases and shop around for the best deal. Often going the "used route" is the best because in our throw away society people frequently get rid of perfectly good things because they want something new.
There seems to be a real theme going today on patience and making do.
Thank you, Crystal.
Crystal!!! I'm super duper sorry for messing up my link, not once, but twice!! Please, forgive me. The last one is the one that works.
oh my goodness, that's a HUGE savings. Way to go!
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica
Great find, guys!
I "inherited" my grandparents' rechargeable mower a few years back when they bought a new one. It could use a new battery now as it doesn't hold a full charge, but otherwise it runs fine. I'll gladly pay $50 or so for a new battery knowing they already got a good 5 years out of it and I've gotten several years also!
Hi Crystal,
I tried to comment earlier and got some kind of "failure to deliver" message. I wanted to say thank you for allowing me to link, and I am very sorry I messed it up, not once, but twice!
This is my first week joining y'all on Frugal Friday. I love all the great tips I find on here, and it's so much fun to share what little bits I've been discovering.
That is AWESOME!!! Thanks for this reminder. Have a wonderful weekend!
Looking around always pays off! We have several items we bought this way, and right now we're selling stuff that's in good condition but won't fit in the new apartment - someone will get a great deal on that!
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