3 Easy Ways To Save Money & Get What You Need For Cheap (Or Free!)

If we all had enough money to buy whatever we wanted whenever we wanted it, life would be great!

But for most of us, that's not reality. Shopping around for the best deal, that's reality. Saving a few bucks here and there, that's real life. Nothing wrong with that. Hey, just because something doesn't cost full price doesn't mean it's not good quality.

In fact, not long ago I heard a story about a friend of a friend who remodeled their house - and bought all their appliances and furniture from online classified ads - while getting slightly used items for dirt cheap!

If you wait for bargains to come to you - well, it won't happen that way. All it takes is a little research to find the right deals that will save you money.

How do you do it? Try these 3 simple techniques:

1) Use Google. Next time you're ready to buy an item, go to Google.com, type in the word of the product you are looking for, and then add the word free or cheap or low cost in front of the name of the item. Then see if you can find it. You can also use words like used or refurbished or discount too. There are lots of websites that offer products for less than the retail cost - new and used. A little time spent searching for what you want can really save you big bucks!

2) Use Craigslist. I've had great success buying and selling items on Craigslist.com. It's free to use, easy to search for items what you want, and broken down by state and city, so you can find stuff near you. This website works kind of like an online tag sale - but you don't have to leave your house or drive around looking for what you want. Once you find it, then you can then contact the seller, negotiate, and then go pick it up. And I've also given away a bunch of stuff - good stuff - for cheap (sometimes even for free!) So you may be able to find some good stuff without paying the retail price. The free stuff goes fast, so you need to work quickly for those items (I once gave away an old computer for free and got 82 phone calls & emails)!

3) Use Amazon.com & eBay.com and other shopping sites. Many of the items on eBay are new, or slightly used, and cost a lot less than shopping at a major retailer. Some you have to bid on, some you can buy now. You won't get as good a bargain if you buy without bidding, but you'll still most likely pay less than you would have shopping at your local mall or shopping center. Sometimes the items come without the original packaging, and the used items sometimes are not perfect. But if you can deal with those imperfections, you can usually save a lot!

One of the great benefits of buying online is that you don't need to leave your house (or have to look for parking spaces, deal with long lines or crabby store clerks, or get to the store only to find out that the item is sold out!)

Shopping around for a bargain isn't difficult. But it could save you lots of money.

Just make sure that you don't buy a lot of stuff you don't really need, or pretty quickly you'll find yourself using Craigslist to SELL all the stuff you don't use!

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