Do More, Spend Less

Do you usually pay retail prices? If so, you are not shopping smart. Brad Wilson – the ebullient founder of Brad’s Deals, a money-saving website – knows better ways to buy and describes them in detail in this semiautobiographical consumers’ manual. Wilson amassed five million frequent-flyer miles and persuaded financial services firms to lend him money at 0%. He knows how to buy new cars at below factory prices and how to add 120 points to your credit score. He shares his secrets on how to get the lowest price on just about anything. All Wilson’s suggestions are clever. A few are brilliant. Some are impractical. Some may push the good-behavior line. For instance, he warns you fair and square that selling cars online without a license isn’t legal in some US states, but then he tells that you can make money doing it, “misdemeanor or not.” While he doesn’t exactly say you should transgress, he is a cheery wheeler-dealer, so exercise some judgment as well as some frugality, and watch your conscience like Wilson watches your pennies. With that note, and a caveat that most of his cost-cutting advice applies in the US though it’s adaptable elsewhere, getAbstract recommends his multitude of tips to those who want to save serious money.