Guest Post: The Art of "Slickdealing"

The Art of “SlickDealing”

From the perspective of an experienced bargain hunter

Bio:

I call myself a “Slickdealer” because I don’t believe myself to be cheap but rather frugal (a term that a lot of people mistakenly think means being cheap).  The dictionary defines frugal as the following:

 “Economical in use or expenditure; prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful”

It’s not that I don’t want to buy high quality items, it’s that I would like to buy such items at the cheapest price possible, thereby being economical and not wasteful. I have been practicing the art of ‘SlickDealing’ for many years and it has saved countless dollars! 

Example:

My best example of SlickDealing is a story from when I was 10 years old.  The new Tony Hawk Pro Skater game had just been released for N64 and cost a whopping $60. My mom and I went to the local GameStop to take a look at what they had and, of course, the game wasn’t any cheaper.  I didn’t want my mom to spend that much money on a video game that I knew would be cheaper in a few months, so I started wandering the store looking for another game to buy. After a few minutes I noticed a sign on the wall that read, “trade in any 5 of these games and get a free game of your choice!”  Attached to the sign was a list of eligible games for the promotion.  I began to wonder if any of the games on the list were on sale at the shop for a low, discounted price. Low and behold, this Gamestop had all of the games on the list. I walked around the store collecting the five cheapest games on the list. After around 10 minutes of price comparing, I had a total of around $37 in used games, all of which were eligible for the promotion. I walked up to the cashier and purchased all of them. When the transaction was finished I thanked the cashier and said, “I would like to exchange these for the new Tony Hawk game using the promotion on the wall.” The look on the cashier’s face was priceless. His next move was to call over the manager, who confirmed that I was allowed to do this. So the manager finished the transaction and I walked out holding my new Tony Hawk game for a grand total of $37. As I walked out of the store, I could see out of the corner of my eye the cashier walking around the store removing all of the promotional signs!

Purpose:

            In this series, I hope to show you the steps and measures that I routinely go through when I’m looking to buy a certain product or service in hopes that I can help you get the best bang for your buck on whatever you are looking to buy.  It basically boils down to 3 general steps:

1.      Quality Research

2.      Merchant Research

3.      Price Research

You might have noticed that the word research is in every one of these steps.  That is no coincidence; SlickDealing is pretty much all research!

Erik Johnson is the promotional manager for SuperheroDen.

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