Last summer I went on vacation to a lake with family. This trip taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. Like all lessons, this started with a mistake. The result of this mistake could lead to me saving thousands of dollars for the rest of my life.

Let me start by saying never put more than 2 people on a jet ski. Chances are, it will tip over. Also when you are getting on the jet ski, regardless of how many people are on it, DO NOT wear expensive sunglasses.

We all know expensive is a very relative term. Point is, don't go on a jet ski with a pair of sunglasses you can't afford to replace whether they are $10 or $1000.

Now foolish me, made both mistakes above simultaneously and it led to the most important lesson. As you can guess, right now the sunglasses are at the bottom of a lake never to be found again, until global warming does its thing and the lake completely evaporates. But I'm not holding my breath for that just like I'm not holding my breath to go digging for it. Surprisingly, you can't see very much under water in a lake, well not as much as in a nice blue ocean.

After this loss, I just couldn't bring myself to spending money for another pair. It hurt enough the first time. So I squinted and wore caps for the past few months. Then enough was enough, I needed a new pair. I let enough time pass by that by then, even if I hadn't lost them in the lake, I most likely would have broken them by now. So I went shopping the same way everybody has been going shopping for the last 100 years. In a mall. I found a great pair, but they cost about $400. It still bothered me to pay so much for a stupid mistake of my own, so I decided to start hunting online for it. To my surprise, not one store online charged as much as the retail store did.

Why?

Well when you think about it, its really quite simple

When you buy something at a retail store you are paying for...

The Salary of the employees
The rent and utilities of the store
Increasing taxes
Corporate salaries
Marketing

When you research online, and buy smart, you don't ever have to pay for any of these, reducing your cost by sometimes over 50%!!!!

I ended up getting the same pair of sunglasses for less than $200 online. I got them in about 5 days, and they were just as good as the pair I saw in the store, at more than half the price, no tax, no line, and no hassle.

Everybody should be doing this. So why arent we? Fear of the unknown (online)? Thinking that if its too cheap its too good to be true? Just used to our old ways? No time to do the online research?

Probably a little of all the above. Well I thought I'd help a little. I want to educate people on how to successfully shop online , never pay retail, find the best deals, and get the same value as you get in the stores. I created a website that did this, for free! I'm hoping it becomes the next big thing but if it just helps out a few people, I'll be happy. To learn more about how to shop online for just about anything you can think of, check it out.

The important lesson I learned? Forget about the Jet Ski and sunglass lesson, I learned that it is completely unnecessary to ever shop or pay retail ever again! You can buy just about anything you can think of online, and save tons of cash doing it too!

The government wants you to spend money to help us all out of a recession. That doesn't mean you should spend it unwisely. Look for the best deals, check out more than one site, and never settle for paying somebody else's overhead costs.