The summer wedding season is upon us again and the checkbooks are crying for mercy.  I recently caught a couple of episodes of WE TV’s “Rich Bride, Poor Bride,” a show that profiles engaged couples attempting to stay within their respective budgets.  They handed the wedding planner their anticipated budgets.  By the end of the show, when the actual total was revealed, each couple inevitably went WAY over budget, with, not surprisingly, some ridiculous requests.  One couple was looking to rent live peacocks for the reception while another wanted a helicopter to whisk them to a grand entrance at the church.  My wedding requests were a bit more mundane.  I didn’t ask for zoo animals, but I did want the wedding at a nice hotel and I didn’t want to subject the guests to rubbery chicken and watered down drinks.  In the end, we didn’t pinch too many pennies on the food and drink, but surprisingly we did manage to spend several thousand dollars less than our initial wedding budget of $30,000 by doing some of the following things.

• Comparison-shop for flowers:  Do not settle for the first florist you visit, no matter how nice their shop looks or how highly recommended they are.  Flowers are definitely an area where you can shave off dollars in cost without anyone noticing.  The first florist we visited, who came highly recommended, wanted to charge for everything under the sun, including a rental fee for the vases holding the flowers.  I thought that was part of the price for the flowers!  She also wanted a steep $75 fee just to come back and pick up the vases.  I was resigned to paying several thousand dollars for flowers until I visited the third florist on my list.  Although this flower shop was located in a tiny store with barely enough room to move, first impressions can be deceiving.  The florist, also recommended by friends, charged a very reasonable $35.00 for each table centerpiece, including the vase.  The floral arrangements were gorgeous.  Overall, I only paid $1100 for the flowers, which included the table centerpieces, flowers for the ceremony, and bouquets and boutonnieres.
• Save on the invitations by printing them yourself:  Some brides may balk, but it can save you hundreds of dollars.  We decided to forgo the expensive crane paper invitations with foil inlay, ribbons, and scented tissue paper, opting instead for a box of blank invitation stationary at Office Depot.  The card stock was very nice, and it only cost us about $25.00.  We formatted the invitation layout on our laptop, typed in the text, and printed the invitations at home.  Another plus: you don’t have to worry about an outside printer misspelling the names of your parents or future in-laws.  Everything can be instantly proofread and corrected before you print out 200 invites.
• Check out national chains for better deals on tuxedos:  Unless you are a regularly attend black-tie events, chances are you are only going to need a tuxedo for those very special occasions, like your own wedding.  So, instead of buying, rent one instead.  My husband and his groomsmen rented their tuxs at Men’s Warehouse.  The store had a great deal: rent four, get the fifth tux rent-free.  They even threw in the socks and shoes.  You get to keep the socks.
• Suppress the urge to go all out on the wedding dress:  This is potentially a huge budget buster.  Do you want Vera Wang couture or are you willing to settle for the $99 deal at David’s Bridal?  I ended up spending about $900 on a beautiful silk wedding dress.  I loved the fabric and the price was good because the dress was a sample style from the previous season.  However, I regretted the fact that I didn’t shop around more; I probably could have spent even less money buying a dress that I only wore for a total of six hours.  I came to this realization after attending a couple of weddings soon after I got married.  At the first wedding, I knew for a fact that the bride spent $3,500 on her dress; she wasn’t secretive about its cost.  Despite its high price, the dress was nothing special; it was a plain strapless sheath wedding dress.  At the second wedding, the bride wore a dress that was absolutely gorgeous. It was also a strapless sheath, but had beautiful flower embrodiery all over.  I was stunned when the bride told me that she had only spent $200 for the dress at David’s Bridal. 
• Have the wedding at a nice hotel rather than a venue that doesn’t include catering:  I was just chatting with a friend about this point.  She is having her wedding at a local historic mansion and told me that with the rental fee for the venue, the tables and chairs, plus the fee for the wedding planner, she was spending more money than she would have had she chosen to have the wedding at a luxury hotel.  For our wedding, we checked out places like botanical gardens, old mansions, and vineyards for our wedding, but ultimately decided to go with a nice hotel because of all the extra fees associated with renting those places.  Not only would we have to fork over $4000 to $6000 for the rental fee, we would have had to rent the tables, chairs, and linens as well as hire a “house manager” for the evening.  In a hotel, all that stuff is included.  However, there are some trade-offs.  Having the wedding at a hotel may not feel as special to you.  There might be several other couples in the hotel getting married, and you might miss out on having gardens and other areas for the cocktail hour and photos.  However, what you miss out on in charm, you make up for in convenience and price.

