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Comment by chrisdone | Hacker News Reader

I feel that there is a wealth/background effect here that could be studied somewhat too. I think people who don't have to worry about money are less likely to pay any attention to discounts and deals.

Having come from a council estate, there is a certain mindset behind getting a deal for everything, making your little money go as far as possible, buy one get one free, or discounts on anything, or coupons to get into restaurants or discounted vacations, or companies that "get you deals" on all your electric, gas, TV, internet bills, 8 packs of cheap beer, etc. are all seen as victories and you are crazy for not taking advantage of them. There's an emphasis on getting more quantity for less money. That's easily exploited.

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I don't have hard numbers to quote on this, but I'm very convinced that you end up paying more in the end.

From my own experience and pretty much every one I talk about this, people have a tendency to buy things they'll never need. (I constantly try not to do that, but it takes active thinking about it all the time.) No discount deal is cheaper than the one where you don't buy something you don't need.

Then there's underestimated costs that aren't immediately visible. If you buy more stuff of items that you use over a longer timeframe you'll have to store them. Which of course means you're paying rent for the space in your flat that's taken up by excess stuff.

I consider myself reasonably frugal and thoughtful about money, but I definitely fell into one of these traps buying a suit for the first time. I went in with a specific sale in mind, they told me they had a two-for-one deal going so I might as well try on two colors of suits. But then it turned out the second suit was over double the price of the advertised sale price that I came in for (the first suit would have qualified) and two-for-one would of course be the more expensive of the two prices. But I had already picked it out, etc. and it was after all really just "half" the price since I was getting two suits and you know maybe I did need both colors. I have worn one of them once and the other never in the three or four years since then. Though it is nice to know I won't have to panic if there's a sudden funeral I have to attend, say.

I did the same thing. I had a funeral to go to and needed a suit (of course that is not necessarily true but I did not know it then) and walked in the door at the Men's Warehouse and got hooked on the two-for-one deal. Spent a lot more money than I needed to, for my purposes I could have just gone to the Kohl's department store and picked up something inexpensive and it would have been functionally equivalent.

Assuming your body dimensions haven't changed since you were fitted for said suits three or four years ago.

A long running promotion in Tesco is 3 bottles of any brand beer for £5.25. I can't imagine anyone ever goes into a store with the intention of buying 3 bottles but if you just buy 2 you're misguided into thinking you'll lose out.

In reality, you're spending more and drinking more than you really want to.

Having recently moved to the UK, I have noticed some "offers" of this kind in supermarkets where there wasn't actually any advantage over buying the items by themselves. They really must count on people not checking.

> Having recently moved to the UK, I have noticed some "offers" of this kind in supermarkets where there wasn't actually any advantage over buying the items by themselves. They really must count on people not checking.

I've actually seen a couple cases where the bundle "offer" was a worse deal than buying individually (e.g. get one for $1 or a 2-pack for $3). I almost got suckered by it too, because I needed more than one item, so lazy-thinking said a multipack made more sense.

It's not like bottled beer goes off, so unless you were planning to buy 2 bottles and then never buy beer ever again, I don't see the problem.

It requires more self control not to drink the third one when it's sitting in your fridge than when it's sitting in the supermarket

Easy. Don't put it in the fridge until you know you're going to drink it later that day. Or quick-cool it by dunking in ice water for about a hour.

Bottled beer does start to acquire off flavors over time

If you are the type who only drinks one bottle of beer per month, you really need to just walk away from the multi-bottle "deals"

All that ever counts, regardless of "offer" or "saving" is the price per 100ml or kg. Thankfully the pesky EU interfered with the UK yet again and insisted that must always be displayed.

Haven't used Tesco delivery for years, but their "best offers" always brought back the 10p and 7% savings, the real savings were on different tabs or buried in search. There was a search by cheapest, never by price per unit. Funny that.

What really annoys me though is Tesco displays the price per/unit using different units, so you're constantly having to figure it out in your head - one loaf of bread might display the price per 100g, another the price per 1kg etc.

