You know that feeling when you’re standing in the middle of a store, staring at two versions of the same appliance — one costs $189, the other costs $489 — and you have absolutely no idea which is actually worth it? Or when you’re about to drop $600 on a blender because someone on the internet told you it would change your life?
We’ve all been there. On a recent episode of the HerMoney Podcast, Jean Chatzky sat down with Tanya Christian, Senior Home and Appliance Writer at Consumer Reports and co-host of their podcast Talking Carts, to get some real answers.
Here’s what she told us.
The Biggest Myth in Shopping: More Expensive Means Better Quality
After years of testing the products that fill our homes, Tanya has learned something that most of us need to hear.
“We have this idea that the more money we spend, the better the product,” she said. “And what we found in our testing is that a lot of times that’s just not the case. You can have something that’s exponentially more money, and a lot of times that’s just associated with brand. So you save a lot of money by not just assuming that because it’s a certain brand and it’s a certain price, that it’s a better, more quality product.”
When to Actually Shop Deals — and When to Wait
One of the most actionable things Tanya shared is that truly deep discounts only happen at specific times of year, and if you know when they are, you can plan your big purchases around them instead of impulse buying at full price.
“There are really only a few times a year that you see those deep, deep discounts,” she said. “Amazon Prime Day just happened. We saw a lot of deep discounts, and oftentimes other retailers follow suit because if Amazon’s on sale, we might as well be on sale.”
And Black Friday is still very much worth it, according to Tanya.
“I know a lot of people have kind of gone away from the idea that you can get really big discounts during Black Friday, but Black Friday is real,” she said. “We see it every year. We follow the trends and the discounts. And when Black Friday comes around, that is often the time where I’m like, ‘You know what? It’s time to get those top products that I’ve been eyeing all year,’ because you do save a significant amount when you buy during those sales.”
For mattresses specifically, Tanya named the next three best windows to shop deals: Labor Day, Black Friday, and President’s Day weekend.
The Bottom Line
The next time you’re standing in an aisle trying to decide what to buy, remember this: the high thread count on those sheets doesn’t mean better quality, the “cooling” pillow might actually be trapping heat, and the extended warranty is probably making more money for the store than it will ever save you.
Know which sales are worth waiting for, know which brands actually hold up in testing, and don’t let a price tag convince you that expensive automatically means better. According to Tanya, it usually doesn’t.
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