One final note: definitely bargain with all of your vendors and get everything in WRITING.  If you’ve agreed to additional terms that are not listed in the vendor’s standard contract, write it in the contract and have all parties initial the change.  Also, unless you have a signed contract, don’t be afraid to walk away from a vendor if you feel that they are not being straight with you or they have jacked up the price to unreasonable levels.  I had originally asked my regular hairdresser to come to the hotel to do my hair and my bridesmaids’ hair.  However, I was shocked when she wanted $500.00 to do my hair and my three bridesmaids’ hair.  So, I wound up telling her that I was hiring someone else.  I wasn’t happy about having to do that, but I was more annoyed that she was trying to scalp me (pun intended) on the price.

If you like social networking and you are a Wall Street junkie like me, check out www.updown.com.  This website, whose byline is “the social network for virtual investing,” is like a Facebook or Linkedin for stock investors.  However, instead of merely swapping details of your life with your friends and professional colleagues, you can actually make money off of sharing stock information or managing a hypothetical stock portfolio.  I saw the CEO, Michael Reich, being interviewed on CNBC a few days ago.  Apparently, it works like this:  anybody can join for free.  When they register, they will have a hypothetical cash fund to invest in stocks.  Along the way, they provide comments, stock tips, or analysis about the stock market.  People who make the most money with their investing ideas are eligible to win real money from Updown. 

After seeing Reich’s pitch, I went to the website.  Apparently, there are three ways to make money on Updown.com:

• Manage a hypothetical stock portfolio of $1 million.  If you beat the S&P 500 index in any given month, Updown says that it will pay you real cash.  The website doesn’t say how much, or if it does, it wasn’t obvious to me.
• Write your own analysis of why a stock is a “buy” or a “sell.”  Other members of Updown will rate your analysis and provide feedback.  You’ll earn actual cash if your analysis is highly rated by the Updown investor community.
• Refer other people to the Updown website.  When I read this, I thought, “this will be easy.  I’ll just put down a bunch of email addresses of friends and see who bites.”  But, upon further reading, I discovered that it is not as easy as waiting to see who signs up.  Not only do your referrals have to sign up, they have to make money doing the investing You will then make 10% of your referrals’ earnings on Updown.  Sounds a little like Amway, eh? 

The million dollar question posed by CNBC anchor Bill Griffith to Reich: ”[H]ow does updown.com make money?”  I found this part fascinating.  Reich explained that Updown is also starting a hedge fund.  The most compelling stock tips and analysis submitted by members will be used to invest money in the hedge fund.  Very interesting concept.  I just joined as “Financialgal.”  Will let you know how I do.

What is willpower?  According to Wikipedia, it is the ability to exert one’s will over one’s actions.  Willpower is something I wish I had more of, especially when I am around my favorite junk foods, like a large bag of Cheetos or Krispy Kreme donuts.  For most of my life, I associated willpower with routine and mundane activities like eating and shopping (Eat more kale!  You don’t need those Manolo Blanik shoes!)  I never made the connection between willpower and more purposeful activities, like starting a business.  However, a recent article by New York Times op-ed contributors Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang shed some light on this often elusive thing we call willpower and how people who train themselves to increase their willpower capacity can reach long-term success in many areas of their lives. 

