Saving money is both a challenge and a hobby: Part 1

I love saving money.

Thankfully, saving money for me is a game rather than a necessity. I fully admit the irony of going above and beyond to save a dollar on a purchase of several hundreds of dollars, but I won’t think twice when spending five dollars at Burger King on a value meal.

Who am I kidding? Medium-sized meals these days are costing almost six dollars before tax.

I refer to saving money as a game because at the end of the day, it’s not about having $100 more in my pocket, but it’s the feeling that I’ve saved $100. These two phrases may sound the same and my bank balance won’t know the difference, but I just love squeezing every last dollar out of a purchase I was going to make regardless of its price.

To walk you through my process of making large purchases, especially when it comes to electronics, I will use my brother’s recent purchase of a Canon T1i digital SLR. In this case, a little time and effort translated into a camera that would have retailed at $814.69 (all figures US) after tax into a final retail price of $489.98 after tax.

This amounts to a savings of $324.71.

Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

Never Buy on Impulse

We’re all familiar with the perils of impulse buying – wasted money for items that we say will use, but never end up using. When it comes to impulse buying, I have a pretty good track record. The last impulse buy I can distinctively remember was a few years ago when I got Future Shop to price match Dell.ca for an 8GB Class 4 SDHC memory card that ended up costing me ~$60 CAD instead of over ~$150 CAD. Did I have a camera at that point that could use SDHC (or used SD cards for that matter)? Nope.

The reason I bring this up is because just like air travel, electronics pricing goes up and down over short periods of time. For example, the Canon T1i retails at $800, but is regularly on sale for $750, and during Black Friday it was as low as $720. By waiting patiently and watching its trends, you can determine when it is a good or bad time to buy.

With my brother’s camera, I waited several months after he told me of his intentions to enter the DSLR field, knowing that Black Friday would present with some deals. And Black Friday didn’t disappoint with many companies like Amazon and Walmart selling the kit for $720. That’s $80 saved off the undiscounted retail price!

I love how those two are essentially locked in an eternal battle for market domination by constantly undercutting each other; the consumer ultimately ends up winning.

Some great tools to use to price stalk and keep an eye out for deals are Bing Shopping, Google Product Search, Slickdeals, and for my Canadian readers, RedFlagDeals.

Aside: Shopping for Digital Cameras

A special note for anyone looking to purchase digital cameras, there are two or three main times you will want to be wary of purchasing a digital camera because of potential price drops and worse, technological obsolescence. If you time it right and you don’t need the potential upgrades being offered in new models, you can save on clearance stock of older models. Also be aware that with digital SLRs, their product lifecycle ranges from 12 months for consumer-level DSLRs to 24 months or longer for semi-professional and professional DSLRs.

Every year at the beginning of February, the PMA conference is held where the major companies including Canon and Nikon announce new models. Usually camera information is announced or "leaked" in January leading up to the conference, but nothing will really be announced afterwards.

Every other even year in September, Photokina is held in Cologne, Germany. This is also a major photography conference and during Photokina years, announcements are split between the PMA and Photokina. Again, camera details are usually leaked well in advance.

And then there are other events and conferences. For example, some companies choose to announce some products – mostly consumer digital cameras – during CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Also, rumor has it that Canon is choosing to delay the announcement of the Canon 1Ds Mark IV and several lenses until right before the Olympics this year, so by putting off on the impulse buying and putting your ear to the ground, you will have a sense when certain technologies will be released.

Lastly, there are dedicated rumor sites if you’re a gadget freak like me: Canon Rumors, Nikon Rumors, and for pretty much every other company clumped into one site, Photo Rumors.

Next Time: Discounts, Coupons, and Getting Cash Back

In order to make these articles more digestible, I’m breaking them into smaller pieces. Next time I’m going to discuss using discounts, coupons, and cash back programs to really save the bulk of your savings. Till next time.