Is that free shipping really free?
If you're buying extra items online just to reach the minimum for free shipping, you're wasting money on something you don't need and had no intent of buying.
Online vendors will try to lure you to spend more money with free shipping minimums. Ignore them, Hamm argues.
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It happens to almost everyone who shops online.
You go to a site to order a specific item that you鈥檝e already decided on. You add that item to the cart and head to the checkout.
But wait!
The site informs you that if you add just $12 more in items, you can get free shipping on your order! Ordinarily, the shipping costs $8, but if you just add another item, they take away that fee.
You can get a $12 item effectively for just $4. That鈥檚 a deal, right?
Not really. Let鈥檚 walk through this.
First of all,聽you have to find an item at exactly $12 in value to maximize this deal.聽If you end up buying something for $20, you鈥檙e getting it for $12. If you find something for $40, you鈥檙e getting it for $32. A minor discount, but not a big one.
If you try too hard to find something that matches the 鈥渕aximum value鈥� here, you鈥檙e more likely to wind up with something you don鈥檛 even want. If you broaden your search, you wind up not getting much of a bargain and you鈥檙e buying something you didn鈥檛 intend to buy anyway.
厂别肠辞苍诲,听you鈥檙e still spending extra money on something you don鈥檛 need and had no intent of buying.聽In order to do this, you have to search around to buy another item that you never intended to spend your money on in the first place. Spending money on something completely unnecessary is never a good idea.
Unless I am picking up something that I鈥檓 absolutely sure that I need (like toiletries and so on), I consider it a waste of money to tack on something more just to get free shipping.
Sure, I might be missing something of a bargain, but I don鈥檛 consider it a bargain to wind up with something else that I don鈥檛 really need.
Leave free shipping behind. Do price comparisons that include the shipping costs and stop buying more just to 鈥渟ave鈥� 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聽at Amazon聽and at bookstores everywhere.聽