In the US we take it to the next level by mixing in imperial measurements. I don’t know about most people but I’m using my phone for conversations between ounces, pounds, then some SI measurements, etc.

Aren't all foodstuffs and the like supposed to be labelled in metric in the US, in addition to imperial?

I'd imagine while a pain to deal with non round SI measures it should be reasonably easy to work out price per unit, no?

I am mainly using my phone for conversations too.

MySupermarket offers a unit price ordering. Its invaluable.

But if you did want to buy 3, or 6 or even 12 bottles then it is actually a saving. It's about shopping smart.

If you buy 12 there is often a case which is a lot cheaper. I don't drink that much that it makes sense to stockpile; I also have the problem that if I have a fridge full of beer I am going to drink a lot more than I would otherwise.

I may be in a minority, but I prefer to buy a couple of beers just once in a while.

I buy a case at a time, but only put two or three at a time in my fridge ;)

Sometimes, but not often for the particular craft ales that these offers usually apply to.

Ha, I have fallen for that exact trick at Tescos too many times

I fall for this every time I go into Tesco. I think the average beer in this deal is £1.89 so you are shaving off 42p by buying 3 which is around 7% per beer. Sounds alright but only if you wanted all three. I tend to buy the 3 and feel obliged to drink them all that evening when I only wanted 1 or 2.

Plus they're overpriced anyway

Works out ok at my local supermarket on the three bottles of Guinness deal they do.

> but I'm very convinced that you end up paying more in the end

This is actually the same tact credit card companies use, even if the balances are paid off every month. That's why we still use budgeted cash from envelopes to pay for most things. The only payments we run through a card are fixed costs where the percentage paid back on the card exceeds the transaction fee if any.

You're still paying for credit card transaction fees indirectly when you use cash. Since retailers are prohibited from charging discounts for cash purchases then to cover the card fees they raise the price for everyone. Cash buyers end up subsidizing card users.

The fees aren't the point. The point is, using something other than cash tends to trick people into spending more in the same way buy one get one free does.

People being unable to control their impulse to buy something they can't afford is hardly a trick. I would maybe say that a casino that utilizes visuals and sounds and other mental techniques might be "tricking" people, but I can't say the same for credit cards.

All the information is there, in plain english, to allow people to use a credit card simply as a way to keep an electronic ledger, get an interest free loan until the auto pay date, earn some cash back, and have some purchase protection via the ability to do a chargeback. You can even set spending limits online.

Similary, I wouldn't say a buy one get one free offer or 75% off sale sign is tricking anyone either. Assuming you've passed 4th grade, you're stupid if you're not calculating unit prices.

In USA it is no longer legal to forbid cash discounts / CC surcharges. Still uncommon though.

At least your money is often going to a local business rather than a big credit card company

Except in most cases, the transaction fee is already built into the price for everyone. Paying cash is worse for you.

I've wondered if CostCo works along this principle. People like the idea of getting bulk rates for items. But even in cases where items really are cheaper per unit, it may not be an advisable purchase for most people if they don't really need or want as much as they are induced to buy.

I love Costco, but it is worth remembering that a good amount of the time even their per-unit prices are higher than the local grocery store. I still shop there, but I go for the stuff they do better than the other stores in the area, not for any kind of bulk price.

My ex-wife loved "a deal". I had to throw away so much grout and so many mismatched cabinet handles it wasn't even funny.

FWIW, depending on where you live check to see if there is a Habitat for Humanity ReStore near you. Better than dumping such things into the garbage. And for small projects, you can save a fair chunk of cash by shopping there. I used to get wood stain for a tenth of what HD would charge for the same thing.

When my wife comes back from shopping I often jokingly ask her 'how much did you "save" today' and she laughs back.

We're in a quite good position so it doesn't matter as much but it's often easy to get lost in the rebates and forget how much is actually spent.

I usually don't like language that suggests that consumers are brainwashed by marketing. But, getting people to comprehend that spending money =/= saving money is surprisingly difficult.

