In a perfect world, everything is priced at the most reasonable amount a customer wants to pay and haggling is not necessary, but unfortunately, most of the time the sticker price on products are meant to maximize the profit of the seller. When I first came to American I lived in Hawaii. My parents were graduate students and they worked part time at the tourist shops near Waikiki. Sometimes I would go there and do homework while they worked, and they talked about how much the tokens they sold cost the shop, and how much they charged the tourists. Most notably, my mother sold many fanny packs with tropical prints that cost $4.00 each wholesale. She was able to sell them for anywhere from $40.00 to $90.00 to tourists all around the world. She basically taught me that no matter where you are, you have to get the lowest price as you can as a buyer, and get the highest price you can as a seller. Since we are Chinese, we are very familiar with negotiating for a better offer when it comes to purchasing things, and it really surprised us that most people do not question the pricetags in America. It seems that culturally Americans are not accustomed to asking for discounts, and some people are even embarrassed to do so. From my experience, most sellers are willing to yield to the customer and give discounts if the customer just asked politely. There is really no shame in it, and on big ticket items you could save thousands of dollars by simply opening your mouth. Anyway, here are some stories from my family and I hope that they demonstrate why you should always ask for a better deal:

canadian cialis buy — A few years ago I went to Macy’s with my dad, and he really liked a couple pairs of shoes which were already on sale. He tried them on and decided to buy them. He went up to the saleslady and asked, if I buy both pair of shoes could I get a discount? The saleslady actually was really nice and smiled and took 10% off. He didn’t have to sign up for any cards or deals and he bought the shoes. So you can haggle at department stores.

canadian cialis buy — Recently my fubby and I went couch shopping for our new apartment. We decided to buy a leather sectional with a sticker price of $1799. I said to my fubby, “Lets see if they can give us a better price.” The fubby said, “okay, you do the talking. I know you’re shameless.” So all I said was, “what is the best price you could give us on that couch there?” The lady recognized us from a previous visit and actually cut down the price to $1499. If we didn’t ask at all they would’ve just sold it to us for $1799.

canadian cialis buy– My parents bought their first home in the East Bay back in 1999. It’s kind of funny because we moved to the Bay Area from Hawaii, and real estate in Hawaii was much more expensive than the Bay Area back then. So my parents thought everything was so cheap around here and found a house we all really loved after months of searching. So did my parents get into a bidding war for the home? Nope. They offered for slightly lower than the asking price. After the offer was accepted, my mom wrote another letter to the sellers about the condition of the carpets, and reduced the price a little more. I personally think that the American culture of not haggling contributed to the housing bubble at least a little bit. The artificial housing bidding wars of the past few years really inflated housing prices and in turn people had to borrow more money. What if everyone negotiated and offered reasonably? The current mortgage melt down might not be so bad if the fundamental housing price wasn’t driven up so much.

My fubby hates haggling because he thinks it’s a waste of time and he doesn’t really mind paying more. I agree with him that there is no point in negotiating prices for groceries or very small things. However, when you are purchasing something as large as a car or a home then you should never pay the full asking price. Negotiations may take time, but they can be as simple as asking, “What is the best price you could give me?” If the seller is obstinate and don’t give you a discount, you don’t lose anything, but if the seller opens up negotiations you could be saving some of your hard earned money. I really see haggling as a win-win situation for the consumer, and I hope more people just invest a few minutes in saving their money through haggling.

Today at lunch my coworkers and I discussed the frugal and interesting people at my company and came to the conclusion that I am definitely not the most thrifty person here. This is an article featuring some of my rich and frugal coworkers without giving names. These people profiled here are all brilliant and I think of some of them as rolemodels. If you’re my coworker and you recognize yourself below please don’t be offended! I respect all of you very much!

