My Top Tips for the Afterpay Day Sales

In this week's Musing I talk about the MANY sales that happen nowadays and how you might be surprised that I LOVE me a good sale. But I make sure that I have strategies when I'm shopping a sale AND one of those strategies involves avoiding certain key things. I'll explain what they are and why and share my strategies in this musing.

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Transcript 

Hey, welcome to Mel's Money Musings. Today, I want to talk about the Afterpay day sales that are on at the moment. And you might be surprised to know that I am not anti sales. In fact, I love sales. I don't know if it's because of my Chinese Scottish heritage and just all of this frugality that is embedded within me.

But I kind of hate paying full price for well, anything. So while I am not anti sales, in fact, I'm pro sales. What I am anti is overspending during the sales. And I know I have been guilty of this in the past. So now I have a strategy for sales and I want to share that with you. I also want to share with you why one of the things I absolutely don't want you to do when it comes to the Afterpay Afterpay day sales is to use Afterpay.

And I'm going to explain exactly why and exactly how much more it's going to cost you at the end of this video. So as I said, I love me some sales. However, in order to not overspend is something that you can do to make the most of the sales. So number one is to come up with a list of all of the things that you want to purchase in the next 12 months.

For me, that includes the regular things like, for example, my body wash. It might be makeup that I use regularly, things that I know in the next 12 months or six months or three months, I'm going to turn over anyway. I will also add in those things that I want to buy for special occasions, for example, Christmas presents and exactly who I'm buying for and what I want to buy.

I’ll also putting things that maybe are starting to be used up, but actually I've got 12 months to look for them, such as towels and sheets and other things like that. And then when the sales appear, I use my list to check out the sales. So for example, I've never paid full price for sheets before because retailers have taught me that I don't have to.

If it comes to white t shirts, if it comes to body wash, etc., because I'm willing to buy in bulk and to stock up when they're on sales again, it's not something that I need to purchase when they're full price. I also with things that I love, for example, this blazer is a beautiful example. I had it in a wish list for a particular store.

There was no way I was going to pay full price for it back in the day. But it was on my you know what? If this happened to come up on sale, that would be something that would be great because it's a blue blazer. It was part of my things that were missing in my wardrobe at the time.

When it turned up on sale, it was like, beautiful. Now I'm happy to buy. So again, you you have to be comfortable with missing out. And I think that's the thing in today's instant gratification that the psychology of the sale simply works in your brain is, my gosh, I can't miss out. I want to make sure that I win.

And what you're doing by having the list and making sure you get that dopamine hit from your list is you're allowing it to work to strict parameters, or alternatively, you might have a dollar amount where you go, you know what, the sales are coming up January sales, Christmas sales. Afterpay Day sales, I'm going to allow myself 100 bucks or 200 bucks or whatever the amount is to shop those sales.

So I have a list, have that list that you replenish during the year and go to those sales. Kind of like a hunt for those things that you're after. But why I do not want you to use Afterpay is according to Afterpay's own website. You will spend between 18 and 40% more, so 40% on the UK and the US site.

18% it used to say 40% on the Australian site. Now it says 18. I don't think as Australians we're any smarter than our overseas friends. I think maybe Afterpay's is trying to cook the books a little and make that look better than it is. So the reason that we will overspend by 40% and why we’ll shop 50% as much, according to Afterpay own website, is because something called the framing effect.

So instead of you just concentrating, you might have decided I'm only going to spend 100 bucks. And instead, of you concentrating on the $100 that you spend, the framing effect means that you will only concentrate on the repayment amount. See being reframed to just concentrate on that and you have no problem lifting 25 bucks to 35 bucks. It's such a small amount for that repayment you never would have lifted from 100 to 140.

And that's the Afterpay effect. Of course, if you're thinking, Well, no problem, I'll just go back to using credit cards. I kind of want you to stop there as well. That's because according to Dun and Bradstreet research, you spend 18% more when you use a credit card. Citibank says 12%, academic independent research has has that as high as 100% and you know, if you're saving 20% in a sale, but overspending by 18%, that's a null void transaction.

And if I looked at Australian Bureau of Statistics Research and this is mirrored throughout the Western world as household, we're spending about 32 and a half thousand a year on our credit cards that overspend accounts for $5,000, that it's a massive amount of money that could be used for investing, for a deposit for your mortgage or to pay down bad debt.

So enjoy the sales. However, enjoy them strategically. Enjoy them with things that you're going to purchase anyway or that are on your wishlist with a set dollar amount. And most importantly during the Afterpay day sales, let's not use Afterpay.