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How To Get A Deal And Save Money When You’re Buying Electronics Or Other High Ticket Items

By Peter Anderson 21 Comments - The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money. Last edited November 17, 2023.

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My wife and I have always enjoyed watching movies and TV shows at home. You could say we’re movie buffs.

We’ve got a nice finished basement in our home with a big sectional couch facing our home theater where we can lie in front of the TV and watch to our heart’s content. It’s one of our favorite places to be, especially on the weekends.

We love having movie marathons or as we’ve recently done – TV show marathons (We’re watching all 5 seasons of Lost in a row right now).

It’s safe to say that we spend a lot of time down there.

home-theater

For quite some time I’ve wanted to upgrade our TV in our basement. The couch is quite a ways from the TV, and while we do have a nice 37″ TV down there, I’ve always wanted a big-screen TV to really make it a true home theater. My TV of choice for our basement has been a 50″ Plasma TV as it’s big enough to be of substantial viewing size, even if we’re 10 or more feet from the TV. It’s also small enough that it won’t be a problem getting it down the tight staircase to our basement.

The only reason I haven’t pulled the trigger on a big new TV up until now is that buying a new TV is extremely expensive. Even up until a year or so ago 50″ plasma TVs could run you anywhere from $1000-2000 or more.   Being frugal as I am I had no desire to spend that much money on a television. We set a price point we wanted to pay and saved up that cash in our online savings account so we would be ready when we did find a deal.

Finding A Deal Isn’t As Hard As You Might Think

While I didn’t want to spend more than a thousand dollars on a TV, I didn’t give up on the dream of having a big-screen TV in our basement. I just decided to get creative and see if we could find the TV we were looking for, at a discount. It isn’t as hard to do as you might think, and you can do it too if you’re looking to purchase a high-ticket item. It can save you a lot of money. 

Here’s the process I usually follow to save my family hundreds of dollars on our big purchases.

  1. Research the item that you’re looking for at many different stores: Look around at a ton of different local and online stores to find a good price on the item you’re looking for. Often different stores will have the same item for vastly different prices.   The internet has made this process a whole lot easier, as well. You can search through sites like CamelCamelCamel, froogle.com, pricegrabber.com, and a ton of other helpful sites.  Keep searching until you find a good price. Sometimes this may take a while, but be patient. (Don’t settle for just a good price. Check out reviews on the item you’re buying to make sure it is worth your money!)
  2. Once you’ve found a good price, see if they offer additional discounts for buying the TV online:  If you’ve found the item you’re looking for at a bricks and mortar store location, check out the company’s website or online store.  Often you’ll find that the online price is a lot lower than the in-store price.  Often buying from a website (like amazon.com) means you won’t have to pay taxes as well.
  3. See if any manufacturers are offering mail-in rebates or discounts:  Even if you’ve found an item on sale sometimes the manufacturer or the store will have additional mail-in rebates and discounts that you can take advantage of.  Search the store’s “rebates” section, or do a Google search to see if you’re missing anything.
  4. Find store coupons by searching online: When buying online (and sometimes even in-store) you can find store coupons to save an additional percentage off of your purchase. Often the discounts are stackable on top of sale prices.  For example, when we recently bought a new home computer we saved 10% off the price by buying a coupon code off of eBay for $5.  Using the coupon saved us $50.  Find coupon codes and physical coupons through eBay, retailmenot.com, and other coupon websites.
  5. Find other cash-back discounts online: A lot of online stores, and some physical stores have cash-back programs to save you extra money on your purchases.  Sites like Honey and Rakuten.com have cash back programs that will give you cash back on your purchase of anywhere from 1% up to 10% or more when you buy through them.   Each store has specific savings that you can receive and they vary widely.  My new favorite cashback site, however, is the bing.com cashback program.  It seems that right now their cash-back percentages are extremely high for some stores.  For example, shopping at sears.com you can save anywhere from 4%-32% off your purchase price in cash back savings. The one caveat with the cash-back programs is that often you have to wait a while to cash out your savings or reach a certain payout level to get cash back.  On larger purchases, this usually isn’t a problem, however.
  6. Find other non-cash discounts or incentives: You can often find non-cash rebates or incentives to buy certain items.  Gas cards, gift certificates, and other incentives are frequently given out by mail-in rebates.  Do some searches of the site’s rebate section or of online rebate sites to see if there is anything available.
  7. Pick up your item to save on shipping:  You can often pick up an item purchased online instead of having it shipped.  Sometimes this can save you a good chunk of change if you bought a large or heavy item like a TV.

As you can see, if you spend a little bit of time researching the item you’re looking for, and finding miscellaneous discounts and rebates, you can find some great deals on a lot of things you buy.

