Do I Look Dumb????

When you are out shopping sometime have a look around at all of the gimmicks that are used to entice you to buy something. Every day in the newspaper there are ads explaining how much you will save by shopping at our store as we are having a clearance sale! Wait a minute this store has a clearance every month. Are they ever totally clear? Then there are the 10, 15 and 20% off deals that show up on this particular electronic store's ads which seem enticing. But you turn the page and you find their competitor has the same 10, 15 and 20% off deals on their merchandise. I walk through a large department store and see a great shirt on sale for 40% off. This looks too good to be true so I look at the label and sure enough the original price was $60 marked down to $36. Then I looked at the shirt and I wondered if I would have paid $36 for this shirt if it wouldn't have been on sale. I have nothing to compare it with and manufacturers labels now are pretty much the same (made somewhere in the third world or China) and the sale ends today so what do you do? You buy. I have to laugh at my wife and mother-in-law when we are away on vacation in the south because they get so excited to see the morning newspaper so they can peruse the ads for sales and coupons. But sales are not the only enticement. Consider the car shows, the boat shows, the RV shows who always have some babe, half dressed with legs that go on forever hanging over the product. Why, because it is men that buy the bulk of this type of equipment. It must work because it's been the same way for 50 years or more. Buy one get one free is another tactic that sells a lot of stale donuts or rotisserie chickens. Happy hours are so successful for bars that Steak and Shake figured they'd get in on it as well by offering happy hours for milkshakes, can you believe it. Gambling is always popular on many fronts so here come the scratch and win deals at the checkout counters to see how big a % will be on your tag when you scratch away the covering. Use this card for 5% off or use this card to save 10 cents on every gallon of gas and on and on. The latest one I thought was very ingenious was the Hyundai ad that says if you lose your job you can bring the car back. If you lose your house they will reduce the price of the car by 1/2 if you have to live in it temporarily. I noticed that I didn't buy as much as usual while I was away on vacation this time so maybe I'm getting wiser. Next time out I am going to try and find something that's not on sale and is selling for its regular price. Then I am going to snap it up and spend the rest of the day checking to see if I would have paid less for the same item on sale at another store. Anyone want to make a bet?