Tip 65: Shop around for the best deal

A few months ago, I bought a carpet shampoo vacuum cleaner at Lowes. It was a Bissell lift-off, and it was marked down according to the sign on the store shelf. I checked the price on amazon.com and it was the same price at Lowes. When I got home, I checked ads in my newspaper and found a sale on the same vacuum cleaner at Kohl's. I also realized that I had a 20% coupon at Kohl's, which would make even more of a price difference. Finally, I realized that I would get Kohl's cash. So I returned the vacuum to Lowes, bought the same vacuum at Kohl's and saved $60 plus I got $30 of Kohl's cash to use another day. The lesson here is to check prices carefully at several places. Another lesson is that sometimes buying a 35 cent newspaper can pay off.

It seems obvious to shop around for the best price, but sometimes people neglect doing this and miss out on easy savings. Lots of stores have price-match guarantees, so it is easy to let your guard down and assume that the store has done the work for you to check prices. As the story about the Bissell shows, this is simply not true.

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