Patience.
This has be really illustrated to us the past few weeks and months. First with the van we bought. It's old but it looks good, runs GREAT and only cost us $2300, with NO repair costs needed. We looked for several weeks and most of the vans we looked at during that time were more expensive and in worse condition. DH wanted to just get something and quick, but I knew that we had plenty of time before the new one gets here and we needed additional room, so I made him wait until we found one that was better priced. And we did!
And the bigger one most recently, was a bunch of wood. DH loves to do woodworking/furniture building and wood can be really expensive. We don't have much money to spare on a hobby, so he's been looking for cheap stuff on CL and freecycle-when people tear down decks or sheds or whatever. He really wanted more, and our dog house really needs to be repaired. Finally, last weekend, a buddy of his tore down an old barn on his farm property. This resulted in EIGHT truck loads of solid oak. Split between DH, his buddy and a couple other guys, it means he should end up with about 2 truckloads of reclaimed wood, which with his schedule and plans is enough to last for several years. AND the guy also gave him the old aluminum siding he had sitting around, so repair the dog house with that, so he got free wood and the dog house gets repaired for free (the dog house is 3'X3', he made it a few years ago and the roof was recently severely damaged in a storm and needs to be replaced. The aluminum is perfect.)
These have just really showed me that with some patience, you can almost always find what you want for the price you can really afford. You just have to wait for the right deal to come along.
How have you experienced this? If we share stories, perhaps those who are trying to wait for the right deal to come along will be able to wait just a little longer and save the money they want to save.
This has be really illustrated to us the past few weeks and months. First with the van we bought. It's old but it looks good, runs GREAT and only cost us $2300, with NO repair costs needed. We looked for several weeks and most of the vans we looked at during that time were more expensive and in worse condition. DH wanted to just get something and quick, but I knew that we had plenty of time before the new one gets here and we needed additional room, so I made him wait until we found one that was better priced. And we did!
And the bigger one most recently, was a bunch of wood. DH loves to do woodworking/furniture building and wood can be really expensive. We don't have much money to spare on a hobby, so he's been looking for cheap stuff on CL and freecycle-when people tear down decks or sheds or whatever. He really wanted more, and our dog house really needs to be repaired. Finally, last weekend, a buddy of his tore down an old barn on his farm property. This resulted in EIGHT truck loads of solid oak. Split between DH, his buddy and a couple other guys, it means he should end up with about 2 truckloads of reclaimed wood, which with his schedule and plans is enough to last for several years. AND the guy also gave him the old aluminum siding he had sitting around, so repair the dog house with that, so he got free wood and the dog house gets repaired for free (the dog house is 3'X3', he made it a few years ago and the roof was recently severely damaged in a storm and needs to be replaced. The aluminum is perfect.)
These have just really showed me that with some patience, you can almost always find what you want for the price you can really afford. You just have to wait for the right deal to come along.
How have you experienced this? If we share stories, perhaps those who are trying to wait for the right deal to come along will be able to wait just a little longer and save the money they want to save.
Or when our fridge broke - we spent a weekend trolling the new-appliance stores, went home to think about it, hubby had the brilliant idea of seeing if the issue was covered under warranty, and the appliance repair guy was able to fix it for $200-some. Much less than a brand new side-by-side. Plus since we had the garage fridge as backup, the fridge in the kitchen dying was more of an inconvenience than anything - repair guy was actually happy about that so he didn't have to cobble together something to get our fridge going and risk breaking another part in that process. It's nice to be able to do our own thing in that regard rather than things being total emergencies. 
