{"id":1033,"date":"2012-04-25T19:03:52","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T00:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2012-04-25T17:45:39","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T22:45:39","slug":"clearance-and-discount-items","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2012\/04\/clearance-and-discount-items\/","title":{"rendered":"Clearance and Discount Items \u2013 Really a Value?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been known to be frugal.\u00a0 I cringe at the price of things; lately that\u2019s been the cost of binders.\u00a0 My mind is boggled by how much they cost.\u00a0 This leads me to search for items in discount stores and the clearance section of stores hoping to save my money.\u00a0 I also frequently browse the dollar area of stores looking for great products at a discounted price.\u00a0 And you might have already guessed this \u2013 there is often a high cost to purchases made in this way.<\/p>\n

Let me continue with my search for 3-ring binders.\u00a0 I went to countless stores searching for less expensive binders.\u00a0 Some stores had binders at the same price as the typical office supply stores.\u00a0 Other stores did have binders at a lower price, sometimes not at a significantly lower price. \u00a0A couple of stores had some binders in their clearance area. \u00a0I cannot tell you how much time I spent driving around and going shopping, which isn\u2019t something I enjoy anyway.\u00a0 It was all in the effort of saving money and I was motivated.\u00a0 First off, how much did I really save by all the time, energy, and gas I spent on this quest?<\/p>\n

Secondly and maybe more importantly, those less expensive binders I did buy are breaking apart \u2013 whether they came of the clearance areas or the discount stores.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t save myself anything.\u00a0 Although I spent less money initially, the quality was poor and I needed to get more binders. (Thank goodness for Unikeep\u2019s Ecobinders<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This is one of the things we don\u2019t always think about when we\u2019re searching to save money \u2013 the clearance and discounted items are often less sturdy.\u00a0 If we think about it, this makes sense \u2013 how can something be so inexpensive here and nowhere else?\u00a0 It\u2019s logical that the quality is less than the \u201cnormal.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was shopping with a friend and we were looking through the dollar items at a store.\u00a0 I had stopped at a container, it was a style that I\u2019ve been intrigued with yet don\u2019t want to spend the money to get (at least until I have a strong purpose for it).\u00a0 It was tempting; it was only a dollar.\u00a0 I picked it up and was looking at it.\u00a0 Then I noticed that one of the corners was all smashed up.\u00a0 I put it down and moved down the aisle.\u00a0 Then my friend saw the same container and got excited.\u00a0 I commented how poorly it must be made since a corner was smashed in.\u00a0 She too put the container back down and moved along.\u00a0 If one was so easily smashed in, it really suggests the quality isn\u2019t up to the standards of similar containers.<\/p>\n

If you examine the discounted items at stores, you can offer discover why they are offering those items at a lower price.\u00a0 Without naming a store, I was intrigued with a display table of discounted items from a familiar brand \u2013 ooh a chance to save some money.\u00a0 I picked up several of the offerings to see if I needed any of them and played with them.\u00a0 It quickly became apparent why they were discounted though if I hadn\u2019t stopped to \u201cplay\u201d with them, I wouldn\u2019t have realized the poor quality.\u00a0 It was quite unexpected, as I said, it was a familiar brand, yet whether these were factory problems or just bad design \u2013 the products were defective.\u00a0 That didn\u2019t stop the company from putting them on a nice display table in the middle of the store to tempt people into spending some money to get them.<\/p>\n

Sometimes it\u2019s not so easy to tell when something is poor quality, yet pausing to ask yourself, to consider the idea that if these items are being offered at such a reduced price there is likely to be something less than ideal about them.\u00a0 Stores play on our desire to save money by enticing us with clearance and discounted items \u2013 \u201cwe\u2019ll get such a deal.\u201d\u00a0 Even some of the binders I looked in the clearance areas of the office stores were there because of faulty design, which wasn\u2019t apparent until I pulled it off the shelf and started to examine them.<\/p>\n

Those discounted and clearance items can certainly be tempting.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been burned by an impulse decision to save some money and grabbing the item off the shelf and into my cart.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019ve learned and I closely examine each item for defects and hints of lesser quality.\u00a0 (Heck this is a good idea no matter where the item is found, as I\u2019ve found poor quality items sitting in their section.)\u00a0 I haven\u2019t stopped exploring those clearance areas \u2013 you can find good deals there \u2013 although it\u2019s wise to approach it cautiously.<\/p>\n

I hope you will consider \u201cwhy\u201d a company would be selling something for such a discounted price the next time a clearance item calls to you.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My frugality has gotten in my way, attempting to save money has lead me to clearance items and the discovery that there\u2019s a cost to those as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,8,5,15],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personaldevelopment","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-household","tag-resources"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-gF","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1037,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}