Save money #4 thoughts on discounts

Buying things on discount is a usual way for people to save money and that makes sense. If you pay less for things you save money. However it's not really that simple and I'm going to talk about it because relying on discounts might loose you money in the long run.

To begin with why does companies offer discounts?

Get rid of products

Getting you into the store

Getting your data

Promoting impulse buys.

Getting rid of products.

This is when the store knows that they can't sell the item at full price but that it's either easier for them to sell it than to throw it away or they are hoping to re coupe some of their losses. 

Examples of this include: out of season items like Christmas decoration in January, food nearing the last sell by date, everything in a store that is moving or closing or when the store has just a few things left in a batch and they don't want to make room for new stock.   

The discount for these are usually significant starting at 30% but I have seen up to 80%. 

You have a good opportunity to save money here assuming the thing is something you actually need. But there's often a reason why these things couldn't be sold full price. 

Getting you into the store

It's quite common for some stores to always have discounts on some of their items. Most grocery stores will do this where there every week will be new items sold at a discount. The idea is that by having a discount on one thing you need you will buy other things while you are there. This is the same as getting the first month for free when you sign up for a streaming service. 

The discounts here usually aren't that good. It's also common for the price of something to be advertised as a discount but just be regular or there are similar products that are cheaper. 

In general if you know what the regular prices are and don't get carried away you can save some money here but it wont be much.

Getting your data

Similar to the previous the store is hoping that a small loss now will make a profit in the long rum. Things like 10% of if you sign up for a newsletter or a membership where the aim is for them to be able to advertise to you. Still not great discounts but there is nothing stopping you from getting it and then close down whatever you signed up for. Being constantly sent ads wont help you save money.

Promoting impulse buys 

This is things like few percents of to get you to try a new product rather than what you usually gets.

This won't save you money, because the products probably isn't thing you need and the discount is still well within the profit margins. Making you think you are getting a good limited time deal to make you buy something. 

In general the way to use discounts is to not buy things you don't need even if they are cheap. It's also useful to know or look up what a product should cost. I have noticed that branded items even with the discount often are more expensive than store-brand products.