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Buying a new car is a significant investment of resources. For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to ignore the new car versus used car argument. I know the pros and cons of both, but emotional factors come into play when making purchasing decisions.

Being a little risk adverse when making large purchases, a new car’s lack of history, expected reliability and warranty (if needed) offer a sense of comfort that I’m willing to pay for – even knowing that the car will depreciate as soon as I take possession of it. But I go into this planning on keeping my new car for 10 years, so I don’t really walk away a loser at the end of the day because I’ll have gotten my money back in the utility of the car by the end of that time.

With all of that being said, I just purchased a new car this week to replace our 2002 Honda Civic. Our Civic had been a great car with only 87K miles on it. Although it wasn’t the flashiest car around, it started right up and reliably got us from point A to B.

Recently, however, we started to notice a few small problem popping up. The car had a slight shake in it every now and then; the driver’s side electric window would sometimes stop working; the cloth roof liner was coming undone; the check engine light came on. Some of these things are to be expected with a car that we’ve had for about 11 years, though. Still, I had gotten a good deal. For about $15K, I had a car that I used every day for over 11 years. It was time to move on.

Every little bit counts when saving money!  Today I found a nice way to save a couple bucks off the price of a pizza by being creative in the ordering process.

I asked one of my boys what kind of pizza he would pick if he could have his choice.  He said that he wanted sausage, green pepper and pineapple – with pepperoni on half.  We have a Domino’s close to our house, so I figured I would order online and then run out and pick it up.  After selecting the toppings he wanted, the price came to $16.42 after tax.

That seemed a little high for a large pizza, but I knew it was because I built my own pizza and was being charged per topping.  So instead of using the ‘build your own pizza’ option, I instead decided to adjust a specialty pizza.

I selected the Deluxe Feast, and then customized it.  I removed the mushrooms and onions, and added the pineapple and half-pepperoni.  By doing this, I basically created the same pizza.  Instead of adding toppings, though, I removed them.  The result was a a price of $13.77 – a reduction of $2.65.

On top of this trick, I used a coupon to get an additional 50% off to get a final price of $6.88.  In total, I saved $9.54 or 58%.  So the next time you are buying a pizza, think about creative ways to save yourself some money.