Recent Robert Morris
University (RMU) graduate student, Evan Wright, has taken his experience as a
marketing student and decided to publish.

His first book,
“Cost Combat: Guerilla tactics for the retail jungle”, aims to teach the
readers his “tactics” and “anti-tactics” for smarter shopping.

“Nobody is going to
care about your financial life more than you do,” said Wright. “This book is a
charge for the reader to start thinking about how they can be more in control
of their spending.”

The first chapter,
in his 22-chapter book, is not about the actual buying process. It is about
decisions, such as whether to buy an item in the first place or not.

“It’s not a battle
between you and the seller,” he said when describing the retail “jungle”. “It’s
a battle between you and poor buying decisions.”

Wright lays out how
people should determine whether to buy something or not, how to pay less if
they buy it, and what they should do with it when they no longer need it.

The book helps
people look at a purchase not simply as “meeting a need” in the moment, but
“what return can they gain from it by selling it at the right time?” Changing
the perspective of buying from simply buying to thinking about investing.

“It’s not about
saving by not spending, it’s about saving by spending smarter,” stated Wright.

“Seeing the adults
[in my life] live paycheck to paycheck I asked myself, ‘how can I help make
their money go further?’” he revealed. “So that even people who are struggling
don’t have to live beyond their means.”

“This book is for
people who don’t have a lot of money,” he clarified. “To people who do, these
are tools that [will] help you not only save but use your money better so you
have the ability to buy more.”

Wright elaborated
that the difference between this book and other financial guide books is his
method of payment.

“Small businesses
often discount your purchase if you use cash because it saves them money on
transaction fees,” he explained. “I’ll teach you how to double and triple dip
your discounts just by how you pay.”

He explained that if
a consumer purchases a sale item with a discounted gift card he or she bought
with a credit card that offers five percent cash back, he or she has triple
dipped on his or her saving and cash return.

While at RMU, Wright
learned about the perspective of companies and marketers in the buying and
selling process. He discovered how and why retailers market discounted items.
This helped him determine how a buyer can work with a company and use different
discounts to his or her advantage.

“To me, marketing is
the science of suggestion,” he said. “You don’t see commercials for things you
need. They show you things that you should want. And people sometimes mix that
up.”

According to Wright,
it’s about consumer control, not just about the suggested retail price or even
the seller themselves.

With such modern
trends, such as Groupon and Living Social, Wright believes these seemingly
charitable sites are misleading to consumers.

“You have to adhere
to their rules,” he said. “…You only get to decide whether to purchase what
item they tell you that day, but what I have [in my book] you’re making your
own deals. You decide what you want to get and how much you’re going to pay for
it.”

Wright insisted that
he is not a financial planner or advisor and can’t teach someone how to recover
from bad spending habits, but he can help people break those habits to change
the outlook of their future spending.

Wright’s book is
available on the Amazon, the Barnes & Nobles and the Create Space’s
websites. It comes in paperback and digital form for the Kindle, Nook and
eReader softwares.

There is already a
sequal in the works. He is planning to write a spin-off version for college
kids and children. He is also planning to develop his first iPhone app that has
interactive “guerilla tactics and anti-tactics” designed to further put control
in the hands of the buyer.