Name: Are You Spending Your Money Wisely? | Wolfgang Schnellbaecher | TED
Uploaded: 2026-02-24T21:32:24.000Z
Duration: 10 min 17 s
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I've got two questions for each one of you.

How much money did you spend in your entire life so far?

That already takes a bit to estimate, right?

And question number two, did you spend your money wisely?

If you hesitate now and are not so sure, it likely means you're not a good buyer, frankly, because you have not even defined for yourself what good buying truly is.

And that, sorry for the bitter truth, despite your buying things pretty much every day.

And good buying can have such a massive effect on your entire life and through your lifetime, you will spend a fortune, if not several fortunes.

Considering we're in Dubai, spending it more wisely will either make you have to spend less or for the same amount, make your life more luxurious, comfortable, sustainable, fun, or whatever else you want it to be.

And the good news is, there are people you can learn it from.

As a procurement leader in bcg, I work with them throughout the world.

High tech companies, auto manufacturers, American big pharma, Middle Eastern oil companies.

From Swiss clock manufacturers to Middle Eastern mass producers.

Steel, spare parts, intellectual property rights, fruit.

Just last week I. I did a live auction for a Norwegian salmon farm for fish.

My promise to you is if you learn from their combined knowledge of these professional procurement teams, you will be a good buyer for the rest of your life.

It only boils down to three rules these companies do, right?

Number one, prioritize on what really matters.

The truth is, it's not, because there's a few words missing.

Prioritize on what really matters for a group together.

In every company, in almost every household, there's a few players.

And even for yourself, you're oftentimes not so sure how to prioritize.

How about a more comfortable buying experience versus sustainable products?

Do we pay extra just to make our neighbor jealous?

I'm from Germany and you might argue we built an entire auto industry purely on that feeling.

Now, professional buyers, they actually read the corporate strategy.

They align with business partners to find out what is it really that makes our company better.

They graphically pin down what are the priorities and then share with everybody for your life.

It might look like this, maybe at the start, during education, start of your career.

You don't have so much money and therefore you want to have fun.

A bit later, you might found a family, get children, and

you Care a lot about quality of the food, of the toys, of the furniture, just to have it all right for them, maybe a bit later.

You just want to have an easy going lifestyle.

I've even seen a lot of families like this who have slightly different priorities.

Now, the core thing is to be a good buyer.

You don't have to follow a predefined set of rules.

It's just for yourself and your loved ones.

You need to have these priorities very clear.

And now we already at rule number two, influence your allies.

You arrive at the dealership and the first thing that happens is your kids climb into the car, they have dirty boots on, and

they yell and tell you how much they love it.

The colors, design, the design, everything.

You're already a bit on your back foot starting to negotiate.

And the car dealer basically tells you that right now, cars with dirty seats are a bit rare.

Your wife gives you look like, please don't mess it up.

You will for sure not buy it at a good price.

They have to align with their allies up front.

Who's going to say what in a negotiation, after negotiation, before a negotiation, only if these things are clear, they can ensure they really strike the best deals.

They have the ability to influence the stakeholders on what they really want.

Let me tell you about the inverting method.

I once had a workshop with a big railway company.

We were supposed to reduce the cost of big steel tracks.

And we had a group sitting there of rather old buyers, basically telling us everything is optimal.

After 60 minutes, I was still in front of an empty flip chart, panicking a bit.

He just turned around to the crowd and said, let's forget this exercise for a moment.

What would you do in the following situation?

He's younger than you and he's firing you.

And the only thing you can do to strike back is in the next three months when you're still in the company, increase the cost.

Do you have any creative ideas to increase the cost without just raising prices?

We could buy two long tracks we have to cut.

We could buy two short tracks we have to weld together.

We could buy too many and we have to put on stock.

We could order too late, so we have to pay a fee.

We could pay too early to not have interest rates.

All of a sudden the flip chart was full and my colleague turned around again.

Are we sure we are really at the optimum in each one of these dimensions?

And when you're buying a car, you can do the same with your family.

What would we have to do to increase the price?

We could buy it in the spring in an expensive city, only go to one dealer in a rather high class part of the town.

We could state right away, we will only go to you, to the dealer.

We could tell them how much we love the car.

And once you've listed all these things and then turn it around, then you really come close to what's an optimum.

To me, the inverting method is also a great reminder.

Good buying can be fun and good buying can be creative.

And now we are already at rule number three.

Negotiate from strong starting positions.

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Are You Spending Your Money Wisely? | Wolfgang Schnellbaecher | TED

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