Very few people like to haggle when they are out shopping, preferring instead to simply pay whatever the shop or retailer asks for. This is a shame, because a huge amount of money is being wasted unnecessarily. Dealers and traders calculate in to their prices a figure which they need to get, and a figure they'd like to earn as profit. They then add these together, and then add a percentage. This percentage is their margin for negotiation, and every time you fail to negotiate, you are handing over money to the trader on top of the expected asking price. Imagine being able to save ten to fifteen percent on every major purchase you make! The average person could save many hundreds of pounds every year just through haggling.
So how do you go about it? The first step is preparation. The salesman is prepared - very well prepared, and so if you are going to meet them on level ground you need to be as prepared as you possibly can yourself. This involves knowing about the product you're after, having a good understanding of the prices, and preferably having done some research on online prices and trader prices. There are many consumer magazines on the market and online which you can use which help to recommend expected and fair prices for goods.
Once you know the product you're after, and the sort of price you should expect to pay, begin the negotiations. They'll offer you the price, or simply inform you of the price. Don't react too much here - keep what you say and what you do to a minimum. Try to stay calm, and natural. Ignore the price that you're told and ask them for their best price. This will almost always result in an immediate discount! How easy is that? You'll kick yourself the first time you do this, when you realise just how easy it was to get a first discount. But, you're not going to stop here. Once they give you the discount, bear in mind what the lowest price you found online was, and what the recommended trade price was in the magazine. Tell them you were really looking to pay no more than $100 and then give them a figure just below the recommended price or lowest price you found.
The conversation will head in a variety of possible directions, but what you have to bear in mind is that at the end of the day, no one can force you to buy the product, and you can always walk away and come back tomorrow or try somewhere else. Stay firm, but polite. Don't start arguing, but treat it as a friendly game, which is what it should be.
You will clearly have to increase your price, but the salesman will probably decrease theirs. At some point they'll probably say that their hands are tied, or it's not up to them. In this case, apologise for wasting their time and ask if they would be kind enough to introduce you to someone who does have the authority to discuss the price further. Very often sales people will keep you waiting while they go to speak with the boss. This is almost always a delay tactic to discourage you from haggling any more - don't let it put you off. Keep going, and speak to the next person up, and so on. You'll be amazed at how much of a discount you'll get, possibly will extras thrown in. Once the deal is done, they'll have a good deal more respect for you than if you meekly handed over whatever random number they decided to write on the sales board.
Very often it is the quick convenience food such as ready made snacks, microwaveable food and tins which cost far more than the individual ingredients themselves because, of course, you are paying for the recipe and combination of those ingredients. What you are also paying for are the ingredients which you wouldn't have included had you made it yourself, such as preservatives, emulsifiers colouring, flavouring, anti-oxidants and so forth. All those little numbers and chemical names which you wouldn't even consider including in your home made recipe. Why wouldn't we include them? Well, to start with they wouldn't be necessary because the food is being eaten straight away, and you wouldn't like feeding your children on a handful of laboratory chemicals you know nothing about. And yet, everyday this is exactly what we do. Our families are eating the chemicals we put on the table, simply because we can't be bothered to cook meals for ourselves, and we fall into the trap of buying convenience food.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with it every now and again -we all have busy lives and there is a place for it, but with anything it's good in moderation. It's the excess of these chemicals which causes children to lack concentration, become overweight, addicted to certain types of food and develop allergies, conditions and problems at school. Not to mention the extra cost which is adds to our grocery bill.
Once you begin to realise the problem, it's easy to look dreamily into a future where you cook elaborate meals fit for a Sunday dinner table every single day, but in truth this is highly unlikely to happen. However, this is taking the whole matter to the polar opposite extreme, and it's easy to think that food comes in two types -convenience food you can open, shove in the microwave for a few minutes and it's ready, or elaborate home cooked meals that take an hour or two in the oven, plus all that fiddly preparation which will inevitably result in a cut finger, piles of vegetable shavings and a mountain of pots to wash afterwards.
There is a happy medium, and it's quite a large spectrum between these two extremes. There are plenty of very quick meals available which cost a fraction compared to the convenient alternatives, and all it takes is a little research first. Most home cookery books seem packed with complex recipes that need piles of ingredients that every good cook is supposed to have in their kitchen but which we have never even heard of before, so forget them. Use the internet -there are heaps of recipes there for the taking. Find a cook book for students, or beginners -often these recipes are simple, nutritious, and both cheap and easy to make. Student cook books are invariably great, because they assume that you're on a budget, need good food, and can't be bothered to mess around with it too much.
Why not get the family involved in looking for, and choosing these recipes? A team can be far more efficient than one, and it will give your children a good standing to prepare them for the future.
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