How can I become okay with not getting the best possible deal?
July 3, 2015 1:06 PM   Subscribe

Whenever I buy an item, and later discover there was a cheaper way to buy the same item, it really upsets me. It bothers me for hours or days. This stresses me whenever I need to buy variable-cost items like plane tickets and insurance, because I will probably find out I didn't get the best deal and then feel bad. What's worked for you in fighting this neurosis?

I'm fine with spending large amounts of money, as long as I feel like I got the best deal. Let's say I bought a car for $20k. If I know that I negotiated for the best possible price, I feel good. If I find out that there was a better way to negotiate or another dealership that would sell me the same car for $19,900, I'll be upset, sometimes for days.

It makes me paralyzed when it comes to decisions where it's very difficult to get the best deal, e.g. tax decisions, plane tickets, salary negotiations. I know that I'll find out I could've gotten a better deal and then I'll feel bad. Even before I start buying the item, I already feel dread in anticipation.

I grew up with very little money, and every dollar was significant. Even after I got a job and started making money, the idea of spending more than $40 seemed formidable. It made me anxious to rent an apartment, buy a car and furniture. I got a tiny studio (well below what I could afford), and got everything used / free.

Now, years later, I can buy things, but I feel terrible if I "wasted" money because I could've gotten it for cheaper. I'll literally spend hours feeling bad about $3.

If you've had an issue with this, how have you combated it? I'm already in therapy (since that's MeFi's favorite go-to!).
posted by cheesecake to Human Relations (27 answers total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
Now, years later, I can buy things, but I feel terrible if I "wasted" money because I could've gotten it for cheaper. I'll literally spend hours feeling bad about $3.

When you buy something, you are not just buying the thing itself in a vacuum; you're buying the ability to take ownership of the thing at a specific time and location.

This means that sometimes, you pay more money than you might have paid elsewhere, because what you are paying that extra money for is convenience. The convenience of being able to get it when you want/need it, without having to spend time - valuable time - looking for The Best Possible Deal.

If you spend hours clipping coupons to save $10, now you are $10 richer but several hours poorer than you otherwise would have been.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:12 PM on July 3, 2015 [62 favorites]


I have a strict rule of just not ever looking at prices for %expensive_thing% after a major purchase so I don't drive myself crazy.
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 1:16 PM on July 3, 2015 [28 favorites]


The vast majority of people contributing, to whatever product or service you buy, are not paid very generously, but they at least have some kind of employment. While the price difference you paid won't go to tipping them or any kind of bonus for them, it does help keep the system going so that a few more are employed for a tiny bit longer. In other words, you're keeping the slack in the system and keeping the system going.

Also, other people may need the deeper discounts more.
posted by amtho at 1:18 PM on July 3, 2015 [6 favorites]


Would you drive 10 miles to get cheaper petrol even if the net result is you spent your free time plus actually used more value in petrol than you saved to get it cheaper?
As showbiz_liz says, you need to factor in your time - but also you need to factor in your mood as a cost.
Plus on balance across all your purchases you can be comforted that you are saving money overall, you won't win on everything but compared with a lot of the population, they won't even haggle at all!
posted by razzman at 1:19 PM on July 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


I get this sometimes too, but for me the thing that helps is valuing my time appropriately. Like, in the car example, you got a slightly worse deal, but you can also think of it as you just paying $100 to not have to deal with it anymore.
posted by Ragged Richard at 1:19 PM on July 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


Like, in the car example, you got a slightly worse deal, but you can also think of it as you just paying $100 to not have to deal with it anymore.

Better yet, think of it as a .5% convenience surcharge. Barely a blip.
posted by phunniemee at 1:27 PM on July 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


I'm not as bad as you, but I've found that I don't value my time very well - or to put it another way, I don't figure in how much time I may have saved. I've started thinking of my time worth (arbitrarily) $50/hr so that way I have a realistic idea of what convenience is worth. If I "saved" x hours then it's worth time x 50 dollars to pay more.

I'm actually pretty terrible with numbers so that might have something to do with it.
posted by fiercekitten at 1:29 PM on July 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


I do what fiercekitten does: work out my time worth, and limit myself to worthwhile savings.
posted by scruss at 1:37 PM on July 3, 2015


Best answer: Yes! I know this. This is perfectionism, and there's lots of good askMes about overcoming perfectionism.

It also presumes, being a numbers person, that things have an exact value, a known value, a measurable objective value. But things actually have the value you (and others) assign to them. My $200 purse was excellent value to me. Someone else wouldn't want it (or anything) for more than $50. Someone else wouldn't pay more than $100 for my purse. Some would say it's worth $300 given the leather and stitching. So to prevent that dread, I decide in advance how much something is worth to me. I research going rates for flights, clothes, and so on, given the quality & type of product. Then I decide that flight is worth $500-$600 to me, and that particular sweater is worth $30 to me. But that other sweater is worth $100 to me. And then I pay what it's worth to me. Or I don't buy it at all, because the price doesn't match its value. This way I've developed more confidence in my financial decision making.

Going rate + value + my own personal tastes + time spent looking - how much more time I care to spend = rough idea of how much I want to pay.

