Smart Spending

Throughout this module, you learned about incentives that merchants offer and how they influence your purchasing decisions. You learned how to make wise decisions by comparison-shopping and by making sure you are wary of outside influences, like advertising, when making your purchasing decisions. These principles apply to large purchases like a car or a house, or smaller ones like groceries or electronics. You can use the decision making model from this module to help you make the choices that will meet your needs and expectations. By doing all of these things, you are much more likely to make good choices which satisfy your wants and needs and stay within your budget. This is especially true for large purchases like a car and a home.

Suppose you do everything right, but you end up with a product that doesn’t meet your expectations or is defective or even harmful. What can you do about it? Unfortunately, there may be times when you do all the right things, but a purchase may not meet your needs and expectations. Sometimes even wise consumers may need protection from unscrupulous or careless merchants.

In the next module, you will learn about how you can protect your rights as a consumer. What is a warranty? What is a contract? How can you be sure you are buying a quality product, and what if the product doesn’t meet your expectations? What laws exist to protect your identity? What can you do to protect the environment? You will learn the answers to all of these questions and more in the Consumer Skills module!