Saturday, October 4, 2008

Super Saturday Savings! Furniture Shopping for Less!


For whatever reason, my husband and I always find we do our furniture shopping over the weekends.

It could be due to my hubby being dead tired after he gets home from work, or possibly that we are running to football practice, religion classes, cub scouts, dance classes, etc on the weekday evenings...but no matter.....it always seems to have to be a Saturday that we run from furniture store to furniture store when we need to furnish a new room.

So, how does one keep the cost of furnishing a room down?

There are a number of ways, I am sure. From finding deals on used furniture, to buying furniture from discount stores to the great deals my sister in law just found at IKEA.

But, other times you find furniture for a bedroom, family room, etc. at a furniture store and just love it. And, you look at the price and immediately have sticker shock!

Well, hopefully you know about buying direct, because it has saved my family a lot of money over the years!

How do we do it?

First, we shop all the stores and eventually find what we want. Then, we price it out at all the local stores with delivery and tax. Because, this is the final price that we will actually pay out of pocket.

Once we have found what we want, I ask for all the skus, phamplets, make, etc of the product we want to buy. The sales representatives have never had a problem providing this information for me.

So, how do we get the price even lower than the sales running at our local furniture stores?

Well, we find direct furniture providers for that manufacturer. Most of the time, we are buying for providers in the Carolinas, it seems, but we have also bought from other states.

Many times, they can offer these lower prices because they do not have to store the furniture or have the overhead of an actual store or the mass of employees. So, if you can find a direct seller who has your product, you can save substantial amounts of money.

Other times, they do have brick and mortar locations as well and just ship products out of state, and you just save money via lower costs.

The other benefit, if you live out of state, you do not have to pay tax. As we all know, this can add up to substantial amounts of money!! Beware, though, you will want to check with your state on whether you need to report items you buy via internet or out of state on your taxes at the end of the year.

When my daughter needed her "big" girl furniture years back, I fell in love with a set from Lazy Boy for Kids. My heart was set on it. You can see a picture of the beautiful bed I got for her above. In addition, I got the matching dresser, night stand, and a chest. So, I picked all the pieces then came home and did searches online.

To save you a bit of time, here is a site that lists many furniture direct sites, mainly from the Carolinas. Click here.

If you don't find what you are looking for, just try doing simple searches online with the manufacturer of your furniture AND type either furniture direct, carolina direct, or anything similar to that to try and pull back some results.

How much do you normally save? Well, we have averaged anywhere from $500 to $800 off a set of furniture.

What are the downfalls?

You usually have to wait a month or two to get your furniture. Why? Because they are out state, you have to wait until their next delivery to your state occurs. Usually, I have been quoted anywhere from 4 to 8 weeks.

So, as long as you know about what time of year you need your new furniture, and can shop a few months in advance...you can save LOTS of money! To us, it has always been worth the wait to save that much money!

Needing new furniture soon? Already have your dream set in mind? Give it a try. Buy out of state and have it shipped to your home...you may be pleasantly surprised how much money you will save.

If you are like me, you will never buy furniture from a local store again!



1 comment:

Siddhartha said...

Superb. A rock solid demonstration of detailed design. Not only you, but when it comes to shopping for a new refrigerator, or other home appliances, we prefer Saturday/ Sundays.

 
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