Getting A Deal On Our New TV

It’s easy enough for me to say that you can easily find a deal, but it’s another thing to do it in practice.  So I thought I would share our experience in buying our new 50″ plasma TV, and how we managed to get it for a lot less than other people were paying for it.

We were searching for a 50″ plasma television.  We searched prices across a variety of stores and found that we would be able to get one that fit our needs for between $850 and $1000.   Several stores were having sales reducing the prices of their TVs below $1000.  After narrowing our options down to a few models we settled on one particular TV at Sears.

The TV was normally $999, but was currently on sale through the weekend because of a sale on TVs 50″ and bigger. So right off the bat the sale slashed the price to $799.99.  Already we’re saving $200 off the price.

Next, we found that the TV was cut in price by an additional 10% because there was another special sale on LG brand TVs.  The savings were stackable, so that means we saved another $80 off the price.   The total price before taxes was $719.99, about $770 after taxes.

This is probably where most people stop the process and just buy the TV because $770 is a pretty good deal on a TV of this size.  But not me. I want to find where else I can save.  After searching online for further coupon or rebate savings I found that the Bing.com search engine now has a cash-back shopping tool that allows you to save money when you shop at certain stores.  I found that Sears was one of the stores and incredibly they currently had a deal where you could save an additional 16% in cash back when you shop at sears.com through their sponsored link.  

I jumped at that opportunity, which saved us an additional $115 in cash-back rebates.  That cuts the TV price to $655.  That’s an amazing deal on this TV by any account.  But I wasn’t done yet.

One last thing that i decided to try before jumping on this deal was to see if there were any special rebates being offered by LG or Sears for purchasing this TV.  I found another rebate online that gave people who purchased a 50″ or 60″ LG plasma TV a pre-paid discover gas card.  For my particular TV you could get a $75 gas card by mail in rebate from LG.  We buy gas anyway, so getting a $75 gas card is just another $75 in savings!  Cut that off our price and you have a final price on this TV of $580.

I found that I could also save another 5% off on this TV if I opened a Sears credit card, but I didn’t want to do that.  (Left another $30-40 in savings on the table there)

50-inch-tv

So once again, here’s how it broke down:

$999.99 – Regular Price
-$200 50″+ TV sale discount
-$80 extra online discount for LG brand TVs
$719.99 final price. (add tax and it was $770)

Other “found” discounts
-$115 (16% discount for buying through bing.com search engine)
-$75 Special LG TV buyer gas card rebate (it’s a discover gas card, but we buy gas anyway so we’ll still be saving this money)

Final price after all discounts, rebates, cash back and gas cards:
$580 with tax included- $470 in discounts!

So we’re extremely happy with the deal we got on this TV.  We ended up saving almost $500 off of the retail price just by doing a little bit extra leg work and internet searching.  You can do the same thing next time you buy something expensive!

Have you recently made a good purchase where you saved some extra money by doing the extra legwork? Tell us your story and your own shopping savings tips in the comments!

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Last Edited: 17th November 2023 The content of biblemoneymatters.com is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Visitors to biblemoneymatters.com should not act upon the content or information without first seeking appropriate professional advice. In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.

This article is about: Commentary, Frugality, Saving Money, Tips

About Peter Anderson

Peter Anderson is a Christian, husband to his beautiful wife Maria, and father to his 2 children. He loves reading and writing about personal finance, and also enjoys a good board game every now and again. You can find out more about him on the about page. Don't forget to say hi on Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook!

Comments

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  1. Matthew says

    Well done. And this probably goes without saying, but it’s always good to check reviews on CNET.com or ConsumerReports.com so that you’re sure your getting good quality, not just a good deal. Quite impressive Pete.
    Matthew´s last blog ..When investing turns into gambling

    Reply
    • Peter says

      I agree, I should add that in there. I also did quite a bit of research reading reviews on Cnet, amazon and other websites to make sure the TV I was getting was in fact a good reliable performer.

      Reply
  2. Torrey says

    One thing I tend to do is purchase factory refurbished electronics. I know that many are hesitant to do so, but as long as they have the same warranty, doesn’t bother me one bit.

    I agree with Matthew about checking out reviews. But I tend to rely more on reviews from actual user vs. the “experts”.

    Lastly, my go-to deal finding site is dealnews.com. Buy most of my stuff in general from finding deals there.
    Torrey´s last blog ..5 Mistakes Single Women Make with Men and Their Money

    Reply
    • Peter says

      I’m in total agreement about refurbished electronics. Usually I buy my computers refurbished from dell. You save a couple hundred bucks, but they’re as good as new. My old computer is 6 years old now and still running great – and it was refurbished.