Aamodt and Wang say that we can increase our overall willpower capacity by flexing and strengthening our so-called willpower muscle.  In certain studies, people who stuck to an exercise regiment for two months reported increased willpower in other aspects of their lives, such as shopping less impulsively, watching less TV, and eating more healthily.  Learning money-management skills is another way to flex willpower muscle.  The key to growing willpower abilities, according to Aamodt and Wang, is to resist the desire for instant gratification and focus on long-term success when doing activities that require self-control. 

It’s easy to see how willpower is the foundation of building personal wealth.  Whether you are starting a small business or trying to make a million dollars, being able to exert your willpower to take action and to resist certain impulses is one step closer to success.  Instead of spending your entire salary on a house that’s too big or a car that guzzles too much gas, you hoard your cash in anticipation of the Subway franchise that you’re going to start or the investment real estate that you’re going to buy. 

But, just like losing weight, taking action on certain goals that are not related to an immediate consequence is admittedly difficult.  When the doctor tells you that you need to drop a few pounds because you might get heart disease years into the future, all you might hear is “wah wah wah.”  Similarly, you might have certain financial goals that you may want to achieve, but you make little headway because you’re comfortable, you have a stable job, and there is no immediate pressure to move forward.  That’s why strengthening your willpower muscles is critical to success.  As I am writing this post right now (at 10:30 p.m. on a Monday night), I wouldn’t be lying to you if I said that I had to propel myself up off the couch to come over to the computer and start typing.  But once I got over the biggest hurdle - getting started - the rest of the work was downhill from there.  It’s all about exerting willpower to force myself into action.  I think that I’m going to have to put myself on a goal-oriented work regiment.  Everyday, same time, same place.  I’m going to buff up those muscles!

For a humorous and insightful take on how lack of discipline sabotages our chances for success, check out the following post at Bripbrap’s blog: 31Causes of Failure #5 Lack of Self-Discipline.

Now that I’ve written about some of the habits of people who have accumulated and maintained their wealth, here are some of my observations on how people destroy wealth.  When I say “destroy wealth,” I am including not just the habit of taking a lighter to the dollar bill in your pocket, but also those habits that prevent the creation of wealth in the first place.

• Buying homes, cars, and other things just to “keep up with the Joneses.”  I knew a lawyer who decided to purchase a much larger home with six bedrooms in a swanky neighborhood even though her old house was more than large enough for herself and her mother.  She was bothered by the fact that several families, including her own brother, had recently purchased larger homes and she felt that she had to keep up as well.  At the same time, she decided to upgrade her Lexus 300 SUV to the larger Lexus SUV, even though she is a single person and has no reason to acquire extra car space.
• Engaging in instant gratification payoffs while shunning long-term investments:  A friend of mine invested $2000 in an S&P 500 index fund.  However, when the fund value dropped to $1,600 a couple of months later, he became very nervous and decided to sell the fund rather than wait out the volatility.  Of course the S&P 500 index rebounded and surpassed the price at which my friend made his original investment.  Meanwhile, he has no qualms about traveling to Vegas or other gambling hotspots (Niagara Falls, anyone?) to drop several hundred dollars at the craps table.
• Failing to acquire the necessary education to move up in your profession:  If you are an entrepreneur, this point may not necessarily apply.  But for those of us working in a profession, the surest way to increase your paycheck and therefore your bank account is to move to a higher position in your work organization.  However, some people don’t see that further training and education is often the key to moving up, particularly those positions in professional fields, like engineering or accounting.  My husband, an engineer, has seen several lower level technical employees in his company complain about their inability to move into engineering positions.  These employees, however, lack a four-year college degree, which is a basic educational requirement for an engineering position.
• Failing to take advantage of new opportunities because of fear:  I see this problem a lot, even with my own actions.  It’s a lot easier to stay put in a dead-end job or not take the plunge into becoming self-employed, because the “known” is more acceptable to us, even if it’s crappy, than the “unknown.”  Because of this fear of risk, we miss out on all kinds of new opportunities.  I am actively working on getting myself to move forward and not spend so much time dwelling on why a particular business idea might be a bad one.  I find when I do take a baby step in a certain direction (like starting this blog), it usually turns out to be a much more positive experience than I anticipated.
• Letting someone else control your financial destiny.  This is a rather extensive topic and probably will address it again in a separate post.  But I’m writing about it here because I just had a conversation with a friend about her finances.  My friend, sick with pneumonia, was concerned about job security because of all the days that she had taken off this past year to deal with her divorce and health issues.  Unfortunately, during her marriage, her husband controlled all of the finances, including much of the “spending.”  He bought a fancy car and squirreled away money in separate stock investment accounts.  When he demanded the divorce, my friend only had $30k in a 401(k) account and an old car that was ready to break down at any moment.   

