My Mattress Hunting Expedition

So apparently I’m in the market for a new bedroom mattress. Over the last few weeks my wife has pointed out to me that our current model is no longer up to speed. Persistent neck aches, possible pinched nerves, what feels like non-stop mattress flipping and a sinkhole located in the middle of the mattress have undoubtedly brought me to this daunting scenario.

I find the entire ordeal of mattress shopping to be tiring and cumbersome: from the initial sticker shock that I was not prepared for to shopping for something that makes me feel like an adult, I definitely have a few apprehensions just thinking about this task.

From 0 to 18 my parents furnished my bedroom as I went from crib to a kind of sort of “larger”  twin mattress. In college some apartments were furnished with a mattress and in others I learned to make a good use of sweatshirts that were not needed to be worn in a tropical climate, but made for great mattress substitutes. Thankfully after college when I lived in New York my shared apartment was furnished as well.

Which brings me to Chicago. For the last 6 years my wife and I have made due with a queen sized mattress from the teenage bedroom of her parents’ home. 6 years is probably a bit longer than a mattress should last, but given that it’s been known my wife longer than I have, I’ll admit that there more than likely may be an issue or two with the mattress’ durability at this point.

So yesterday after church we checked out one of many mattress stores in our neighborhood. My eyes went straight to price tags, and my wife’s body bounced from floor model to floor model, testing the waters of just about every mattress in the store. When she coaxed me to lay next to her and test them out as well, I quickly learned that mattresses really don’t mean anything to me.

Yes, some are soft and some are sturdy, but truth be told when I go to sleep I typically curl up into a ball, get comfortable on my pillow and really don’t give two licks about the kind of mattress I’m on when I fall asleep. Air, water, soft, a futon, it doesn’t matter to me. As long as the lights are out and I’m not freezing cold, I can fall asleep anywhere. But as Dave Ramsey points out in FPU, sometimes as a husband, even though I don’t intellectually “get “ the concept of buying a quality mattress, I just have to physically “get” the quality mattress. My wife’s comfort and peace of mind does mean the world to me, I just didn’t expect her to call me on it.

So the sticker shock definitely threw me. In the particular store we walked into most of the makes and models that my wife liked were upwards of $800 and included free delivery and removal of the current mattress. I seriously walked in expecting to spend no more than a few hundred bucks. So we did what any other good Ramsey follower would do, we went home and my wife lovingly began to price shop and get a pulse reading of what a mattress of her liking cost on average.

We came to the conclusion, for the make and quality that she prefers, that we should expect to spend no more than $600. I think when we walk into the store and flash $100 dollar bills at the sales manager that we can snag the free delivery and removal as well, but I will keep you posted on how that goes.

In the meantime we are still doing our fair share of homework to make an informed buying decision on this considerable purchase so that we do not overpay. We’ll also plan to price shop and buy locally from a vendor in our neighborhood to help lock in a free delivery.

For this month we will press pause on sending a large amount of our monthly disposable income for saving for our house and set aside in cash our mattress ceiling price. After doing our homework and knowing where our price ceiling is, we plan to walk in and make a cash offer to see what kind of deals will open up to us. On a side note, a warranty is not a benefit to me. If I need a warranty, then that means the vendor is selling me a trash product that is likely to break down. But if the item purchased truly is a lemon, I have my emergency fund to cover the cost and can self-insure, I don’t need to pay an extra fee to a vendor for the privilege.

So stay tuned to see how my mattress buying expedition turns out later this month.