Financial Reflections

The beautiful monstrosity of a tube TV that had been keeping me happy passed away recently.  It was an untimely event and quite against my money-saving-while-watching-tv timeline.  I even wrote a post titled Why I Didn’t Buy An HDTV to show what my plans were for that 32″ not-ready-for-the-digital-age set.  Oh, we were to have a long future together watching football and Family Guy for years and years.

But then it died. I didn’t even get to say goodbye!  Well, I’m now in the digital age and there aren’t many options for standard TVs.  With flat-panel prices droping, I knew it was time to take the plunge.  The real trick was doing it without spending our Christmas budget.

Here was out trick to getting the HDTV cheap.  Maybe it will work for you:

• Shop a warehouse store like Costco or Sam’s Club.  We ended up at Sam’s after being very dissapointed in Circuit City’s “store closing” prices.  After seeing what the they were charging before the discounts, it’s no surprise they were going out of business.  Sam’s had prices that were in many cases lower than Circuit City’s.
• Check out the discount rack.  Way in the back of the store is a shelf just for open-box TVs and the like.  It’s always worth a look.  We managed to get lucky and find one just the size we wanted.  Here’s the catch — there are NO RETURNS on those items.  If you get it home and it doesn’t work, tough luck!
• Get the warranty.  This worked at Sam’s but I’m not sure about other places.  Our open-box set was $75 off.  We were told that if we got the $15 year warranty, we could return it for a full year.  Without the warranty, we were back to that NO RETURNS policy.  So we got it.  That’s $60 bucks off retail and we ended up with a 32″ HDTV that works just like new and a year in case it blows up like my dearly departed tube set, may it rest in peace.
• Consider the HD signal an option.  An HD set can get SDTV (standard television) and right now, that’s what we are doing.  So we are still at our cheaper standard sattedlite rate, but an LCD screen to view it on.  The best part is our DVDs look great on the new set.

Here’s some other ideas I came up with, but haven’t fully tested:

• Buy used.  We have married friends who are unemployed.  My wife (who has some tact, unlike me) asked them how they got their TVs as we were looking for one.  We wanted to help them out and she was seeing if they might be willing to let go of one without directly asking.  The wife in that couple (a real frugal master — I should ask her to guest blog) told my wife that the TVs were a big problem with reception and she wouldn’t wish that brand on anyone.  So we ended up not pursuing that route.  But if done with tact, maybe one could help out someone who’s in over their head by buying a luxury.
• Buy refurbished.  I found a 50 inch refurbished HDTV set with a 90 day manufacturer warranty for under 700 dollars at Crazy Cool Cargo.  Not a bad deal.
• Search online.  Deals happen online all the time, it’s just a matter of finding them.  You can find a deal, or use a rebate site like Big Crumbs.  Either way, you save.

That’s what I’ve found.  What deals have you found out there?  Any good HDTV stories?  Leave them in the comments below.  I’d love to hear from you.