The Personal Finance Playbook

My wife loves to haggle.  She’ll look at any sales person, smile sweetly, and ask for a discount.  It’s part of who she is.  She knows how to get a bargain.  It’s not my style.  I like to get a good deal, but I don’t have the knack for it that she does.  I have found that most things tend to be negotiable on price.  The key is (a) finding someone who has the authority to give you the discount and (b) asking in the right way or for the right reason.  My wife is a pro at this. 

After I graduated from law school, she decided to get me a brief case.  We went and looked at them a couple of times and found some we liked, but we were too frugal to buy any of the ones that we liked – because most of them were at a cost of about $150.  Just before I started my job, my wife surprised me with one of the brief cases we’d looked at.  It had a price tag of $139.  I chastised her for spending the money, and she got excited.  “Guess how much I paid for it!?!” she asked.  Before I could answer she told me, “$89!!!”  When I asked how, she went through and showed me each and every blemish on the leather.  She showed them, too, and asked for a discount.  They told her she could have it for $99.  She asked if they would sell it for $89.  They made the sale.

Asking for that deal took a little courage and a little moxie, two things that my wife has plenty of.  She doesn’t blink an eye asking for things like that.  90% of the time, people say no.  The other 10% of the time she finds a great deal.  If it had been me, I probably would have paid the $99.  I’m glad I wasn’t with her to hold her back. 

Lately, she’s really gone crazy selling our stuff on Craigslist.  She’s listed several items that haven’t sold, then re-listed them at a higher price and sold them.  She has an uncanny ability for understanding the psychology of selling, and she’s great with people.  She bought a table the other day for $40 and when I said I didn’t love it, she sold it today for $125.  The people who bought it are supposed to pick it up on Sunday.  I hope they aren’t reading this.

I don’t really like sales.  I would hate a sales job.  In the back of my mind I would always be worried that people would think that I was only being nice to them because I wanted to sell them something.  Rachel is a born salesperson though.  I’m proud and happy that she’s going to be a doctor, but part of me feels like she’s missed her calling somewhere along the line.  She’ll be a great doc, but someway, somehow, I’m going to make sure she capitalizes on that ability to sell – that unabashed lack of fear that she has when she’s asking someone for something she wants.  And I really think that’s the key, having the courage to just ask for what you want.  Goethe (or Basil King, depending on whom you ask) allegedly once said, “Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.”  I’ve used that as something of a mantra when I’ve been afraid of something in the past.  I say it to myself a lot when I feel nervous about public speaking or something like that.  I really think it’s true, too.  Be bold, like my wife, and you’ll do well in sales and in life.  Thanks for reading.

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bargain hunting, craigslist, haggling, sales

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 5:00 am and is filed under Careers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.