What's the dealio?

Clearance, Limited Time Offer, 50% Off, Buy 2 Get 1 Free, 90 Days Same As Cash, etc...you've seen them all! So many promotions and "deals", so little time. They are very enticing, you don't want to miss out! I mean, how would you feel if you didn't pull the trigger and the price doubles the next day? Or how much would it suck if you procrastinated and the item you wanted to purchase wasn't in stock anymore? There's so much internal justification that goes on in your head when you see something you want to buy associated with one of these amazing "deals". Basically, if you would be able to get exactly what you wanted at a lower price than what you were expecting, why wouldn't you do it? It's so logical....except if you don't really have the money for it! Or maybe you have the cash but it was planned for savings or allocated for something else. In those situations, no matter how tempting the offer, it's best to just walk away. I know it's tough and it probably won't make total sense at the time, but this is the type of discipline that will get you to the debt freedom promise land!

This topic is very timely for me as I experienced this temptation today! As I've mentioned in prior posts, we've come to a point in our journey where we have acheived so much progress that we have more freedom to dictate where our money should go. On that note, we've decided to celebrate our success a little more this year and reward ourselves with some vacations. We've been extremely excited, thinking of all the various places we could go and the exciting things we could do. So, we started searching for ideas on the internet and were inundated with deals left and right. We've priced out everything from plane tickets to cruise rates to resort accommodations, etc... One common theme is the special price/limited time offer promotion. My historical mentality when it comes to travel shopping is to search for what seems like a great deal and snatch it up before the opportunity goes away. This mentality has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past (i.e. debt trouble) and now I know better after going through this journey. So, instead of locking something up today as I would've done in the past, I simply stopped searching so that I woudn't be tempted anymore. I'll resume my search once we have planned the appropriate budget for the trips.

The key here is not "the deal", it's "the timing". The deals are not the problem. In fact, I'm the first to proclaim my love for deals. Anytime I don't have to pay full price for something or I can get much more for my money, I'm all over it. But what's just as important is to evaluate your readiness for purchasing the deal. You need to prioritize your preparedness to buy the item or service with cash, above and beyond the value of the deal. I would guess the majority of people don't do this prioritization and end up buying the deal because it was such an awesome value. But without thinking about whether or not you're ready to buy it, the likelihood of going into more debt is high. This is true even if you don't buy it on a credit card as this purchase will replace something else you were already planning to buy. Thus, you end up not buying the other thing, or even worse, still buy the other thing....on credit.

As mentioned above, I could've paid for the trip with cash today but it wasn't planned for. I didn't want to dip into the emergency fund because this was clearly not an emergency and I didn't want to re-allocate the money we already had set aside for other expenses. These are the types of tough decisions that everyone has to make during their debt free journey. Although your decision-making will be easier with practice, the temptations that provoke these tough decisions will never go away. One principle that we have adopted is this: "We will never borrow money again!" Guess what, if you live by that, you will never accumulate another penny of debt...it's impossible. But notice that I didn't say that I will never borrow money from credit card companies again....or from family members again.... Nope, I said I will neve borrow money again....period....actually exclamation point! That includes borrowing from yourself. If you stand by this one principle, you will do just fine in your debt free journey.