      Reply
  3. Jason Y says

    And I thought _I_ was good at getting a good deal! That’s pretty amazing!

    Reply
    • Peter says

      What was your deal?

      Reply
  4. Lazy Man and Money says

    I’m a big fan of CNet’s Cheapskate.

    It’s been awhile since they had a deal on big televisions (it’s always something technology-related like GPS systems or netbooks), but I noticed back in Feb. they had a 47-inch television for $699: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-10159242-58.html.

    It was refurbished, though it sounds like it wouldn’t have mattered to you. It was also a full 1080P instead of a 720P… That means you may be more future-proof in getting the most of your movies if you go with Blu-Ray in the future. Plus this was more than 6 months ago, so you could have been enjoying it for a bit. (It might just not be the TV brand or full feature set you really wanted, which is obviously of some importance.)
    Lazy Man and Money´s last blog ..MonaVie is Trying to Sue Me…

    Reply
  5. Mr. Not the Jet Set says

    We got a great deal just by saving up and paying cash. A financed TV never looked as good as ours!

    We also caught a hefty discount when the new models were coming out – on the new model, not the old ones.
    Mr. Not the Jet Set´s last blog ..Seasonal Recipe: Peaches

    Reply
  6. Mr. Not the Jet Set says

    oh! Newegg.com is a great place to read reviews in addition to cnet and amazon. The folks on Newegg are usually slightly more technically proficient, tho.
    Mr. Not the Jet Set´s last blog ..Seasonal Recipe: Peaches

    Reply
  7. Barbara Ling says

    Fantastic compilation of how to save when buying a big ticket item – I’ll be sharing this one with my network. Thanks!
    Barbara Ling´s last blog ..Give BACK to Your Affiliates – Covert Angel Time

    Reply
  8. jay says

    Great tips above…I actually used to work for an electronics store and I saw a lot of different ways to save money on high ticket items. The best thing is to do your research BEFORE you get to the store, thats the biggest reason consumers end up making a purchase of somethings they didn’t really need.
    jay´s last blog ..Do You Know What Your Net Worth Is? Organize Your Personal Finances

    Reply
  9. Paul says

    Great article! I was aware of some of these things but not all of them. You’ve also managed to get me to consider Plasma TVs again. I had dismissed them but reading reviews of the one you bought convinced me otherwise. They’re typically cheaper then LCDs which is very attractive.

    I remember you writing about a home media center so I was wondering if you’re using the new TV for this purpose and if so how well suited that TV is for such a purpose. Thanks. :-)

    Reply
  10. Mike says

    Plasmas use at least twice the electricity of lcds. Do yourself/others/ the world a favor and if you must have a big tv, try to get a deal on an LCD.

    Reply
    • Peter says

      I’ve looked at the amount of power this plasma tv uses, and while it is slightly more, for the amount of TV we watch a month, and with the new power saving features that this plasma has built in, the amount of extra money spent on energy is minimal. Add to that the savings we got on this TV and it would take years and years to make up the savings on the TV with reduced electricity usage.

      Reply
      • Mike says

        Glad to hear they are doing that with the newer ones. Guess it has been awhile since I looked at them!
        Cheers.

        Reply
  11. My Journey says

    All I can say is WOW, I thought I was good on looking online for deals, but this is amazing.

    The only thing I would add is that most of those TVs are negotiable. When I walked into buy my plasma, I got the guy to shave off $200 with just pure negotiations. However, I am not sure how that would work out using your (better) techniques.
    My Journey´s last blog ..Why is Layaway Becoming More Popular?

    Reply
  12. Cheapnik says

    Price matching works too. If you find a great sale at a store that runs out of that item or is not a store that you want to do business with try price matching at your favorite store. Most electronic stores will do this.
    Cheapnik´s last blog ..Use It Up Week

    Reply
  13. Chris says

    I’ll have to try some of these techniques. When we bought our large plasma screen we bought at CompUSA a couple of years ago when they were going out of business and liquidating inventory.

    Reply
  14. Jeff says

    Pete.. great job on the tv buy. We are considering a large tv purchase and I’ll for sure use this information when the time comes. Thanks for showing and not just telling, so much more powerful.

    Reply
  15. Camden@Best Gifts for Men says

    This caught my eye, since I’m researching a new dishwasher even as we speak! Didn’t know about bing’s program; I’ll have to see if that’s still offered.

    I’m also going to check my current credit card’s programs – I know they have discounts if you purchase online through them.

    Reply
    • Peter Anderson says

      The Bing program has been discontinued as of a month or two ago. Sorry! There are a variety of other cash back program still out there though.

      Reply
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