I’ve found that one key to financial freedom is just being comfortable making an ask. With that said, does anyone have a successful negotiation story to share Whether you negotiated a major purchase, salary, rent, or a bill, I’d love to hear about it! What did you negotiate? How did you go about the negotiation?
And if you haven’t negotiated successfully, I’d still love to hear about a time when you tried and what you learned from it.
Hoping these success (or learning) stories will help us all flex our negotiation muscles. ?
What an interesting question! Negotiating is not my strength either, but I actually tried to negotiate a salary one time. I didn’t achieve the result I wanted, but I was so very proud of myself for trying. My sister on the other hand, could give lessons on the fine art of salary negotiations!?
I think we all have small negotiations that are eligible for bragging rights, we just may not realize it. Anytime you’ve been dissatisfied with a product or service, speaking out to correct the problem often results in a negotiation win for ourselves. Even if your desired result falls short, pointing out the issue is usually better than acceptance. I check my store receipts before leaving a store and often (especially at grocery stores) find errors where sale items were not rung up properly…stopping at the service desk is a win. Asking for a discount for a damaged item in a store is a negotiation. Need I mention negotiating a better price when purchasing any vehicle? The negotiation where I had the most on the line was with a licensed contractor we hired to install a large Morton building on our property as well as adding a large screened patio behind our home. The contractor turned out to be uncooperative and disappointing to work with and eventually walked off the job. Because we had required insurance information from all his sub-contractors during the contract stage, we were able to negotiate directly with them to finish the job. The certificates of insurance provided the subs’ company names and addresses. Most of them were worried they were not going to get paid for what work they had done so far. We not only finished the work much faster than the contractor seemed to be doing, but we were able to pay the subs more with a bonus for showing up every day and we paid less overall because the contractor broke the contract with us and he was off our payroll at that point.
Last time my wife and I bought a car, we first got one that had overheating issues within a week. Luckily, the dealership had a good return policy, but one that left us on the hook for the taxes paid on the first car. Well, we picked out a better car, the salesman gave our paperwork to the finance guy (mind you, we were paying cash, but the finance guy still crunches the numbers). We waited in the cafe for him to come out with our “deal.” I was not happy. I told him nicely that it wasn’t that great, but I think it was the look on my face that did the trick. (A “you’ve got to be kidding me” look can work wonders.) He came back with a deal that effectively waived most of the taxes from the prior lemon so that our out-of-pocket for said lemon was less than a week’s rental would have been. And the car we ended up with has given us no problems almost a year later. Plus a pretty good warranty for when it does.
