Bargain Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

More Minimalist Confessions – Wedding Edition

June 20, 2013 BY Jordann - 28 Comments

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Today's post is by my lovely staff writer Jordann. She is getting married this week!

I haven't been a very good minimalist lately.

It's not that I don't want to be, my desire to live a minimalist life is as strong or stronger than it's ever been before.

The problem is, I don't have time to be as minimalistic as I'd like. I'm getting married this weekend, and to save on costs and help me achieve my dream of being debt free, we're DIYing everything. That means that I've been going pretty much non stop for about a month now.

What does this have to do with minimalism, you might ask?

Well, when there's no time, there's no spring cleaning, no decluttering, no yard sales. There's no once weekly sweep of the house, removing everything that has built up in the past seven days. [Read more…]

Bargain Beauty

July 25, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - Leave a Comment

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Today I have a post from a beauty blog that I really love. Her tutorials are very easy to follow and she makes everything seem super easy. I'll let her take over my blog now…

Hi, I'm Elle, from ElleSees, a beauty-based lifestyle blog. I feature beauty tips and tricks to get the celeb looks without the price and so much more. I'm on a pretty tight budget, so how do I save money when it comes to beauty products?

Dupes–There is almost always a dupe or knockoff of a more expensive beauty product. Try the drugstore generic of a favorite beauty or hair product. Usually they're made in the same factory! Not in the mood to treasure hunt and try? Search for ____dupe (ex. Mac lipstick dupe) and you'll easily find a comparable product for a fraction of the price.Here's how:

Drugstore--Most of the products I use are drugstore! The quality of what you'll find is so much better than it used to be. Try Wet N Wild shadows, Revlon lipsticks, and Covergirl mascara, just to name a few.
DIY–When I saw a brown sugar scrub for $65 (seriously) I knew I could easily make my own. And I do for many hair, skin, and body products. Check those out here.
Returns–Is there anything worse than spending your money on a new lipstick only to hate it once you bring it home? Luckily, many stores allow returns, even with opened & used products! Try Sephora, Ulta, drugstores, Wal-Mart and Target. Keep the receipt!
Monthly Subscriptions–One way to sample new beauty products is to try a monthly subscription service, such as Birchbox or MyGlam. Some are even free–try influenster.com
Beauty Swap–If you have a lot of good friends who use beauty products, try a beauty swap. What doesn't work for you might be perfect for someone else! Makeup can be easily disinfected (click here for a post on how to).
Sell, Donate, or Repurpose–See link above for more details!
Multipurpose Products–I love it when I can use a product for more than one thing. Conditioner easily becomes shaving lotion, baby wipes make great makeup removers, and lipstick can be blush!
Choose Wisely–I love drugstore products, but I do spend money on my haircut and color. But drugstore mascaras are always better than high-end brands. If you have finicky skin, a name-brand foundation is a wise investment. Drugstore shampoos work just as well as the fancy ones.

What bargain beauty tips do you have?

Michelle's comment: I've honestly never even THOUGHT about looking up dupes! That is such a great idea. I'm going to start doing that. And I recently signed up for influenster and received my first box. I love everything that I got, and best of all, it was all free.

How to Bargain and how I need to learn how to bargain

October 25, 2011 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 8 Comments

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Do you bargain a lot? I don't because with the all times I have tried bargaining, there's probably only been a 5% success rate. I've tried bargaining on hotel rooms, bad products and so on. I wouldn't say I'm cheap, but if I feel that I'm being overcharged (like on a hotel room), I'll often ask if they can go any lower.

Here are some rules, and hopefully one day I will be better at this.

Rules:

Do NOT go crazy on the person you are talking to. When I managed a retail store, people would start yelling and making stuff up so that I could give them a discount. Or they would purposely ruin items in front of me. You yelling at me made me want to NOT give you the discount even more. No need to scream. However, the customers that were really nice, I never had a problem with giving discounts to. And a lot of our best customers we would give discount cards to for future purchases. Being nice does help.
Don't be loud. If you ask for a discount, it should be a tad secretive. The employee can't give the discount out to everyone and if you are loud and everyone else hears, then this is just a bad situation for the employee. I used to have customers that were super loud, and whenever I would give them a discount so that they would get away from me, around 2 or 3 other people would then also come up to me and ask for the same.
Don't make an extreme offer that could offend the person who you are talking to. If the item is priced at $150, and it's actually worth $100, and you offer $3, that is just mean and could make the person you are trying to haggle with walk away from you.

Once you follow the rules, find the item that you think should be less. Offer a certain percentage lower. For instance with hotels, it's common to offer around 15% less. Be prepared to make a counteroffer. And if all else fails, just walk away if it's not at the price that you want.

Now, like I said, I am not the best bargainer out there. What are your tips? If you disagree with any of mine, please say so! I'd like to improve.

And of course these are not all of the tips out there. Like I said, I'm not good at bargaining, so these are just tips from my perspective.

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