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Businesses Try to Attract Your Money on Labor Day

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WILSON — Many women and men are spending their Labor Day holiday shopping. The newspapers are filled with sales circulars for just about everything. With the wild ride Wall Street has been experiencing lately, how willing are you to buy big ticket items?

Many customers still look at Wall Street as something that happened in the newspaper. They do not think about it as losing money. So, a lot of folks are out shopping this Labor Day weekend.

A lot of local businesses know that people are a little nervous about spending a lot of money right now, and they know that the easiest way to get money is to make it easier to spend.

While you're enjoying a day off, businesses across our state are hard at work trying to attract your money. They are doing their best to calm the fears of stockholders who lost money during the recent tumbles on Wall Street.

But Wall Street woes do not seem to bother some people. Shoppers like Jim and Joan Cooper say their investments focus on long term gains, so they will not lose sleep over day to day changes on Wall Street.

"Well I think the stock market has been around a long, long time," said Jim Cooper. "It survived the depression. It survived a couple of other falls. And I really think it will be here for a long long time after I'm gone."

For most of us, shelling out tens of thousands of dollars is a little unnerving after watching our stocks plunge.

For big-ticket sellers such as auto dealers, the big hook for buyers is finance incentives. You do not have to plunk down all the money at once, and with lease deals the upfront financial commitment drops even more.

The better you feel about spending money, the more income local businesses earn.

"It's a lot easier to buy a car now than it used to be," explained John Howell, a dealership owner. "The terms, the way the things are now, it's easier to buy a car. You don't have to have as much money now to buy a car. The whole thing is a lot easier."

Dealers say one of the best ways they have been able to attract customers is to offer those low payments up front.

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