The following is a guest post from Crystal at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. That’s where she writes about her bills, saving for the future, and making sure that they fit in fun stuff along the way.
Do you shop online? Ever notice the boxes at some checkout asking for a “promo code” or something along those lines? I actually used to skip those thinking that they didn’t apply to me unless I had a code before going to that site. Silly Crystal. Now I know better.
Find Your Money
If you are going to buy something anyway, it’s worth a shot to spend 5 minutes on your search engine of choice to find a code that may work for you. Specifically, anytime I see that code-wanted box, I run a quick search using the shopping site’s name and the exact wording of the code box.
For example, if you were at Gala Bingo Online and decided to buy something, see if they have a “coupon code” box in their checkout. If they do, flip over to a search engine and type in “GalaBingo coupon code”. The results can be scanned through pretty quickly. I generally stick to a 5 page-of-results maximum.
Generally, Retail-Me-Not pops up along with some other general coupon sites. I browse through those quite quickly and try any options that they have published. I lean towards sites that simply give me the code. I refuse to jump through additional sign up hoops. I seem to have a 50-50 rate of success overall.
If none of those quickly found sites work, I click through the next 4 pages of the search results to find a recent blog post or any other recent info. Sadly, bloggers don’t come up very often in my searches. The ones that do usually posted the code about a year before I needed to use it. I only seem to have luck about 25% of the time with this method.
Don’t Spend More
The second trick to using savings codes is to remember that you saved money…you didn’t just clear up some more cash to spend. If you spend even more, than you didn’t actually save squat. This seems pretty straight-forward, but I hear a ton of statements from friends and acquaintances that make me cringe.
I am referring to conversations that start with things like “I bought two and saved so much since they were half price!”.
Ummm, no. You saved 50% and then spent it on another one. Yay for getting a better deal, but sad face for buying more than you intended.
You’ll simply be better off if you shop online from a list – just like the grocery shopping tip. If you limit yourself to your list, you’d splurge less often. A list and a little will power can save you a ton.
What other online shopping tips can you think of to share with us?