And when I could have gotten it cheaper, I've learned to shrug it off. I've basically decided that in life, there is some financial slippage, and figured out my % amount to feel bad about. Or I think about it in casino terms, and just as a general competition. That Item was $2 cheaper elsewhere? House wins again! But who will win the next round...? Stay tuned!

I figure I could have negotiated $350 lower on my $16k car and my friend said "It's a dollar a day for a year. Forget about it!!" (That was 5 years ago!) also I got the exact color I wanted and a sun roof
posted by St. Peepsburg at 1:40 PM on July 3, 2015 [21 favorites]


I've been this way to varying degrees at different points in my life. It has tended to get worse when I have had very little control in other parts of my life, hence the focus on seemingly more controllable minor things, eg your example of the $100 difference on a $20,000 car purchase.

Whenever I was able to identify the actual source of the anxiety, it helped. I also started realizing that my time is valuable, as is my overall happiness and well-being. The ability to let go of agonizing over every little thing is worth the money to me.

It also helped to read about the concept of "satisficers" vs "maximizers." Nowadays I'm much more of a satisficer, partly through self-awareness and conscious effort, but also because I frankly don't have the mental energy to devote to being a maximizer.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:44 PM on July 3, 2015 [13 favorites]


It may be helpful to remind yourself that you made the best decision you could with the information you had at the time of the purchase. You sound very careful, so it seems likely that if the deal had existed when you made the purchase, you would have found it.

Also, some stores offer refunds for the difference in competitor prices, or if something goes on sale after you buy it. If you buy things from companies that offer this guarantee, that might help you feel better about the time spent researching prices after you make a purchase.
posted by Little Dawn at 1:44 PM on July 3, 2015


Seconding Blue Jello Elf - just don't look at prices for a while. If I do glimpse a better deal, I remind myself that I searched for the best deal at the time, and this deal wasn't available, so there's no point worrying about it because if you always wait for a better deal you'll never buy anything.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 1:46 PM on July 3, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have a similar background and I've similar issues in spending far too much time thinking about pennies. For me, the trick was having budgets. I have a car budget, a food budget, a retirement budget and so on. My brain is happy to believe that car money isn't the same thing as food money or retirement money, so it no longer feels like I'm shorting myself on food or retirement by spending the car budget, even if I don't spend it perfectly.

Worked for me, anyway.
posted by emilyw at 1:55 PM on July 3, 2015


Gretchen Rubin talks about maximizers and satisficers. I find that a useful framework for deciding how much time I want to spend getting the best deal.
posted by BrashTech at 2:05 PM on July 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


As a mental hack, what might also help is determining what an item's value is to you before you start, and give yourself a range. If the deal falls within that range, you have bought it for its perceived value to you, even if it ends up being a little bit cheaper somewhere else. You haven't been ripped off, you haven't been careless with your money, you made the best possible decision that you could have made with the information that you had at the time. If you get a good deal within your perceived range, you have no way of knowing that you will find a better deal elsewhere, so it's not a matter of being irresponsible. It's about giving your future self a break who may be taken by surprise by something that they had no way of really knowing for sure would be the case (i.e., a lower price).

So, it's always possible to get a good deal elsewhere, but you never know for sure that you will. You are only responsible for what you have in the moment, based on good-enough research to not compromise your time that could go towards other things.

The only time I'd feel bad about this is if not getting the best deal possible might provide a financial hardship. I'm going to guess, though, that this isn't your current situation, but might be residual feelings from back when you had to be really careful about spending. We should always be careful, but at some point we need to trust that when we have basic budget and savings/investments covered, we don't have to be paranoid about what we have left. Sometimes we'll get the best deal, sometimes we won't, and that's okay. The only way to make sure we can always get the best deal is to be omniscient or to spend an insane amount of time on each purchase; but not only is there the impossibility of omniscience, but there's the research-time cost which can impede on quality of life. As others noted above, time is a resource. If I don't get the best price when I bought something, but it's still worth what I paid for it, I almost always determine the higher cost of having it now as paying for the benefit of increasing my quality of life elsewhere by means of time.
posted by SpacemanStix at 2:07 PM on July 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


Don't even look afterwards.
posted by ryanbryan at 2:31 PM on July 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Man I really struggle with this too, having parents who were really not good with managing their finances. Seconding everything said above about valuing your time.

Also, keep in mind that the market value of just about every consumer product is going to decrease over time. Wait long enough and you will probably find a better price, but you may miss your opportunity to get the thing you really want if someone else beats you to it.
posted by gennessee at 3:02 PM on July 3, 2015


What helped me , at least in the case of eating out, was to spend some time in London. Now I can go into any restaurant and think "this cost less than the sushi/pizza/fish & chips I had then and is sure to be better" and order without worry.

So maybe spend some time in a place where all your options are bad options. If you're in the USA, take a trip to Canada and shop here. It may shake you out of that need to get the best deal.

