This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.Any tips to get the most for my money? Is there a buying guide on /r/pf? (self.personalfinance)submitted by My wife and I are planning to buy a mattress this weekend. Are there places I should avoid? Is there a mattress buying guide you recommend? I read the one on consumer reports. edit: This sub is always so helpful. Thanks for all the replies! π Rendered by PID 31262 on app-636 at 2017-03-07 12:17:46.708050+00:00 running 0816123 country code: SG.Mattress shopping, as we've previously highlighted, can be quite a confusing experience. Take some off-the-clock advice from a mattress salesman on how to get the best value. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of variables when it comes to mattress shopping. Help cut through the thicket of choices and potential rip-offs by taking the advice offered by an insider at Get Rich Slowly. They have advice directly from a guy who has been part of his family's mattress business his whole life.
He's full of industry-related wisdom, including useful negotiation tips like this one: If a store is willing to negotiate mattress prices, then they are overpriced, so make sure you get them down a considerable amount. Mattress manufactures contractually set minimum prices that they allow retailers to sell their mattresses at, so they either have to price them at that minimum or overprice them and negotiate. Most of the larger chains just price them at the minimum right away.Don't take advice from a salesman talking about coil counts as he likely doesn't know what he's talking about. Always ask if the innerspring mattress you're looking at has edge support to keep the edges firm and keep it comfy for you getting in and out of bed.For more tips check out the full article at the link below. Have a mattress shopping tip of your own? Scoff at this "coil count" business because you rock it out on a foam mattress? Let's hear about it in the comments. How to Buy a Mattress [GetRichSlowly]
Cheapest place to get a QUALITY mattress? Frugal)submitted by I've never bought a bed before. I want at least a queen sized memory foam mattress. Where is the best place to shop for this to get the best deal? What type of memory foam should I get? I was warned by my uncle not to get a full memory foam mattress because they don't last long and fall apart. π Rendered by PID 48756 on app-787 at 2017-03-07 12:33:13.684630+00:00 running 0816123 country code: SG.The poor pay more for everything, from rolls of toilet paper to furniture. It's not because they're spendthrifts, either. If you're denied a checking account, there's no way for you to avoid paying a fee to cash a paycheck. If you need to buy a car to get to work, you'll have to accept whatever higher interest rate you're offered. If you don't have a car, the bus fare might eat up the change you'd save shopping at a larger grocery store as opposed to the local corner store. It's easy to feel that "when you are poor, the 'system' is set up to keep you that way," in the words of one Reddit user, "rugtoad."
That comment is at the top of an extraordinary thread full of devastating stories about what it's like to get by with nothing in the United States of 2015. "Growing up really poor means realizing in your twenties that Mommy was lying when she said she already ate," wrote "deviant_devices," another commenter. You can buy only a single pack of paper towels at a time, rather than saving on a bundle of 10, as "Meepshesaid" noted: Comment from discussion What do insanely poor people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about?. You can't pay for health insurance, and instead buy medicine from pet stores, as "colorcoma" writes: I buy "fish" antibiotics online because I can't afford health care. Mostly for husband who has Lyme's disease. We can't afford our monthly health care rates. We are 30somethings in the US. Really feel like a "bottom feeder". You can't also buy shoes that will last for more than a few months, according to "DrStephenFalken": I'm making $150- $200 a week and I need new shoes.
So I can buy $60 shoes that will last or $15 walmart shoes. So I buy the walmart shoes and some groceries instead of just the $60 shoes and no groceries. Three months later I'll need new shoes again. But I'll also have to pay rent and my light bill is due. So I'll pay the light bill and buy some "shoe glue" for $4 to fix my shoes for another few weeks until I can buy the $15 ones again. Economists have documented the "ghetto tax," as the additional costs of living paid by the poor are often known. A Brookings study from 2006 found that someone who is not able to open a checking account will typically pay between $5 and $50 to cash a $500 check, and that people in poor neighborhoods paid several hundred dollars more for homeowner's insurance, or to buy a car of a given make and model, than someone living in a wealthier neighborhood. A television that costs $200 might cost $700 on one of the payment plans that poor people are obliged to use, the study found. There are all kinds of reasons why the poor pay more.
Maybe they can be summed up this way: The ability to draw on a pool of cash always saves you money down the line. Lenders will give you a better rate on a car. You can avoid relying unscrupulous firms with exorbitant rates to make it to your next paycheck. As Elise Gould, an economist at the liberal Economic Policy Institute told me, the poor are "liquidity-constrained." "There's all these vicious cycles that poor people face," she said. "You get a job, but you need a car to get to a job." A guarantee of financial security in the future often costs money now. This is a problem not just for the very poor, but also for the middle class, Gould noted. Their kids might have to take out loans to go to college, for example, while wealthier parents can pay in cash. And they lose the discounts on fees that financial institutions give to clients with large balances. Even among the very rich, economist Thomas Piketty's data suggests that those with more money are able to earn higher returns on their investments.
To be sure, however, the problem is most acute at the bottom of the income distribution. The commenter "drink[expletive]fight." whom I'll quote at length, vividly describes a poor upbringing: Hauling food out of the dumpster at 7-11, because they threw away piles of chip bags that were a day over their expiration. (Manager caught us one day, they apparently told the employees to stab a hole in each chip bag after that. NBD, we just had to sniff each bag to make sure nothing was contaminated). Checking neighbors' trash bins - rescuing half a damn pizza some idiots had ordered the night before, then threw away after a handful of slices. Hauling in furniture from alleyways - my littlest sibling, my sister, received a twin bed mattress that had a grotesque brown stain on it, looked like someone had [expletive] a gallon of wet feces onto it. No [expletive] given, we scrubbed that [expletive] with bleach over and over, and she slept on it for years. And then there were times when the welfare checks or food stamps didn't arrive, and the trash bins were not producing food.