I know the title with the whole recession thing sounds crazy, so give me a chance to explain, but regardless of whether we’re going into a recession right now or not, it’s always a good idea to be budgeting wherever you can, especially if you still love Apple products and want to stay in the ecosystem while also saving some cash.
So what I’ll be doing in this article is going through each category of Apple products and giving you guys some really good tips and options to save a LOT of cash, but first, I’ve gotta explain the whole recession thing.
It’s no secret that inflation has been putting pressure on regular people around the world, with prices of everything going higher and higher including food, gasoline, everyday products, services, cars, utilities, rent, housing, and more. And to make things worse, Diesel prices have recently been skyrocketing in the past week which is putting a huge strain on truckers who transport basically all of our food and goods to the stores we buy from, which means that they have to pass the extra cost along to other business and consumers.
For example, Amazon just announced a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge for sellers, which means that they’ll be raising the prices of basically everything on Amazon to cover that extra cost. And because of that, it seems like things could be getting worse in the near future for various reasons.
First of all, other countries are reporting even worse inflation than us, like over 30% in the eurozone and 70% inflation in Turkey, YES 70%! On top of that, the China lockdowns are continuing, which means more supply shortages which will continue to inflate prices. Even Apple recently reported their earnings and mentioned that they could lose up to 8 billion dollars due to the China lockdowns.
The Federal Reserve also just had their FOMC meeting where they said that there are further risks of inflation due to the China lockdowns, which is one of the reasons they raised interest rates by half a percentage point, the first time in 22 years that the rates were hiked this much. And Jerome Powell says that they’re just getting started with the hikes, with more 50 basis point hikes on the table for the next couple of meetings. And while we had a huge rally in the stock market as soon as Jerome announced the hike, all of it and more was lost the very next day because we got the worst US productivity report since 1947.
Now to explain the significance of the rate hikes, it’s basically going to slow down the economy because higher rates mean that it becomes more expensive to borrow money, so anything purchased with a loan will get more expensive. And what this basically leads to is lowered demand for buying things including tech products, which Apple analyst Ming-chi Kuo has already been seeing in terms of the global smartphone market for months, which could lead to people getting laid off from their jobs, bringing us closer to an official recession coming sooner than expected.
In fact, a recent CNBC poll shows 80% of small businesses are expecting to see a recession this year, which is why the small business section has laid off 105,000 total employees in the first quarter of the year. And it’s not just small businesses, we are now seeing reports of Facebook and amazon doing hiring freezes, and even Apple has reportedly frozen hiring of genius bar employees, and the only reason it makes sense for anyone to stop hiring is because they expect sales to go down this year, potentially because of a recession.
And what basically starts to happen when we have news headlines of recession risks, that’s when people start saving money and budgeting, which is basically why I decided to make this post. And in terms of how close we are to going into a recession, we’re actually 50% of the way there, because the US economy actually contracted or went negative in the 1st quarter of 2022 compared to last year, so if Q2 is also gonna be negative, then we’ll officially be in a recession the first half of this year. And according to JP Morgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon, he sees a 33% chance of a mild recession, and 33% chance of a severe recession, so that’s a 66% chance of recession according to the CEO of the biggest bank in the US.
But of course, we might completely avoid a recession and not have anything to worry about, but just in case you’re thinking of ways to save money on the Apple ecosystem, let’s get into some tips and great deals on Apple products.
First of all, whatever you’re buying, you should definitely be buying it from Amazon instead of Apple’s website because Apple NEVER has sale prices on their website, compared to Amazon which routinely has some really amazing deals as I’ll show you over the next few minutes!
Getting started, if you’re looking to upgrade your iPhone, you can now find a fully unlocked, 
renewed iPhone 12 for just $496 which is a KILLER deal because you have up to 90 days to return it if you change your mind, and the iPhone 12 features the new flat-sided redesign and one of my favorite iPhone features ever, MagSafe, which I use literally every day for charging, mounting my iPhone in my car and for my MagSafe wallet which is really convenient. And speaking of MagSafe accessories, instead of buying Apple’s MagSafe charger for $39 and their 20W USB-C power adapter for $19, a total of $58, you can literally just buy Anker’s MagSafe charger that comes bundled with a 20W adapter for only $22 right now if you’re okay with the 7.5W charging speeds.