What also helps is being insanely busy. It doesn't have to be with work. But just have so much going on that you don't have the time to obsess over getting the best deal. You have x amount of time to get the shopping done, you can spend that time going store to store to get the best deal for each thing and not finish, or you can go to one place (or maybe two) and get it all from there.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:05 PM on July 3, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: If I find out that there was a better way to negotiate or another dealership that would sell me the same car for $19,900, I'll be upset, sometimes for days

Imagine a genie appeared, and said "Hey! I'll give you a hundred dollars! The only catch is you have to be miserable for a couple days!

You probably wouldn't accept that deal, but you are accepting something quite similar. Your time and sanity are valuable, valuable commodities, and there's only so much of them you can spend on chasing the perfect deal.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 4:49 PM on July 3, 2015 [7 favorites]


I think mindfulness meditation helps to deal with all kinds of unwanted thoughts. But you could also get a credit card with price protection, so if this happens with a bigger-ticket item, you can get a refund of the difference.
posted by three_red_balloons at 5:06 PM on July 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


Best answer: I mean, you go into a restaurant and eat and pay - but chances are good they're throwing some food out at the end of the night, right? And yet, you probably aren't standing in dumpsters at 12am.

Go into every single transaction knowing you could have saved more if only ______. Seriously. Own that knowledge. Expectations are resentments waiting to happen, and setting yourself up to think you're getting the best deal clearly isn't working for you. "This is the best deal right now, and I cannot control anything else."
posted by good lorneing at 5:17 PM on July 3, 2015


I recently read about this startup called Paribus that will automatically track price changes and apply for refunds automatically from sites that refund differences. Other than reading about it, I know nothing about it other than that they want you email password to parse your email for receipts which is too intrusive for me. But you might be able to get money back without even thinking about it if they work.
posted by procrastination at 6:40 PM on July 3, 2015


Best answer: Have you ever had the opposite happen? As in you didn't buy something because you thought you could get it cheaper and then it turned out that you couldn't, and so now you either have to pay more or you miss out on having it completely? Because I have, and I've found that having to pay more than the cheapest price around at the time (or not getting $thing at all) is a worse feeling than finding out later that $thing was available at a cheaper price.

Here's what I do (which I guess is satisficing?) I shop around for prices, monitor trends etc, and when $thing is the cheapest I've seen it, I'll buy it. Then stop looking at prices. And if (or more likely, when) I find it cheaper later, I think "well yes, I could have saved $50 but I've had it for 2 months now and that 2 months of happiness $thing has brought to my life is totally worth the extra $50".

The negotiated price/salary etc situation is different. I totally get you! If you're like me, you're thinking - Should I have held out for longer? I could have just walked away! I'm sure I could have said some magical words that would have got me a $20K pay rise! I think in this, like all areas of life, all you can do is do your best. Don't go down the path of comparisons. Yes, someone else might have been able to get a better deal/higher salary etc. But "someone else" is also able to run faster than you, and you don't beat yourself up that you're not winning Olympic gold medals are you? Whatever you negotiated, that was the best that you could do at the time. And it must have been reasonably acceptable because you still bought the thing, took the job etc. right?

Now, you might want your best to be better, in which case - well, all I can suggest is that you go into these negotiations as well prepared as possible. Learn and practice negotiation techniques...but that's a whole other Ask that I'm not qualified to answer.
posted by pianissimo at 7:49 PM on July 3, 2015 [4 favorites]


I, too, grew up as a Poor Kid and remember the significance of every single penny, sometimes even down to whether to buy one more slice of lunchmeat or one less based on the cash we had on hand. I, too, discuss my money shame spiral with my therapist and we work on it.

But it's still there. For me, there is no trick or hack that makes me feel any better about it, whether it's the pre-buy anxiety or the post-buy shame at missing out on a deal. I have had to learn to talk to myself about it, sometimes out loud, and just feel the feelings about it.

"I could have saved $3! But I didn't. And I won't ever have saved $3 on that purchase. I am the worst. And, yet, I keep on being okay. Maybe I'm actually doing okay and can let this happen..."

It takes time and a sort of refiguring of one's adult place in the world versus one's out-of-control childhood place in the world. Sometimes we just have to go back there and be grateful we're not there anymore. I'm sorry that you had to be there but I am as proud of you for being solvent financially as a complete stranger can be :)
posted by Merinda at 9:04 PM on July 3, 2015


Some credit cards (mostly American Express, I think?) offer price protection where if the price of something drops within X days of you buying that thing on their card then they credit you the difference.

You pay for the service via higher annual fees, etc., but it's usually part of an overall customer service package that's very valuable.
posted by Jacqueline at 10:39 PM on July 3, 2015


You may find reading The Paradox of Choice helpful - I did.
posted by hilaryjade at 9:52 AM on July 5, 2015


Just to expand on the price protection thing, Amex has a good number of no annual fee cards that include the price protection benefit. (I'm happy enough with Blue, but Blue Cash might be bettet for you) There are also a crap ton of Visa and MasterCards that also have that. Basically any "gold" or "signature" card will have it, whatever the bank, since it's a Visa and MasterCard benefit, not specific to the bank providing the credit line.
posted by wierdo at 2:43 PM on July 5, 2015


« Older Whose idea was it to have an open bar at a lecture...   |   Who are the Louis Armstrong's of guitar playing? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.