by Das Brain
During my recent vacation with my wife to Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Florida we went on our usual “search and destroy” mission for outlet malls. Our last excursion to the United States was Grand Canyon and Phoenix, Arizona back in October of last year and we were able to find a lot of deals at Arizona’s various oultet malls.
In Fort Lauderdale, Florida we were directed to the Sawgrass Mills Outlet mall by our hotel desk clerk. We were able to find quite a lot of deals on items that we wanted. Although the outlet prices at Sawgrass Mills were not better than the Arizona outlet malls, the prices were still cheaper than buying the products at home in Toronto, Canada.
My wife and I usually make note or a list of products that we want prior to entering the United States and then look for them and buy them while on vacation. Generally, Canadian customs agency will give you an allowance of a certain dollar amount if you stay in the U.S for a certain amount of days. What we do is buy as close as to the maximum amount allowable per person, and this way we save a bundle of money.
To give you an example of how much we saved on this trip here are some items we purchased.
My Wife’s purchases:
Abercrombie and Fitch Shorts US price $24.98 CAD price $29.98
Ralph Lauren Sunglasses from
Sun Glass Hut US price $129.99 CAD price $149.99
My purchases (not alot on this trip):
Rayovac Battery charger with
2 free AA NiHm rechargable batteries US price $9.99 CAD price $26.99
4 AAA NiHm rechargable batteries US price $9.99 CAD price $16.99
Things to note is the CAD to USD exchange rate is 1.17 and that Ontario, Canada has a 14% tax added on to the CAD price. Also Florida has a FLAT tax of 6%. So, with these details in mind lets do a comparison using first the purchase of the Abercrombie and Fitch shorts that my wife purchased.
Purchase US price $24.98 + 6% flat tax = $26.49 USD
Convert to CAD is $26.49 * 1.17 = $30.99 CAD
If purchased in Ontario, Canada it would have cost this much.
Canadian price $29.98 + 14% GST/PST tax = $34.18 CAD.
The difference or savings is $3.19 CAD.
If you do the same calculation on the sunglasses she bought, she saved more there.
As for my purchases, you can see just from the price differences alone, that I saved quite a bit on the battery charger and rechargable batteries. You don’t really need to do the calculations to figure that out. As mentioned earlier, the Sawgrass outlet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida did not offer as big a savings as the outlet malls my wife and I went to in Arizona.
One of my wife’s best friends live in Hamilton, Ontario which is just a short drive to Niagra and Buffalo, New York and she knows that shopping in the U.S does pay off. She is very fortunate to live near the border though. However, if you are Canadian and you don’t live close to the border or travel to the U.S a whole lot then this post / article doesn’t really help you a whole lot.
Most Canadians who shop a lot in the U.S knows that the stores in the U.S has much better selection, lower prices and lower taxes. Why is that you ask? The answer is in the size of the U.S population in comparison to Canada. The U.S has a population of 300 million compared to Canada’s 30 million, that is 10 times the amount of people in Canada. The state of California alone has 30 million or the same amount of people in Canada, so basically the U.S has huge buying power.
The next time you head for vacation to the United States, make sure you make a list of things that you have been wanting to buy. Write down the Canadian prices for the items with the canadian tax added to it and also write down the current exchange rate. Then when you are on vacation, find the outlet malls and compare the prices after conversion to canadian currency. Chances are you will save money.
My goal here at MoneyAccumulator.com is to pass along money making and money saving ideas to my readers, I hope this post / article helps you in some ways to save some money.
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