Probably the one common thread throughout these habits is the failure to focus on the ”long-term” picture.  But even if you do have that long-term plan firmly seared into your brain, it still isn’t a cakewalk.  Chances are it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back.  Hey, I just splurged on a new outfit last week, even though I had vowed to spend no money on clothes for the next two months.  We’re all only human! 

The Frugal Duchess, another blog that I enjoy reading, recently posted CNN’s profile of a middle-class mother with two kids.  In the CNN piece, Patricia Guerrero describes how she was forced to go to a local food bank for groceries after she lost her $70k a year job.  A commenter on the Frugal Duchess blog noted that the video accompanying the CNN article showed Guerrero describing how she took off her Tiffany bracelet and ditched her Coach handbag in her car before entering the food bank.  The CNN footage of Guerrero’s house showed luxury fixtures and appliances, including black granite counter tops, a flat plasma screen tv, a stainless steel refrigerator and hardwood floors.  Guerrero also talked about how, at the food bank, the lady helping her offered to pay her utility bill.  The commenter naturally wondered why Guerrero didn’t try to sell her luxury possessions before having someone at the food bank, who might be even poorer, pay her utility bill.  The Frugal Duchess posted a follow-up on this comment and listed some items she would sell if in the same situation and things that she has already cut back on.

I had read the same article on CNN.com and marveled at how quickly Guerrero’s life unraveled.  Were her finances that bad that she would have to go a food bank one month after being laid off?  After reading the Frugal Duchess blog, I went back to CNN.com and watched the video of the woman’s interview.  Guerrero said that she had used her tax refund to pay bills for the last month and that with her unemployment check and rental income from her mother’s house, she can only afford to cover her $2,500/month mortgage.  There is no other money to pay for food or utilities.  Guerrero also complained that she applied for but was turned down for food stamps because she owned her house.  However, what struck me about the interview was Guerrero’s obliviousness as to why she is in this situation.

     1.  She said that she didn’t take her Coach bag into the food bank.  “[The handbag] isn’t worth anything because [I] don’t have a dime.” 

     2.  Describing how she applied for but was rejected for food stamps:  “I never used the system…I needed it now and it let me down.” 

     3.  In response to the food bank employee’s offer to pay her utility bill: “This is really where I’m at?”

I’m channeling a little Suze Orman here, but Guerrero needs to shake off the deer in the headlights attitude and take control of the situation.  Guerrero may or may not have learned her lesson about lacking a rainy day fund or spending beyond her means, but what about what she can do now to feed her kids? 

• Sell the Coach bag or Tiffany bracelet on Ebay or at the consignment store - they’ll certainly fetch more than a few bucks.  Guerrero probably has many other nice outfits, handbags, and jewelry in her closet that she could sell.
• Get a job, any job, whether at the fast food joint, Home Depot, or the department store to make money to buy food.  With the mortgage covered and her mother at home to take care of the kids, Guerrero should be able to make enough for groceries and utilities, even making minimum wage.
• Demand that her estranged husband contribute to the household expenses, including paying child support.  If he refuses, go to the local government agency that handles child support cases and file a complaint against him.  If the husband is working, his wages can be garnished.

