Our New TV

For Christmas, I bought myself this new TV and I love it!

Bird and I have been without a television for almost two years and to be perfectly honest, we didn’t really miss it.  We found other activities to fill our time and when wanted to watch TV (Thursday nights for The Office and 30 Rock) we went to a friend’s house.  We watched DVDs on her laptop which has about a 13-inch screen.  It wasn’t ideal, but it worked for us for a long time.

But once we got married and moved in together, we decided that we were ready for a TV (especially since we got Netflix).  After our wedding, we began to set aside some money in a General Savings Fund for household things like furniture, etc.  With over $2,000 in the fund, I was willing to spend upto $1,300 on a TV.  I started researching and shopping.  After a couple of weeks of researching online and talking to friends, I stopped by Best Buy to stare at the wall of TVs for about 45 minutes.  I narrowed the selection down to three models (high-end, middle-range, low-end or expensive, moderate, cheap) and went home to do more research.

My plan was to buy whatever I decided on online to avoid paying tax and to hopefully get free shipping.  I used sites like www.dealnews.com and www.retailmenot.com to find the best deals and/or coupon codes.  I came close a couple of times to pulling the trigger but never did.  I didn’t know if there would be after Christmas sales on TVs like there was on clothes, but I figured I could wait and see.

The day after Christmas, Bird and I went shopping at the Mall of America to hit the sales .  Though we were shopping for clothes, we stopped in at the Best Buy in the mall for another look at the TVs.  I began to lean heavily toward the top choice of my 3 finalists: the Samsung 46-inch, 1080p, 120hz, which was on sale for $1,300 down from $1,700.

I almost bought it at the mall just to get it over with because at this point I was sick of researching and shopping.  But I knew I could probably get a better deal online.  So we went home and I perused the web but couldn’t find it much cheaper, maybe a hundred or two less.

Then…a Christmas Miracle!  The next morning, I logged on to bestbuy.com and lo and behold my TV was on sale for $999.99.  Sold!  I placed it in my cart while I set off to try and find a coupon code.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one, but then I remembered the Shop through Swagbucks deal.  I could earn 1 Swagbuck for every $5 spent and since I was spending a lot, I was pretty excited.  So I closed out of my cart and relogged in through Swagbucks and made my purchase.  I found out later that you don’t earn Swagbucks for items ordered for in-store pickup which is what I did to avoid shipping fees.  Bummer!  But I did use my Rewards credit card which earned me over 2,000 miles on this purchase.

$999.99 + $71.25 (tax) = $1,071.24

I picked up our new TV at Best Buy later that night after broomball and have loved it ever since. 

The spending on the TV didn’t stop there.  I bought a surge protector for around $30 and various cables to allow us to hook our PCs up to the TV (another $30 or so).  Even after all that, I am extremely happy and we have really enjoyed the upgrade from 13 to 46 inches! 

Watching Buffy has never been better (and have I told you that we are now on Season 7, the final season, and we are dreading the end.  We’ve been watching the Buffy series on DVD for almost as long as we’ve been together, and it will be sad when it’s all over!)