Is a $1,500 Mattress Worth It?

How's it going everybody?  I'm feeling pretty fresh, and rested.  Yesterday was the first day back at school and the kids were well-behaved.  So after a whole bunch of serious thought, I've decided I'm no longer going to be blogging like a mad man, every other day.  Heck, I may not even be blogging once a week.

I AM DONE!  I'm done trying to win over Google, and competing with the thousands of other sites for people's attention (i.e. clicks).  It added way too much stress into my life; stress I don't need.  So, officially...I don't give a rats behind!  I don't care if I ever get sponsored again to write a post, if people want to pay me for linking their site on an article, how much money the ads make, etc.  And it feels great not to care!  Liberating.

I'll be blogging whenever the heck I feel like it from now on.  If that's not okay by you...Bye, Felicia!  If you want to check in from time to time, great and thanks.  So let's move beyond all this now and get to the article.  Question:  When is the last time you bought yourself a mattress?

Would you believe I had my queen bed mattress since before I met my wife?  Until last week, I was sleeping on a mattress I'd bought way back in 2003!  Depending on the material and level of care, a mattress can last between 7-10 years.  My wife and I were well overdue for a new one. 






We had a standard innerspring mattress with a thin plush layer at the top.  No matter how I flipped it around, the mattress drooped in the middle.  This past December, my wife and I noticed how much pain we woke up with.  We felt worse after every night's sleep and were definitely not getting solid 8-hour rest.  A mattress was on our "to-buy" list, but being frugal, I'd pushed the problem further and further along.  Enough was enough.  Despite not having budgeted for a mattress in December, my wife and I went shopping for one, credit cards in hand.

We started at Ortho Matress.  This is a high-end mattress store.  In addition to well-known mattress brands like Posturepedic and Serta iComfort, they carry their own brand.  They also had the main types of mattresses on their display floor, e.g., latex, memory foam, innerspring, and innerspring with memory foam (hybrids).  The sales lady first helped us determine how firm (or soft) we liked our bed.  After laying on firm, medium, and soft mattresses, my wife and I luckily quickly agreed on the medium (i.e. not too soft, not too firm).  I can see how this can be a huge point of contention for couples on their first joint mattress shopping experience.

Then came time to decide on the type.  We told the sales lady about our discomforts when sleeping.  She asked if we slept more on our side, or on our backs.  Both my wife and I sleep mostly on our sides so the memory foam was recommended.  We tried all the types (innerspring, hybrid, latex) anyway, and as it turned out, the memory foam did feel the best.  The memory foam comes with a drawback.  Apparently, sleeping on a regular memory foam makes you hot.  That's why Serta's iComfort comes with special cooling fabric.  The lady was quick to point out that Ortho's version, their fabric, is much cooler.

All this coolness was costly, of course.  The cheapest Serta iComfort memory foam was around $1,100.  And they kept going up from there.  Talk about sticker shock!  The one my wife and I liked came in at $1,400+ just for the mattress.  Did we buy it?  No.  You can't comparison shop if you just go to one store.  So we left Ortho and drove less than a half mile away to Mattress Firm.  This store was smaller and had fewer selection.  Their prices for high-end mattresses were comparable to Ortho, however.  We told the sales guy we'd just come from Ortho and he went into a speech about Mattress Firm's better trial period, and return policy.

Trying out a mattress for 120 nights (Mattress Firm's trial period) did sound somewhat alluring.  The re-stocking expense, should we not like a mattress, was low enough too.  I can't recall exactly how much it was, but it was under $150.  In terms of financing, at Ortho, you have to apply for a line of credit with a creditor they work with.  I didn't like that.  At Mattress Firm, they had a much simpler financing process with a 90-day same as cash option.  Still, I didn't like the mattresses as much as the ones at Ortho.  Neither did my wife.  So we left for a third store.

While in the car, we talked costs and felt spending over $1K on a mattress would be too much for us.  Is a $1,500 mattress worth it?  Look, sleep is something you can't mess with.  You need a great night sleep to be your best everyday.  For this reason, I have to say that buying an expensive mattress, if it's high quality, is completely worth it.  You have to think about it as an investment.  You don't buy mattresses every year so the one you get can be around for a decade.  Say you spend $3K on a mattress.  That's a $300 yearly expense for 10 years.  Not bad.


As for us, we found a wholesale mattress store in the furniture district in San Marcos, CA.  If you aren't local to California, Furniture.com can connect you with local retailers to find quality mattresses in your area.  At Discount Mattresses & More, we found the perfect memory foam queen mattress for only $799.95.  We outright bought an "M-Lily Vitality Bamboo Charcoal 11-inch Memory foam."  The way it felt while we laid on it at the store was comparable to the $1,100, Serta iComfort.  We got it delivered the same day.

I've slept on the M-Lily Vitality now for about a week.  It has been like night and day, waking up feeling so much better and my sciatica is gone!  My wife has also seen her sleep improve.  She can now sleep the whole night without waking up.  Boy what a difference a new mattress makes.  So my final thoughts are...

A $1,500 mattress is totally worth it!  You don't want to go cheap because you'll have to replace your mattress again a whole lot sooner.  I only spent over $800 after taxes on my mattress, but I would've gone as far as $1,500 if needed.

Thanks for reading!