• This coworker is an extremely intelligent Harvard grad who has been with the company for more than seven years. He is getting paid more than six figures and has racked up a stock compensation package worth at least few hundred thousand dollars in the past few years. He doesn’t own a car because he rollerblades to work, and he rents a very reasonably priced apartment near downtown San Mateo. One funny frugal story about him is that he went to McDonalds downstairs and bought a hamburger, and then added cheese that he brought with him to make it a cheeseburger! Despite his frugality, he really seems like a truly nice and generous man.
• I work with this particular coworker a lot and he’s usually very reserved and quiet. He carpools with two other people to work because in his words, “everytime I hear the FastTrak beep my heart sinks a little”. For those who don’t know, FastTrak is the electronic toll collecting system in California and every beep is four dollars now. His own car is a Toyota from the early ’80s and his carpool buddy helps him shop for cheap things when he needs them. He’s also very into saving money and like me, he is a housing bubble fence sitter. This person also makes more than six figures but lives on a lot less. The funniest story I remember about him was when he looked very depressed and our supervisor asked him what’s up. He then revealed that his new wife is demanding diamonds. Then our supervisor pointed him to some sales, and he pretty much gagged at the prices and frowned. I don’t think the wife got the diamonds.
• We’re not too sure about the motivations of this particular coworker. We theorized that he is always at the office to save energy at his own abode. He is always there and one of our other coworkers actually found a picture of this guy on Google’s streetview near our office. Once I left my keys at the office and went back to retrieve it at 2 am, and this guy was still there. We know he’s not working all the time, so he is probably trying to save on internet and energy costs. He also buys groceries and brings them to the office to consume. This guy is in the same league as the first guy in terms of wealth, but he lives like a true office bum.

I don’t think I am ready to go to the extremes of living at the office or packing my own cheese, but my coworkers are truly inspirational. I am nowhere near them in income yet, but I will try my best to continue to be frugal when my income does rise.

Today I arrived at the fubby’s place and he was on the phone with someone, and sounded reasonable upset. It turned out to be his car insurance company. He made a simple call to update his address, and the customer service representative increased his insurance rate by almost 100%, even after removing some coverage, the insurance rate still went up more than 50%. The reasoning was that now he drives longer to work. The fact is, we are moving less than 10 miles away from his old apartment, and he is actually closer to work now than he was before. The problem is that, he also changed jobs last year and did not feel like it needed to be reported to the insurance company. So from the perspective of the insurance company, fubby’s commute length changed from 5 miles to 20 miles, and more driving means more risk. From our perspective, my fubby just moved 10 miles closer to work. Honestly, we did not know that moving could affect the car insurance rate that much. So we proceeded to shop on the internet for cheaper insurance, and along the way, I learned a few things.

• Being single increases your insurance — since we’re getting married in less than a month, at first we input “married” as a marital status. Then we thought about it, and wondered if “single” is the correct status since he is technically not yet married. Well, it seems that married people are considered more safe, because the six months quote for “married” was around 21.5% cheaper than the “single” quote.
• Being young increases your insurance — Apparently 25 is the magic number for the auto insurance industry. The quote difference between a 24 year old and a 25 year old is approximately 10%. My fubby is 24.5, so he has the higher rate. Auto insurance is the main reason why many people under 25 have to pay a higher rate to rent a car.
• Even tickets negated by driving school can increase your insurance — on one of the quote forms we filled out, they actually asked for if we’ve gotten tickets that weren’t recorded because of driving school. What is the point of driving school if that information is collected by insurance companies? Not quite sure how much this increases your insurance exactly, but the mere fact that they asked for this information means that they use it somehow, otherwise, it would not fit into their business logic.
• Getting in accidents increases you insurance — I think everyone knows this one, but it seems that different companies assess this very differently, and the difference in quotes is sometimes thousands of dollars. It definitely pays to shop around.

So finally, we settled on Progressive Direct because their forms were the easiest to use and the rate was reasonable. The new policy actually covers more than fubby’s old policy, and once he gets married they said they will adjust his rate down 20%. Anyway, insurance companies all use some sort of proprietary formula to calculate how risky a person is, and some things they do are plain bizarre. I guess we all live and learn.