And instead of going on Apple’s website to buy a MagSafe car vent mount for $40 to $60, 
you should be buying THIS one for $27 because it comes bundled with everything you need including the MagSafe wireless charger, the power cable, and the power adapter.. Which I personally use in both of my cars because it’s my all-time favorite iPhone accessory ever.
Moving forward, Apple sells an expensive $59 MagSafe wallet, but this one is only $24 
and it features MUCH stronger magnets compared to the weak ones in Apple’s wallet, which is the #1 complaint about it.
Now before I move on to the best ways to save on Macs, I want to mention that you can buy a 6-foot Anker USB-C to lightning cable 
for only $15 instead of paying Apple $29 for their 6-foot cable.
First of all, if you’re thinking of buying a new Mac, I fully believe that the M1 MacBook Air for $950 on Amazon is by far the best bang for the buck Mac of all time, due to the M1 chip being more than powerful enough for most people, as well as having absolutely insane battery life and not having a fan that will lead to dust clogging the inside of the MacBook, which means it’ll be reliable for years! And yes, we are expecting the redesigned M2 MacBook Air later this year, but it’s also gonna come with a price increase, likely starting at $1200, so if you’re trying to save money, you should honestly just buy the M1 model right now while it’s on sale.
And if you’re looking for a more powerful MacBook, I honestly believe that the base $2,000 14” MacBook Pro is more than fast enough for a lot of the people out there that use productivity apps like photo editing, music production, programming, video editing, and more!
Read also: Internal & External MacBook Issues: 11 Potential Fixes
But let’s say you already have the M1 MacBook Air and the main reason you want to upgrade to the new MacBook Pro is because of the extra ports, I would instead buy an Anker USB-C hub for $60 to get those extra ports instead of buying a whole new MacBook Pro! 
And in my opinion, one of the best ways to save on Macs is to save on the internal storage cost, so instead of paying Apple $400 to upgrade your MacBook Air to 1TB of storage, you can buy the reliable Samsung T5 1TB external SSD for only $100,
or upgrade to the faster T7 for just $15 more.
Moving on to ways to save on the iPad ecosystem, the current budget iPad is $20 off which is pretty good because the storage space doubled to 64GB with the model, 
making it a great deal, and if you want a more modern-looking iPad, you’ve of course got the new iPad mini which is currently $100 off right now.
But if you’re looking for a crazy good deal on a 12.9” iPad Pro, here’s a renewed 2018 model with the flat-sided modern design 
and 256GB of storage for only $539, which is probably the best deal I've seen!
And in terms of accessories, instead of paying Apple $100 or even $129 for the Apple Pencil, you can buy the Logitech Crayon for only $61 right now, 
which actually supports almost every iPad including the iPad 9th gen and the new iPad mini 6!
And instead of buying Apple’s Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air and iPad Pro for $300, you can get the Logitech Folio Touch for the iPad Air for only $145, 
or the iPad Pro version for $160, and both of them support all of Apple’s unique trackpad gestures just like the Magic Keyboard thanks to smart connector support.
Now in terms of AirPods, you can now get a basic set of 2nd-gen AirPods for only $100, which is the best price ever, or if you want the Pros, they’re only $175 right now which is a great deal because they’re much better than the new AirPods 3.
Moving on to the Apple Watch, Amazon currently has some of the best sales right now, including a brand new Apple Watch SE for only $229 which I think is the best one to buy if you’re on a budget because it comes with almost all of the best features for the lowest possible price. Or if you really want the best in class Series 7, it’s currently $70 off, so only $329 which is probably the best price I’ve ever seen on the latest model. And if you think you have to buy Apple’s expensive watch bands, you don’t! T
here are a ton of great options on Amazon that are much less expensive, like this one for $13 which is rated very well with positive reviews, instead of paying Apple $100 for their solo braided loop bands.
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