海角大神

If there鈥檚 one thing I suggest that people do before they go shopping for any reasonably expensive item, it鈥檚 that they make a list of the features they actually need before they go and stick to that list.

There are several parts to that simple suggestion, though.

First of all, how do you know what features you need? Often, the assumption is that you have to know some things about what the product can do before you can decide which ones you need.

That鈥檚 a bad assumption. Not knowing what you want before you go shopping makes you into a target for a salesperson.

The best approach is to sit down and ask yourself why exactly you鈥檙e even thinking of making this purchase in the first place.

Why are you thinking of buying that camera? That phone? That washing machine?

You might think the answer is really obvious, but when you actually think about the question for a little bit, it becomes much harder.

For example, you don鈥檛 buy a cell phone because you 鈥渘eed鈥� a cell phone. You buy it because you need to communicate in a mobile fashion with people in your life.

Well, then, how do you communicate with those people? By phone call? By text message? By Twitter? What methods do you actually use? Don鈥檛 consider what you think you might use someday. Consider what you use right now. How do you carry out that communication?

You might come to the conclusion that you just need a device that enables you to make phone calls and send text messages while you鈥檙e out and about. For the vast majority of us, that鈥檚 really all we use our cell phones for, other than an occasional 鈥済ee whiz鈥� moment. It鈥檚 a mistake to pay very much at all for those rare 鈥済ee whiz鈥� moments.

To put it simply, the question 鈥渨hat am I really going to use this for?鈥� should lead every buying decision that you make. It鈥檚 the key question. If you don鈥檛 have an answer for it, you shouldn鈥檛 be buying a product. If you do have an answer, make sure it鈥檚 a realistic one in your life, meaning that you will actually be using this item because this is a real need for you.

Make a list of those real uses. Then, figure out how those uses translate into actual features on the item you鈥檙e considering buying. Most of the time, you鈥檒l find that your actual uses translate into a pretty bare bones model, which means you鈥檒l be saving a lot of money.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.