Thoughts on buying something

 Thoughts on buying something

So you want to buy something of interest, you search google, the market on FB and TradeMe, what’s next? If not in a rush, don’t buy on impulse or urgency.

Sleeping on a big purchase or having time away from it is good, it’s meant to be it’ll be there the next day for you to pick it up. No regrets if you miss out on a good bargain, it’ll come around again in the future. If it doesn’t life will just move on with one less thing cluttering the house.

1. Set an estimated budget. (i.e $200 for a bike, $50 for a guitar, etc)
   - it’s not set in stone, the actual price can be more of less. If more, it’s gotta be worth it, if less your lucky!
2. Buy second hand first if possible
   - often much cheaper than brand new, good for the earth and environment. good test to whether you’ll really use it often or not. if you can use it enough that it breaks (the fear of second hands), then well, you passed the test to get a brand new one of a higher grade, and you’ll know what you want in your next purchase from the experince of using it. (i.e I bought a unicycle from the flea market, never used it as much as i’d like, so thankfully didn’t buy a brand new one), or badminton rackets, second hand is good, but you’ll know when you want a brand new one, and also what you’ll want in it.
3. Go to different shops
   - So i picked up a Takamine guitar off FB market place, been looking for one for quite sometime, and finally there was a post come up from a mom that bought it for their kid when he was interested in learning but now no longer needs it around, so they just posted it up for cheap. It was a good price for a quality second hand item, one broken string. Brought it to RockShop and they wanted to charge 30 bucks for labor over the cost of the strings. Walked around the block to MusicWorks that would do the restringing for free. Found the better deal on the second try walking it. So, best not to jump head in right on the first offers.
4. Stick to the budget
   - I walked into BikeHouse that was having a garage sale today. Marin WIldcate bike for $400. A steal compared to its $800 normal retail (ex-hire bikes). But it was over the $200 budget set for getting a bike here. ALmost got pushed to walking out the store with it by the sales guy. But nah, told him I’ll take a walk to the Market with my wife and come back later if we really wanted it. Fired up google and searched about the brand and found it was a woman’s bike (no bigge), fired up FB market palce and there as a 4500 Raliegh for $70, messaged the person striaght away. If i break the secondhand bike, then maybe i’ll consider a really good trail bike. But for now, I don’t see myself doing a lot of mountain biking with the baby (yet), saved that $400
5. Middle price
   - doesn’t need to be the cheapest, doesn’t need to be the most expensive. Normally the middle ground is the sweet spot, if you really like it, go for the second tier. Top tier’s are over price most of the time (i.e GPUs, CPUs). Got the Martin Classical guitar strings that were $22 ish, just a few bucks over the cheapest at $19 ish.
6. If you want it done right, do it yourself
   - So after an hour walking in the market we came back up to pick up the guitar. Really appreciate the young chap for offering to do the service for free. However instead of trying the strings to the bridge block like how the original strings were on, he just threaded them though the holes and used the metal nuts to hold the strings in place. Also, when winding the last string on the tuner, it was spiriling outwards like the original. Small details. but i guess i can’t be too nitpicky about it since I accepted the offer for the restringing. Guess if I really wanted it do be done right, I should have just bought the strings and did it myself. owh well

So yup, these are few of the lessons learnt from today’s Saturday morning excursion in Dunedin city.