Asking for discounts

Many of you probably already do this, but I'll mention it here for those of you who aren't quite so bold. :)

Anytime you can come up with an excuse to ask for a discount on something...ask for it. I'm even teaching my oldest about this. She wanted a shirt and had $10 of her own money to buy it, but it was $9.99 and she didn't have enough to cover the tax (yes, I'm a tough-love kind of mom). I noticed some spots on the front and asked her if she would be willing to buy it if we could get it at a further discount (it was already on clearance). She said "yes" and the clerk offered another 10% off, which allowed her to buy it. One washing will take care of those spots, too. :)

An example of what I did today was at Home Depot. They have their bulbs on clearance at 50% off. I asked the manager if he'd sell me the packages with the tags torn off at a deeper discount since I wouldn't know the colors until they came up. I bought everything he had with missing labels and I paid the 50% off price for 14 bags and came home with over 30 bags of bulbs (over 1000 bulbs). I'm selling some on ebay to recoup my costs, too, so that in the end the bulbs will be even less - if not free.

Oh, and don't forget the restaurants. I bought a gift certificate for someone and asked if I could have a coupon for a free appetizer to go with the gift cert. The waitress handed me exactly what I asked for. That was an extra $6.00 FOR FREE and all I did was ASK.

One last example: I watched a bunch of gallon size containers of hostas at Walmart waiting for them to go on clearance. Finally, I asked about buying them at a discount. In short, it took 3 visits and two people to get them at an amazing price. $5.00 for 34 hostas. Yes, that's about $0.15 for each gallon pot. :)

ALWAYS ask for discounts...restaurants, department stores, gift shops (everywhere). It doesn't matter if they say no. Your situation didn't get worse, it just didn't get better. :) If they say yes, you're ahead of the game.