One thing all of my friends know about me is that I’m a sucker for a sale. I don’t know that I’ve ever paid full price for pretty much anything, and I’m always trying to get the most bang for my buck. I’ve found a lot of different resources for this habit over the years, and with the holiday season here, I wanted to share what I have found. Some of these are pretty popular, but I think there are a few that might surprise you!
Deal Websites
I used to work in Fairfield County, Connecticut, one of the wealthiest parts of the country. I had my first real internship in New Canaan, CT, and I remember I had just gotten a 2005 BMW and I thought I was going to fit right in when I pulled up. When I parked next to my boss’s brand new Maserati, and my coworker’s brand new Mercedes, I knew I was probably a little out of my league. But it was actually my boss with the Maserati that introduced me to Ruelala, a deal website that offers boutique sales of higher end products because he also loved a sale! They’ll have specific brands each day for up to 70% off and the deals go for a few days, with new brands each day. They have a lot of super popular high end brands like I just looked today and they have Ugg, Chanel, Valentino, La Perla, Canada Goose and more.
Hautelook is pretty much the same, but they’re owned by Nordstrom, so they have a lot of sales with Nordstrom specific brands like Zella, Treasure & Bond and Halogen, along with others. Where Ruelala showcases brand boutiques more, Hautelook will have more item specific sales like today they have statement jewelry starting at $15, comfy and cozy styles starting at $25, and things like that.
A friend of mine told me to look on Brad’s deals when I was looking for furniture when I bought my first house, and it has been really helpful in saving money. They work with a lot of companies that offer them a special discount code for advertising for the company on their website, so it’s similar to the way that the Amazon affiliate program works where Amazon gives people like bloggers or influencers a small commission for referencing one of their products on their website or social media if one of their followers buys something using their link. Brad’s deals seems to have codes for websites when I can’t find any other codes, so it’s definitely worth subscribing to!
Look for special discounts
A ton of stores will offer special discounts for students, teachers and military, and this year a lot of stores are also offering special deals for people that work in health care. If you qualify for one of those deals, you should definitely take advantage of it! Sometimes you have to look for these types of deals, but a lot of times if you google “military discount” or “teacher discounts” you can find the stores that offer these deals! This website lists a lot of the stores that have special deals, just make sure to go to the top right and select the type of deals you qualify for!
Sign up for Rakuten
I can’t really totally figure out how this website makes money or how they offer such good discounts AND money back from things, but I signed up for Rakuten (used to be Ebates) a few years ago, and I’ve gotten over $100.00 in money back over the years, plus they always have the best coupons, and will calculate which coupons to use based on what’s in your cart! You can sign up for Rakuten here and then you can also refer your friends and family and they’ll send you $40, and they’ll send your friend $40, so long as your friend spends $40 using Rakuten. It’s also super easy to download their plug in on your browser so now whenever I’m online shopping, if there is a coupon or I can get money back, Rakuten pops up automatically!
Just a side note- as I was in the midst of writing this post, I ordered our holiday cards and when I first put them into my cart, they were $149.99, but Rakuten popped up and said they were going to give me 10% back, plus it ran through a bunch of coupons when I was checking out and got my total down to $64.99! With the 10% back, I’ll be spending $58.49, not bad!!
Join deal websites on Facebook
Last year my husband came home and told me that his employee had gotten a bunch of stuff for free or nearly free on Amazon because she had joined a glitch group on facebook that people were posting all of the different glitches or coupons that they found on Amazon. I was totally interested, so I searched on facebook for the word “glitch” and hundreds of groups came up. I could not believe I had never heard of this before, but if you go to facebook and search you can find the groups too! Some are better than others, and a lot of them are Amazon affiliates so they’ll get a commission from referring you to specific products, but it’s totally worth joining. I got the majority of our Christmas gifts last year using those groups!
I have the RetailMeNot app on my phone, and I mostly use it when I go into stores like Joann Fabrics or Hobby Lobby, but they have coupons for a lot of different stores! You just pull up the app, search for the store that you’re looking at, and they’ll show you what coupon codes you can use online, or if they are offering any coupons in store. I also just looked at their website and it shows a list of all of their best sales as well, so that can be a resource too! If you go to their website here, you can download the app like I have, or you can search their website for sales.
Google it
Sometimes if I have no luck anywhere else, googling the store plus the word “coupon” will find coupons or deal codes that I didn’t find elsewhere. If all else fails, you can always try googling it!
Subscribe
Often times if you look at the bottom of a website, or if you search for a coupon, you will find that you can get 10% or 15% off your first order if you subscribe to their site. From blogging I have found that this is how a lot of businesses generate revenue. The more subscribers that they have the more that companies will want to advertise on their website. It can be kind of a hassle to have a lot of sites emailing you crowding up your inbox, but you can always unsubscribe after you use the coupon!
I use these websites and tips all year round, but they definitely come in more handy around the holidays when we have a ton of people to buy for! Let me know if you have any additional tips that you like to use!
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