I’m just curious, what prices are the most likely to fall during tough economic times? i.e. what are good things to buy right now, if you can and if you know you’ll need them later?
Houses are probably one, right?
I can’t really think of anything else. For instance, you’re not really going to see the price of an ipod or a laptop going down too much, are you?
Cars?
Normally things like TVs are cheaper because when people have no job or are worried about their job they stop spending on electronics and other non essential items.
I would argue that Laptops and iPods are likely to come down in price. As people are lose their jobs and or tighten their belts usually the first things people stop buying are luxury items. So I would expect consumer non-necessities to fall in price because demand drops.
Now in practice the profit margin on a lot of luxury items is already pretty thin so the difference may not be noticeable. The extremely high cost/high end merchandise is probably where you would see the most notable drops. Most of today’s high end luxury items tend to involve new technology which in a normal market steadily falls in price as newer/better items hit the market. My WAG is that the only real change you’ll observe is that the brand new stuff either hits the shelves at a slightly lower starting price, or is discounted quicker than usual.
The price of cars has already begun falling, although it too is more noticable on the higher end models. I think I saw an ad on TV the other day selling new Escallades at something like $15,000 off MSRP!!!
A $149 Ipod really can’t get much cheaper but a $2000 TV can be reduced to $1800 or lower.
I would argue that the “natural” (cf. Moore’s Law) tendency of electronic products to get cheaper will overwhelm any reductions in price brought on by a general recession.
In other words, if the 2008 computer is now available for 50% of last year’s price, a 10% reduction due to the general economic climate isn’t going to be a big deal.
Especially since the OP’s talking about buying things now that you’ll need later - that is, times when current low prices should influence when you buy it. I’m not even sure Apple could lower their prices and then raise them later if they wanted to - the notion that electronics get cheaper over time is so ingrained that even a slight price rise would be met with protest. It’s much more likely that they’d simply wait to lower the price, meaning whatever the current price is, it’s still not worth getting if you don’t need it now.
Basically, commodities in widest sense drop in price. Anything which people like to have but don’t need, and can easily do without. This includes everything from gasoline to consumer electronics.
Outright luxury goods may or may not fall in price - it depends on the luxury. Many times sellers simply clam up a bit and tide themselves over. They dont’ want to ruin their eventual markets by cutting the price too much.
These days, car dealers will kiss your feet for just walking in. Want a car dealership? You’re in luck. If you’re looking for bales of recycled paper, it’s very nearly free, because the Chinese box plants aren’t buying it right now.
Blowjobs.
Blu-Ray DVD players… a good generic DVD player is now as cheap as $20 these days, and most people remember going through the pain and cost of having to re-build their VHS video collections with regular DVDs. But that was a long time coming and the difference in image quality and sound was incredible. Sure Blu-Ray is better quality still, but not by a huge margin, and good luck getting anyone to fork over the $250+ for the player and getting them to cough up $30 per movie to buy YET ANOTHER copy of Star Wars in this economy. Especially when all the ‘regular’ DVDs are everywhere and at 1/3 that price for most movies.