Negotiate for Fun and Profit

Another way to save some money is to learn to negotiate. Some of us are braver than others, but I have acquired some good negotiating skills over the years. Once you get the hang of it, it can be fun but, like sales, you have to be prepared to be turned down sometimes. It never hurts to ask!

I was furnishing some rental property (yes, a positive net worth woman can become a landlord if she wants to) at the same time my friend was furnishing an apartment for her daughter. We made a list of everything we needed to set up a kitchen. My friend watched ads in the Sunday newspaper, went to various stores, and bought a lot of things on sale. I spent the same amount of time three Saturday mornings and took my list to some neighborhood garage sales. We each completed our list, and she had spent over three hundred dollars while I spent less than $100. I had a lot of fun putting items together and making offers that were almost always accepted.

We usually think of negotiating prices on big items like cars and boats, but negotiation can be done with lots of things.

With two kids in college at the same time, I needed more cash flow than I could squeeze out of my budget, so I rented out our big house and moved into a small townhouse. The landlord said that I couldn’t move in when I needed to because the painter would not be available for another two weeks and two rooms still needed to be painted. I offered to paint the rooms myself for $100 off the monthly rent. He agreed and I had that same discounted rent for two years.

As a landlord myself, I was always surprised that potential tenants didn’t negotiate more with me. I always knew what my bottom line was and sometimes had to offer it to keep them from walking away because the rent was out of their budget. So, you see, negotiation can work both ways.

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