If you haven’t been to http://www.fatwallet.com, I highly recommend it. I think that, as a substitute for throwing away my money on cars, I have turned to electronics as a decent substitute. You can spend pretty significantly on electronics and still not lose the kind of money that you can on a new car (think depreciation).
Now, I don’t spend a ton of money on electronics and the money that I do spend is part of our “left over” funds once all of our goals are met for the month. Because we don’t live with any debt, (other than our house payment), we end up with a decent chunk of change left over each month. (after all of our investments are funded for the month). As part of the balance we are continually seeking between saving every cent and spending every cent, we tend to be fairly liberal with some of the left over cash. (quality of life funds).
Okay, so now that I’ve spent the first two paragraphs on trying to qualify why it’s okay that i blow a little cash on electronics once in awhile, let me tell you how I blow that money. I LOVE FATWALLET.COM. I set up an account at fatwallet.com (just a login, not credit or anything). When I want to buy something, I go there and check out all the “store” specials and also search the forums for posts on things I want to buy. Lately I’ve been getting my DELL fix. I’ve been needing a new monitor for my PC in my office and I’ve been watching Fatwallet for a deal. My day finally came a couple weeks ago. They had a 35% off coupon for Dell 19″ LCD’s (1905fp) or a 20″ widescreen monitor. Because I’m not rich, I opted to look at the 19″. All the 19″ LCD’s that I’ve seen in stores etc are all running around $360-$400 and quite frankly, none of them have been as nice as the Dell 19″ LCD . Dell retails this monitor for $479. Once I applied the 35% coupon it dropped to $311. Not bad, but I wasn’t done there. I then found another coupon on fatwallet.com for $60 off any accessory purchase of $500 or higher. I added a $21.95 laptop mouse to my cart to get the total retail value just over $500 and then applied the $60 coupon which dropped the price for the monitor and mouse to $273. So, in a sense, I got the monitor for just over $250 instead of $479. I love it. I then ran over to Ebay and checked to see what they were selling for there. 1905FP’s are going for around $310-$320 there so I knew it was a good deal. Oh, and by the way, this monitor is AMAZING. If this deal comes along again, I would highly recommend it.
Now, that deal wasn’t too bad, but I followed it up with a purchase of a laptop for my Aunt (she paid) the next week. This time, they had a coupon for $750 off of a select number of Dell laptops over $1499. I built her a VERY nice laptop to get it over $1499 (to $1501) and then applied the $750 off coupon which brought the total price to $757 for a laptop that Costco is selling right now for $1400. That coupon was so popular that it was used 15000 times in 3 hours and then expired. If you ever consider buying a laptop, this is the way to do it. You just have to wait until the coupon shows up and then act fast.
So, there you have it. I’m spending a little, but only under the right conditions. :)