Even when they understand money has been spent, it's not spent rationally: money "saved" at the grocery store doesn't actually mean less total money spent, rather the same amount as usual is spent, and more food than usual was able to be purchased.

This is a fine tact if you're going for volume, but it's absolutely not "saving money."

If that additional volume makes your daily spending on food lower, then it's a saving. If it makes you eat more, or throw away more food, then yes, it's not a saving.

That isn’t saving money it’s spending less money as I see it. If you took the surplus amount you would have spent and put that in a long term investment or savings account then I think you could claim a savings. Almost no one does this with day to day spending though so it’s best to view it as spending less. When you spend money you aren’t saving money. You are spending it. You might be spending less in a given situation than you would have if the circumstances were different but it isn’t a savings.

You wouldn't see the following statement as correct usage? "I was going to run to [store x], but I wanted to see the new [store y] instead and it ended up saving me $[amount]."

I'd agree that a "savings" figure on a receipt is bogus though, as it's comparing a price you wouldn't be charged with one you would.

In our everyday speech this is how people talk. So in that sense it is correct usage. I claim it is misleading to think this way. I think our speech has been affected by marketing and it’s caused a change in how we think about money.

Spending money is never a savings. All you can do is spend less than what you were willing to spend. I know our way of speaking isn’t going to change anytime soon but I hope to change the way people think about saving. I hear people who are broke talk about how much they saved in the scenario you presented. But they have no savings at all and it is bad for them to think they saved money when in fact they spent money. Spent money is not a savings.

I'm not sure I get what you mean. If I go to the store with a list of the usual items I purchased and some of those items are on sale, I end up spending less money for the exact same items.

Suppose a grocery bill is usually $100 a week, and (for simplicity's sake) let's say it buys 30 food items. In the example I'm referring to, $100 would still be spent, but 35 food items purchased. This could only be considered "saving money" if the extra food allowed you to spend less than $100 on next week's groceries.

Anyhow, sorry for being confusing. It's possible this example isn't all that common in general. I just bump into it all the time.

I'll take an example for my local store.

We have some Belgian waffles that cost 18 NOK a piece. They always have an offer that gives you 2 for 20 NOK.

I never eat more than one of these and they end up spoiling as they don't last very long, and even if it seems that I'm "saving" 16 NOK on the purchase I'm actually spending 2 more than I otherwise would.

The other replies have good examples. At it's simplest if you have $100 and go to the shops and leave with $20 you have not saved any money, you have lost $80. Reducing the amount you lose is not saving that money as money is still being lost. Yes you might lose less money than usual but the article and the point most people are making is that these offers short circuit rationality to make us think we are getting a deal but actually in most cases we are not. You have to be very shrewd to do the home economics correctly. I don't bother and most people don't bother and we are being swindled most of the time.

You aren't losing $80 if you are buying something that is of equal or greater value to you. No matter what, I am going to need toilet paper. If I usually spend $20 to get the toilet paper I need, and it is on sale for $15, I actually have saved money. Sure, I spent $15, but I didn't 'lose' $15. I saved $5. Even in the case of a bogo offer. I spend $22 to get 2 packages instead of 1. I don't have to buy toilet paper next month. So I saved $18 assuming that the time value of the additional $2 does not exceed the $18 savings by next month.

> usual items I purchased and some of those items are on sale

Often the "deals" are "buy 3, get one free", where the per unit price might be a bit less than a single unit, but if you only went in for 1, but ended up buy 4, you've paid more than you might have otherwise. Sometimes it's a good deal, and you get more value, sometimes the items expire before you end up using them, etc.

You haven't lived until you are comparing "buy 2 get 3 free" to the other brand with a simple price but a different package size.

Also with these "deals" you often also have to ask yourself:

Are you buying it because it is cheap or are you buying it because you need it? Often people buy stuff they don't need because it is on sale "right now."

Exactly..

A good way to get around this is to keep a "wishlist" of things you actually need and then if there is a sale you can get it.

I learned a tip from someone:

"Save 100% by not buying anything!"

And its not like that most of the west could actually do with eating less food but higher quality food

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