Sometimes, buying the floor model can save you a LOT of money. I can understand why for certain things you would want to make sure the item you buy is in the box, has all of the manuals, is brand new, and has no scratches or dents, but sometimes that just isn’t important.

Take for example a small stereo. We were looking to buy one for our house. Our house was built with speakers in the ceiling of each room, and was set up so that all we needed was a portable stereo that we could hook up, and we would get great music in each room.

The problem is, with the one we had since we moved into the house, you could only play the radio or 1 cd at a time. Since the stereo is kept high up in our laundry room, it was very inconvenient to get to, so we decided to get a new one that would play mp3′s, and have a better remote than ours did.

Since this was definitely a want, and not a need, we weren’t willing to spend more than $100.00 on it. So, we went to Best Buy to take a look at what they had. They had a few different choices, but one in particular caught our eye. The Panasonic SC-EN37 Micro System had side speakers that we could easily take off and connect the wires to our system, so that was most important to us. It plays mp3′s, so that was great as well. It even would play an iPod, so although we don’t have one now, if we got one in the future, it would be perfect.

What was even better, was that it was normally $129.99, but was on clearance for $79.99. That was a great price, so we were excited. Of course, because we like to shop around, we then went home and did some research online, finding out that first – it is a good product, and second – that WAS indeed the best price around. So this past weekend, we went back to Best Buy to pick it up.

Guess what? They were all sold out, and only had the floor model left. Since it looked in good shape, and we could see that it worked, that didn’t bother us. We did ask if we took the floor model, what kind of discount we could get off of it…and this is where I was shocked. The sales woman told us we would get it for $39.99. Talk about excited! We were told that there was no box or instructions, but let’s face it…it’s a simple stereo, we didn’t need instructions, and if we really did, I’m sure we could find them online. We didn’t care about not having a box. It was worth the $40.00 savings not to get a box!

So we ended up getting a really nice new sound system for our house for $39.99, regularly $129.99.

So while getting the floor model might not sound ideal, if you really want a certain model, but don’t want to pay the full price, it’s a great way to save a little bit of money! Usually the store will be willing to negotiate as well, so you might get an even better deal. It’s definitely worth checking out!