that's not good enough!

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I'm taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University Class at our church.  I am about half way through the 13-week course and am loving it.  It has been holding me accountable for tracking my expenses, budgeting, and using cash instead of plastic on our everyday purchase.  One of my favorite topics of the course was last week's class:  "That's Not Good Enough!".

The class focused on not only finding bargains, but also on negotiating!  Negotiating is something I NEVER have been comfortable, but with practice, I'm getting better at it and am getting to be more comfortable in doing it.

The first time I ever negotiated was 3 years ago.  We were about to move and needed to replace the carpet throughout our house.  Bid #1 was ridiculously expensive.  I think it was around $8,000 to carpet the entire house.  I told them I needed to think about it.  I had a second company come give me a bid and it came in at $3,800.  I about fell out of my chair when I saw the bid and couldn't believe it was more than 50% less of what the #1 bid was!  So, I said to Salesman #2, "I really want to do business with you, but my husband told me that I can only spend $3,500.  He's fishing in Mexico and he doesn't have cell service.  If you can do it for $3,500 I can say yes today, otherwise I'll need to get back to you later this week."  Well...he said, "Yes!  I can do it for $3,500."  That gave me my start in negotiating!  And the thing is, my husband had given me clearance to spend $4000, but I thought I'd ask just to see if I could get it for less!

For a couple of years, I always used the, "my husband will only let me spend $xxx", but now I leave my husband out of it and just ask for a lower price.  Almost any type of service product we use, I ask for the price to be dropped some.  Just this past week alone, I negotiated two different times and saved about $90.

Negotiation #1:  My youngest son and I are renting a small house up in the mountains for Spring Break.  I asked the owner if she could come down 10% for a 3-night rental and she agreed to it.

Negotiation #2:  The other thing I negotiated on was our lawn service.  My husband has always fertilized our yard, but the yards around us who are professionally fertilized are consistently greener and prettier than our yard.  So, I called a lawn service and they gave me a quote, I asked them if they could do it for a different amount and I ended up saving $50 for the year. 

I'm still learning on how much to ask off, but I know it'll come with practice.  With the rental house, I was pretty certain that I could get it for less than the published rate because she didn't have any weekends booked for the next several months.    And with the lawn care service, I think I could have gotten more than $50 off, but spoke too soon and rushed though the negotiation.

So, what about you?  Are you a negotiator or do you always pay the asking price?