^[1]Since I routinely stretch our family’s dollars by paying less than the sale price for items we need or want, I get asked, “How do you do that?”

Though I write about the different savings strategies I use to get the cost down as far as it can go, I know sometimes it is easier to see how to combine savings rather than to hear how to do it.

In writing this post, I cover a lot of information. As the article became longer and longer, I decided to break it up into these three parts:

Part 1: Shopping and Adding up the Cost of our New Range

Part 2: Implementing Savings Strategies for our New Range

Part 3: Completing and Evaluating the Purchase of our New Range

Within the next three days, all three articles will post, but I will not leave you hanging to find out the ending. I know you want to know what the last page says, so I will tell you.

We purchased a unit that was on sale for $454.99 plus a cord, fee, and tax, but we only paid $441.83. You can do this, too, and I’m going to take you step by step. Let’s start with finding the item to purchase.

Part 1: Shopping and Adding up the Cost of our New Range

Almost two weeks ago, our oven decided it had done enough baking ^[2]. In diagnosing the range, Paul narrowed down the problem to two different parts. One of them was the culprit, but there was no way to figure out which one it was. Both parts cost around $150 to replace.

Continuing to research, he discovered that if one part was good and the other one was bad, then the range would short out the new part.

In calculating our worst case scenario, we found it could cost up to $450 ($150 for first new part which might short out and need another first new part for $150 and then an additional $150 for the second problem part) to repair our 10-year-old range.

Wondering what the price of a new range would cost, we decided to go shopping.

Shopping for our New Range

Keeping $450 as our target price, we browsed new ranges. My only must-have was a smooth-top surface. We searched online at Home Depot, Lowe’s, Best Buy, Sears, Amazon, Walmart, Kmart, Target, J.C. Penney, hhgregg, and local appliance stores. The lowest prices were through Sears which made me happy.

Our previous range was a Kenmore, and I loved it! My favorite range found online was a Sears Kenmore with the same base model number as our previous one. And this new one had a few more bells and whistles. Yay!

The unit chosen was on sale for $454.99 from $729.99 which was a $275.00 savings. This unit was close to our $450 target price, but not at or under it – yet.

Adding up the Cost of our New Range

The sale price of the unit was $454.99 which we added to our shopping cart. Then to have the deliverers install the new oven, we needed to purchase a new cord.

Since we did not know for sure why the previous range quit, we did not want to take any chances with an old cord. We added the cord for $26.99.

Needing our previous range removed, we added the $15 removal fee, and then tax was $26.77. With all the charges, our shopping cart looked like this:

As we were now well over our target price, I was ready to get the savings strategies together to see if it was possible to reach our goal by paying less than the sale price.

Though you already know the end of the story, I will pick up here tomorrow when I share which savings strategies we implemented when purchasing our new range. Hang in there because the story is getting to the good part. 🙂

Question: Do you look for savings all the time or just on big ticket items?