These are just some ideas off the top of my head; I’m sure there are others.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of feeling sorry for oneself when bad luck strikes, but the bottom line is that Guerrero, just like the millions of homeowners who bought or borrowed too much house, need to do what they can to help themselves first before turning to the government.  Going to the food bank should be a measure of “last resort,” reserved for those people who have already exhausted every other avenue and are hanging on by a thread.

My post on money-saving tips for new parents is part of this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance, which is hosted by Stocktradingtogo.com and features tips on how to select an online broker. It also contains great posts from other personal finance bloggers on topics ranging from saving and budgeting to stock investing and real estate. Check it out!

My husband and I had our first child last month.  We’re thrilled with the arrival of our new son, but in sticker shock over the cost of essential baby items (diapers anyone?).  However, through trial and error (as well as the help of friends and family), we’ve come up with a list of money-saving tips for new parents.

• Accept gently used baby items from family and friends.  We received a baby swing, papasan chair, bassinet, baby clothing, high chair, changing table, car seat and bottle warmer from friends whose own kids had outgrown these things.
• Talk to friends and family about what worked and didn’t work.  Other parents are a great source of baby product information.  You might see a baby gadget that looks like a “must have,” but talking to a friend might reveal that the thing was a piece of junk.  Talk to a variety of people and find someone that has similar tastes and spending habits as you do.  Obviously, the friend who buys every new gadget is not going to give you good tips on essentials.  Your friends may have disagreements on what they like (”Diaper Genie beats the Diaper Champ!  No, it doesn’t!”), but at least you’ll get an idea what worked for different people.
• Get a copy of “Baby Bargains.”  Many people consider this book to be the bible on baby shopping.  This book was written by the same authors of the “Bridal Bargains Book,” and is full of reviews and suggestions.  The authors are good at trying to sort through what is a “nice thing to have” versus an essential.  They provide comparison guides, reader reviews, and talk about the best place to buy things.  One chart shows the cost for Huggies diapers at 8 different retail stores.  Another useful tip in the book was to avoid baby bedding sets.  The sets cost over $150 and contain items such as quilts that you’ll never use.
• Watch out for anything targeted for babies.  This is especially true for baby furniture, which are marked up simply because it’s a specialty market, just like wedding stuff.  Find out what you need to buy (”Baby Bargains” has some suggestions), how much you want to spend, and go to both baby specialty and regular furniture stores to comparison-shop.  We had a doozy of a time finding a reasonably priced baby dresser, but finally settled on a solid wood dresser that cost about $350.00 at an unfinished furniture store.  A comparable finished dresser would have cost upwards of $600.00.  I’ve never stained any furniture before, but it was remarkably easy to do and only cost me $23 in materials and about an 1 hour of total work spread over a couple days.
• Comparison shop online.  We found a great stroller for $90.00 on Amazon.  The same stroller was selling for $150 at a local store.  We also bought a pack-and-play which was on clearance at Target.com.  The reason it was on clearance?  The design print was being discontinued.  Because we didn’t care if our pack-and-play matched the stroller or car seat, we were perfectly happy to buy the item at a considerable discount.  Manufacturers routinely obsolete items to introduce new patterns and color schemes.
• Scour Sunday circulars for deals on diapers.  With newborns going through 10 or more a day, diapers are one of your biggest daily expenses.  Through the circulars, we found a great deal at Target; buy two large packs of diapers for $19.00 each and get a $5 gift card.  We used that gift card and rolled it right back into the next pack of diapers.  But be careful not to load up on too many diapers at once.  Babies grow like weeds and will graduate to the next size in no time at all.
• Sign up for baby product “clubs.”  Similac, Pampers, Huggies and many other baby item manufacturers have “clubs” that you can sign up for.  Once you sign up, you’ll start to get coupons in the mail for their products.  Similac sends out $5 coupons to members.  That’s a 20% savings off a large jar of formula powder.  We’ve also gotten lots of coupons from Pampers.
• Don’t go crazy with the cute baby stuff.  Remember that your adorable newborn baby will be a walking, talking kid before you know it.  So there is no need to sink thousands of dollars in that solid cherry oak crib, no matter how fabulous it looks in the store.  We bought a glider and ottoman from Walmart for $120, which is a fraction of the cost at the local baby store.  Although the fabric and pattern doesn’t look as chic as the gliders in the potterybarn kids catalog, we did not want to spend a small fortune on something we’ll only use for a couple of years.

