Online Shopping: Tips to Save Your Money

Finding deals on pretty much everything has always been important to me, but it’s seems essential nowadays. Since I can’t really go around to a ton of different stores to find those great deals, I rely more and more on various sites to get coupon codes and find promotions for all of my online shopping needs. Most especially for electronics! So many of us are now doing homeschool and HP is become more essential than ever before!

Pre-Covid, I’d check ads, then hit the stores. It wasn’t all that strange for me to hit up a sale at a store, go check another store and return if the price and deal were better. There was a time that it was fun even! Oh, how those are missed! I’m glad we can do online shopping though, it’s better than nothing.

Since it really isn’t safe or feasible to go out and shop at the moment, thought we’d come up with some fantastic ways you can save when shopping online!

• SlickDeals has fantastic deals on HP for sure! You can also find deals on their site for just about anything you are looking for. Groceries, clothes, electronics of all sorts and more are all on the bar across the top. You can enter what you are looking for in their search engine and it will pull them up for ya!  Accounts are free and you can have deals sent to your inbox if you choose.
• Money Making Sites are a great way to earn cash back, though many take a lot of time to get to a cash out level. If you follow that link, those are all sites that I’ve cashed out on. They also include my affiliate links if you choose to use them, it is certainly appreciated!
• About that Additional Warranty… The manufacturers warranty is designed to last a certain amount of usage at which point the warranty runs out and you are just stuck, which is why we are often so tempted to purchase those additional warranties. However, not all are worth it. I’ve met with people from Best Buy who swear the warranty is a scheme there, they informed me that if the warranty covers whatever is wrong, they’ll send the product off for a month or more and often it still won’t get fixed. (Don’t use their tech services either, for real. Find a small computer shop, it will probably be cheaper, definitely faster and way more successful.) The point is, read that fine print. Our stove, for example, has the additional warranty. They will cover an $80 part but refuse to cover the labor to install the part. Sounds good right up until you find out that the labor is $600. We need two, so we could just buy a new stove top for that! Be careful, read that fine print!
• Resist Temptations! This one is tough for me. There’s a reason they have all that stuff by the registers, we are compulsively driven to grab something we didn’t want or need because it’s cheap or seems like a great deal. While it may very well be a great deal, do we really need it? If you are buying a new desktop computer, for example, resist the temptation to buy a new monitor, keyboard, mouse, and/or speakers if you don’t honestly need them. If your current ones are fine, then save yourself the money and put whatever you would have spent on the extras into a savings account. You’ll thank yourself later.
• Read Reviews! You may wonder how this will save you money, but stay with me! While it’s hard to know which reviews to trust and which not to, in my experience if I read enough of them I’ll eventually find the common complaints and raves about things. Amazon doesn’t allow paid reviews or reviews for free products, but they still happen. I know, because companies often offer me free product if I’ll do them. It’s a common thing. Of course, I refused to not mention that I receive something for free but, due to my honesty in how I got products (before they changed their policy) I am forever not allowed to review things there. It’s only infuriating because I never reviewed a product without disclosing if it were a promotional item and now I can’t review things I’d legit like to rave or scream about. Wal-mart doesn’t care one way or the other, I never trust theirs but I’m not a fan of them in the first place.
• Sales…. Yay or Nay? Those sales papers and ads are super tempting! Just remember that the sales they run aren’t always the best deals. For example, Black Friday prices are not the best of the season for most places. That’s a common tactic. Do a quick search online for the best times to buy on whatever you are looking for. One thing I love are the Rain Checks. Most places will offer rain checks if they are out of a sale item, but did you know you could get a rain check even if they aren’t out? That way you’ll have 30 days to lock in that price in case you are worried that it will become cheaper. I did this when we bought our dishwasher. It paid off, for my piece of mind if nothing else.

I’d love to hear any tips you have for Online Shopping!