Does checking OzB frequently, and buying just to get a bargain gradually consume more of your life?
How do you balance tight-arseness with utility and happiness (unless scoring bargains makes you happy)?
PS: Do you have far more stuff now than a few years ago because there are so many bargains that are so cheap, you buy them just to try them out? (I understand the price of goods, especially electronic ones have fallen over the past couple of years).
I do admit, ever since I started checking Ozbargain I've been spending more and more on electrical goods (e.g mobile phones, PC games, laptops etc.)
A list of things that I have bought recently in a 3 month period:
Acer Liquid Mt $128 < Current phone
Huawei Sonic $188 < previous phone, but now given to parents
Optus MyTab tablets x3 $387 < all bought for family
E320 Lenovo Thinkpad $520 < my personal use
Laptop Accessories $30 < personal use
MicroSD card for the tablets and phones $50
Video games $80 < personal use
2x Wii MotionPlus controllers $40
Grand total $1423 This is my spending in just 90 days.
While a lot of things may seem cheap, if you add them all up the grand total can be quite a shocker!
Are you still using your Asus Garmin A50?
Not anymore, it's now being used as an in-car GPS rather than a mobile phone.
ihbh, from the tone of your query, it seems you already have formed the opinion that frequenting OzB invariably leads to acquiring more things.
In fact I think you will find many of us were already tight@sses even before OzB, and OzB is just a hunting ground.
The key questions a tight@ss asks are: Do I really need it? Do I need it now? Can I make do with something else for a while? To be a real tight@ss you have to watch your impulses. E.g. now and then I think a colour printer would be nice, then I look at my 10+ year old mono laser working fine on its second 6000 pages cartridge and go nah. You also have to be patient. E.g. you stock up enough soft drink to tide you over until it's on sale again. You wait until Ikea has a sale before you buy. You wait until the fan boys no longer consider it a desirable model before you buy it much cheaper.
This
Do I really need it? Do I need it now? Can I make do with something else for a while? To be a real tight@ss you have to watch your impulses.
The number of times I've added stuff to a shopping cart and gone all the way through the process and then stopped at the "Confirm" dialogue, then closed the browser tab, is probably more than the number of times I've clicked the confirm button.
me too.
so i suppose you have to differentiate between normal purchases(items you would have bought with or without Ozb) and impulse purchases? i use Ozb as one of the tools to research items & prices/deals, and i have also bought things i wouldn't have got if i hadn't seen it here(mostly impulse), but i've also got lots of freebies too, pawing over the posts here has taught me one lesson, some people think 5% off is a bargain, others not a penny less than 50%, and just what the meaning of "value" is(still working on this one!), in the end it's about quality of living and having fun, besides with some of the better bargains you can sell items and make a tidy sum, as Broden jnr would testify… ;)
ps i'm still amazed by the number of people who buy stuff they can never use, like people who buy blu ray movies or ps3 accessories but don't even have a bd player or ps3, then again that bd movie bundle from the Hut UK was an absolute steal if it was valid, it would have sold a few bd players on it's own!
I generally don't buy anything posted on here that I might not have bought anyway. Or else it's fun money, like cheap blu ray movies etc. I do find that I use more iTunes than I would normally because they were bought cheaper than face value. I don't get caught up in the Logitech deals nor buy things like the HP tablets just because they are cheap. If I buy something and have buyers remorse I usually sell the item off on eBay (usually games and being time poor), bagging a bargain means it's generally quite easy to recoup any outlay as it was bought at a great price in the first place. I do buy things as a result of seeing them here but mainly because I don't read any junk mail. But I try to restrict temptation by following a basic principle of staying one step behind technology, ie still use an old fat PS3 and are happy with iPhone 3GS, and all bought secondhand (when the old owner has upgraded I guess!).
I bought the HP Touchpad 32GB from HN and while it was a fun toy for a week I haven't used it since.
I am waiting for a Android port before I will actually use it. In hindsight, it was a great deal but I will only use it if and when Android becomes readily available for it. I didn't expect some of the major issues I experienced with it due to the web browser. The standard video playback is also very sub par, too much effort required to convert and watch.
hhhmmm, I consider tightarseness from 3 angles.
1) how much is it usually in store.
2) how much is it costing me in time to find it.(opportunity cost if you will)
3) future need
so 1) + 2) e.g. dominos vouchers. If i google and find a reasonable price straight up then I'll only spend another couple of minutes looking for a cheaper dominos voucher. becuase I know I have a good voucher (A) so the likelihood of a better voucher(B) is remote BUT could exist BUT the saving from A to B by time spent is now a factor.
lets demonstrate this with a more practical example - buying uni books. 1) look at uni book shop price, 2) check out ebay, 3) google the ISBN and look at abebooks,etc. We have rough indication of what the book costs at these places. say $115, $85, $87 respectively and shipping inclusive. at first glance ebay seems the best deal. However I then search vouchers for the abebooks/other book sites to see if there is a current voucher. what is the saving then? what voucher is best at which store? eventually abebooks turns up a voucher to save 17% and they win. it takes me 30 minutes to go from $115 to $72. $43 savings for 30 minutes work = $86 p/h. that's good.
3) I posted a few weeks ago a 75% off mens already reduced business shirts deal at Myer. I bought 3. I should have bought more but anyway whilst I have plenty of business shirts it is inevitable that they will need to be replaced. buying 3 branded business shirts for less than $30 total even when I don't need them preempts the future need.
Thank God that's not the case to me yet, i hope never will.
Im only work part time while study at uni, so all the bills remind me to be tight butt :)
Plus i enjoy my donations to my two little kids.
So yeah instead of feeding money to those big ugly company i feed to myself and kids. What's yours?
PS: I really enjoy your bargain post on this sites, and some troll comments ( make me laugh ).
God bless.