Hopefully this list will help you save a few bucks.  Also, keep in mind that generous friends and family will likely inundate you with gifts of clothing, toys, gift cards, cash, etc.  So if you are expecting a child, resist the temptation to run to Babies-R-Us to stock up.  You may need to buy less than you think.

Bripbrap is another personal finance blog that I enjoy reading.  In a recent post, he makes a lot of excellent points about how to make your workday more productive and pleasant.  As a full-time member of the “rat race,” I going to elaborate on a couple of Bripbrap’s points.

Point 14: Take off your shoes, wash your hands and shower when you get home.  Bripbrap advises you to incorporate this routine into your workday to slough off all of the nasty germs you may have picked up in the subway.  Another reason to get out of your work clothes immediately is so that you can get out of “work” mode and relax.  It’s hard to unwind when you’re still donning your starched shirt and itchy wool suit at the dinner table.

Point 12: Leave work early.  Bripbrap advises you to take the evenings for yourself and create your own wealth.  I wholeheartedly agree, which is why I ditched a job that required 70 to 80 hour workweeks for a (more or less) 9 to 5 job, where I could go home at a reasonable hour.  In my old job, I could never predict when I would be able to go home on a daily basis, and most weekends were devoted to more work.  Pretty bad, eh?  It got so bad that I worked 45 days in a row with not a single day off.  I was putting all of my energy and time into the job at the expense of my personal life and my finances.  Even though I was making more money at that job, I ended up spending more money to manage my life outside work.  Because of the hellish hours, I had to spend money hiring a cleaning person, gardener, etc., to do the tasks that I had no time to do.  With no time for comparison shopping, I also found myself spending more on purchases purely because of the convenience factor.  Moreover, I had no time left over to manage my finances.

However, I now have a more humane work-life balance, with more time to spend on developing business ventures and researching investing opportunities.  The result?  My net worth has increased significantly!  Being a dedicated employee is a good thing; devoting yourself lock, stock and barrel to your employer at the expense of all else is not a healthy or financially smart existence.  A job is just a job; it could disappear at anytime for any reason (as Bripbrap notes, witness the unfortunate employees of Bear Stearns).  But the opportunities and wealth that you build for yourself in your downtime stay with you.

How do the wealthy get rich?  A few of us hit it big through God-given talents like singing or acting.  Others, like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, merge a skill, e.g. computer programming, with an innovative idea and buyers willing to pay mind-boggling sums for his or her creation.

Others try to become wealthy quickly by flipping houses or becoming day traders.  Eventually, however, most of these get-rich-quick dreamers crap out because the market they invested in has collapsed, they borrowed too much money, or they went out and spent every dime they had (and more) on fancy dinners, designer clothing, limousines, and extravagant trips.

Most wealthy people, however, do it the old “boring” way, choosing to accumulate their money slowly and steadily.  This is the thesis of the book, “The Millionaire Next Door” by Stanley J. Thomas and William D. Danko.  Through interviews with hundreds of millionaires, Thomas and Danko concluded that many of them accumulate wealth through living below their means, shunning conspicuous consumption, and allocating wealth in a productive way to make more money. 

