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Just a little background about myself. I have been a freelance court reporter for over 25 years. I have owned both large and small businesses, including a large freelance court reporting firm in Philadelphia, a small court reporting firm in Anchorage, Alaska and several typing and marketing businesses throughout the country.

During the time that I owned my businesses, I have tried to find ways to keep costs to a minimum in all of my businesses. My favorite saying is "Why would I want to pay extra for that when I can use that money to buy myself something nice for home?"

There are several ways to buy new items for your business. First, you have to figure out how up-to-date you need the item to be. Why buy the newest computer on the market if its only function is going to be to print out billing statements? Maybe you can still work with a computer from two to five years previously?

I once bought a computer for $25.00 off of E-bay that works with my court reporting program. I also bought several Computerized shorthand machines that saved me spending over $4,000 apiece for new ones. The used machines I bought for between $290 and $800 and were used for multiple years by both me and the court reporters working for me. (One I bought from a pawnshop for $500 and one of the court reporters working for me immediately paid me $1,200 for it. It was worth a lot more, but she was about to spend around $4,200 for a new one when I came across the deal.)

Another resource is trade magazines. A lot of times when somebody has something they tried to use for work and it wasn't compatible, they will sell it fairly inexpensively to get it off of their hands. I have purchased many used cassette transcription machines for between $25 and $50, when new they would cost several hundred. I have bought them off of e-bay, court reporting magazines (they usually have a classified ad section of "for sale" items."

A good on-line resource is Craigslist. You can seem to find almost anything on there.

For my Shaklee business, I have found quite a few sales aids much cheaper than if I were to buy them direct. I have bought four different Airsource 3000 air purifiers for between $50 and $200 off of E-bay. They normally go for over $700 at retail price and I have been able to use them as sales aids to sell new ones. My sales profit on the new ones are a lot more than I am paying for these used machines and usually all that I need to do to sell one is to place a machine in somebody's home and the machine does the sale. Of course, if I had to pay full price for each one, I would have to sell many more to make a profit.

Another thing I have purchased for my Shaklee business are used audio tapes and sales brochures. That can run into a lot of money if you buy them new, but there are always people willing to give them away from practically nothing if they get out of the business or overstock on the sales materials. I save thousands a year in advertising costs this way.

I have always bought used cars. You can get a great deal on a used car (I drive taxi part-time as well and put too many miles on a car to buy it new.) I recently wrote a book called Cab Driving as a Second Career for Fun and Profit telling about the adventures I have had driving taxi at night here in the Twin Cities. (The computer I wrote the book on was less than $50.00).

In summary, almost any business you have can use a few corners cut. Just make sure that you don't cut them too far. Get what you need and, maybe, just a little more.