Personal Finance and Investment

Introduction

These days shopping in “brick-and-mortar” shops looks so outmoded, dated, and tedious. Millions of people every year sit in their chairs wearing their pyjamas, while drinking coffee and shopping for groceries, clothes, gifts, household appliances or nearly anything else you can imagine.

One of the terrific benefits with online shopping is the various coupon, discount and money-back programs are available. If you click on a link, or use a discount coupon code, you can make substantial savings. Besides, you are getting get all the countless benefits of online shopping - no kids to drag through stores, no petrol expenses to drive there and back, and no crowds getting on your nerves.

So, once you appreciate the benefits to shop online, how can you find those savings? There are quite a few ways to save money while shopping online. We shall start with coupons.

Coupons

This is a rather standard method. Visit one of the rebate coupon websites (a few will be given below) and search for the store you want to shop in, or search by category, depending what you prefer. Make sure you hit “apply” or “claim” while entering the coupon code at the checkout.

If in the old days of online shopping, discount codes were abundant and generous (frequently you could get $10 off a $10 purchase including free shipping), these days decent coupon deals are difficult to find. Some stores hardly ever offer coupons, while others may offer free delivery on on orders of any amount. When you place an order, or even if you just came to do window-shopping this time, take the chance to register or sign up with the website for coupon newsletter. These direct coupon emails are frequently the best deals you could ever find.

Here are some first-rate coupon websites to help you started:

MyBargainBuddy.com - offers your compilation of excellent deals and coupon codes. A lot of the best deals require no coupon whatsoever, but if there’s a bargain that goes together with a coupon code, it’s even better.

DiscountCouponsOnline.co.uk - This websites offers the largest discount coupon and offers collection for all major UK online stores. The coupons and offers are daily updated and carefully looked after, and all expired deals are removed in time. So you can be sure that with this site you will find only current and 100%-valid discount coupons and offers.

MyCoupons.com — The most valuable feature of this website are the message boards, which are teeming with the voice of people saving money. First, explore the posts are marked as “sticky” in the beginning of each forum - there are often a number of useful links to printable coupons for favourite stores like Amazon and Toys R Us.

FatWallet.com - Many coupon codes are listed here together with alive message boards where you can find other great deals as well.
NB: If you are seeking a code for a particular store, don’t presume that if it’s not presented at one website, it doesn’t exist at all. Different sites offer different codes. Go to a few coupon websites before abandoning hope that a coupon code for that merchant does in fact exist.

Rebates

Here’s how one of the major online rebate programs works. Visit Ebates.com and open a free account. They offer a $5 bonus just for signing up, thus you automatically receive a free $5 off for your any purchases made through them. After that, when you decide to shop online, check out Ebates prior to going directly to any online store. Even if you found a discount coupon at another website, click on the store link at Ebates to make even more savings.

Suppose you are looking to buy a jacket from Kohls and you founda $10 off a $65 purchase. Fantastic! Now, with the coupon code in hand, go to Ebates and look for Kohls in the list of featured stores. Let’s say the store offers 2% money-back, so you click on the Kohls link at Ebates and make the purchase. Doing so, not only will you benefit from the discount code you used at the checkout, but in addition you get an extra 2% money-back from your purchase. Not bad, isn’t it?!. Here, Ebate can either send the money to your Paypal account or a cheque to your postal address.

Points

Not many people are aware of the different point programs on the market, but as you can obtain points without the need to buy anything, it’s worthwhile to find out about the points programs available.

Head to MyPoints.com and open an account. The website will send you emails with links (daily or, sometimes, even a few time a day). Every time you click on a link in the mail, you will automatically earn 5 points. However, if you sign up for an offer or purchase anything via that link, you can get additional hundreds or even thousands points per offer.

Although you can use those points for offline shopping as well, MyPoints is most efficient when shopping online. Basically, you get points for every link you click and every purchase you make. Majority of stores offer a particular number of points (on average - 2 to 5) per every dollar spent. As soon as you have collected at least 1,000 points, you can redeem them for gift certificates for groceries, clothing restaurants, petrol, travel etc.

Unfortunately, you can’t use both My Points and Ebates for the same purchase; i.e. if a store is featured through both websites, you’ll need to make a choice which offer is the best. However, as far as coupon codes from other suppliers are concerned, you can always try to combine them with deals from either the Ebates or My Points.