I can see this from personal observation of my Uncle Frank, a self-made millionaire many times over.  He never read “the Millionaire Next Door” but seems to represent the classic example of one, with habits such as the following:

Living below his means:

• Has always socked money away, even as a civil servant making a paltry government salary with three kids to support.
• Refuses to buy coffee at Starbucks.  McDonalds coffee will do just fine.
• Has never incurred credit card debt.
• Has lived in the same home (like Warren Buffet) for decades, even after he became wealthy.

Shunning conspicuous consumption:

• Brushes off random comments by business associates that his clothes are not Brooks Brothers chic.
• Has never driven an expensive European vehicle like Mercedes or BMW.
• Doesn’t sport expensive cuff-links or a gold Rolex watch.

Allocating wealth in a productive way:

• Used savings from his job as a civil servant to start his business and make investments.
• Reinvests his profits in his business instead of spending it on purely consumer items, like a boat or a second home at the beach.
• Funded college and graduate school for his kids, instead of buying them fancy cars and clothes.
• When he travels for work, he’s more likely to stay at the Hampton Inn over the St. Regis, unless he gets a very good deal on the hotel rate.
• For international trips, he uses a consolidator to get the cheapest business class seats.

Some may ask “does this guy have any fun?”  Others may question why make money if you can’t enjoy it?  However, this presumes that everyone wants to buy Hummers and live in McMansions with debt up to their eyeballs.  People like Uncle Frank don’t get their kicks by going to the mall every weekend.  They derive enjoyment and satisfaction out of the challenges of building wealth and the accruing benefits of financial freedom.   They have shunned instant gratification to achieve their long-term goals.   

The wealthy approach money and their lives differently than the average working Joe.  Check out Ryan Taylor’s Millionaire Money Habits for ways that millionaires think about their money.

In February, I wrote about a purchase that I made at a local children’s store (Recession Survival Tips - Negotiating a Better Deal) in which I asked for the online price of a mattress.  The online price was only available online.  I wanted to purchase the item in the store.  At first, the manager did not want to give me the online price.  However, she realized that if she didn’t give it to me, I was just going to go home and order it online, and it would cost her more to ship it to me.  She gave me the online price.  We both won because she made a sale, and a profit, and I got what I wanted immediately. 

In today’s NY Times, there is an article about bargaining with retailers .  Apparently, bargaining is back in vogue.  Retailers want to make sales, consumers want to save money.  The article says that before the 1850’s, bargaining used to be common.  I don’t think bargaining ever went out of style for those of us always looking for the best deal.  In Asia, every item is negotiable.  In fact, the vendor will often chase after you in order to make the sale.  Bargaining is a fact of life for most of the world.

You’re used to negotiating car prices, but I think you should consider bargaining for anything that has a high markup.  On these items, the retailer can afford to make a profit, and you can save some money.  Everyone wins.  The following items are good candidates for bargaining:

• Jewelry
• High end consumer goods (TV’s, furniture)
• Any type of service (car repair, home repair/remodeling, event planning and services)
• Anything being sold on commission
• Anything that’s available cheaper online

You should approach bargaining with a plan.  You need to know how much an item sells for both in your local market and online.  If you have a competitor’s price on hand, the retailer will be much more likely to bargain with you.  If you’re able to determine how much an item costs the retailer, you’ll have the upper hand in negotiations.  However, that information may be hard to come by.  When I’m shopping in China, I usually start out with a starting bid of 10% of the asking price.  They expect you to bargain, so the prices are marked up accordingly.  Don’t be afraid to walk away from the sale.  It’s one of your strongest bargaining tools.  If the retailer knows that they’re going to lose the sale, they may change their mind very quickly.  Also, don’t be afraid to mention the competitors.  Retailers usually have an idea of their competitors prices.  If they know that you know you can go somewhere else for a better deal, they’ll be more willing to bargain.  In my opinion, everything’s negotiable.