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By Erica
As I look towards the challenge of moving myself into a new apartment in the next month, I see the daunting project of buying myself furniture (I don’t think any of my three bookshelves will make a comfortable bed). In order to not go over budget and to get the most out of my furniture, I plan to do some frugal online shopping. How can one be frugal in an interweb full of enticing impulse buys? These tips can help us out.
For starters, a safety alert:
Make sure you keep yourself and your information safe when shopping on the web. AllclearID has some tips for you to stay safe while shopping online.
Money Saving Awesomeness
1. Use coupon websites: There are many different places on the web that put tons of coupon codes all in one place for you to find. Retailmenot has tons of codes for different online retailers; they even have an app so you can check up on deals whenever!
2. Be loyal: Become a fan on Facebook, sign up for emails, and do anything else you can to connect with your favorite stores. They love giving coupons and deals to their loyal customers. Hate all those emails in your inbox? Consider making a second email account for this purpose that you can check when you need to buy something, or as Listen to Lena suggests, just create a folder in your inbox and set all emails from the retailers email address to go directly to that folder. That way you can check it when you want, and not be tempted into impulse shopping by deals that pop in your main inbox.
3. …but not too loyal: Be flexible, and follow the deals. Different retailers and sellers will have deals like free shipping on a rolling basis, but not all at the same time. If you are looking for something in particular (and not impulse buying as is tempting on the internet), then be willing to look in different places than your usual retailer who doesn’t have a deal at the moment.
4. Go secondhand: When getting a new gadget, or any bigger ticket item, do the frugal thing and look secondhand-online. Ebay is great for phones,cameras, and electronics, and craigslist is great for furniture and bikes.
Something very dangerous about online shopping is how easy impulse shopping is. If you keep an eye out, you can use the deals to help you with the things you need instead of letting them lure you to things you don’t need. Make a goal to ImpulseSave 10% of every dollar that you spend online, and control your spending habits!
Do you have any super saving online tips? Is online shopping your vice? We want to hear about it!
