Ahh the holidays.
The season to be jolly, festive, warm annnd….the season to spend money!
For most people, the Winter season means Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas—Some of the most expensive days of the year!
And I don’t know about you, but I always used Black Friday and Cyber Monday as an excuse to shop for MYSELF—Not gifts.
With some proper guidance, anybody can use these “shopping holidays” to your advantage and get your Christmas shopping done faster and cheaper than ever.
There are 3 main sites that I use when shopping around online.
I have used these sites for online shopping for years and they are all well known.
Below I will share the methods and resources that I use to always get the best deal on almost everything I buy.
Slickdeals.net
Slickdeals.net is a website I found many years ago while looking through the comments of a blog.
This is basically a user generated deal website where members of the community (or SD’ers as they like to be called) post deals they find online and offline.
In here you will be find coupon codes, tips, reviews, info wiki’s and comments on most of the products that are listed.
The products themselves range from pretty much anything you can think of. If you are looking for something specific, you can always do a search and if you create an account, you can set alerts for anything you might be looking for and receive an email when somebody posts something matching your alert.
When browsing through SD, always make sure to read the comments just to notate if somebody might have had a bad experience with the seller or the product in general.
Posts that get enough thumbs up by users get promoted and pushed to the Front page of Slickdeals which is basically the homepage of the website.
The site is pretty straight forward and easy to navigate. Everything is well placed and you can customize user specific preference for how you want the website to look for you.
Ebay
The most popular bidding site is also one of the most popular market places.
Ebay is a great place to find secondhand new items. A lot of sellers list items that are brand new and sealed at a fraction of the cost.
Even big retail sellers sometimes discount items on Ebay more than their own sites. A good example is a laptop I purchased from Best Buy’s Ebay store for my sister in law. It was $20 cheaper than it was on BestBuy.com.
Ebay is really good for purchasing refurbished or open box items.
A lot of these items look practically new minus the original packaging.
Amazon
Fast shipping, great customer service and easy returns are just some of the reasons why Amazon is the most popular (and biggest) online retailer.
In order to really take advantage of the deals on Amazon, you need Prime.
Amazon Prime not only offers you free 2-day shipping on most orders, but some items have an exclusive price for prime member that is usually cheaper than anywhere else.
For those who don’t already have Prime and do not want to shell out the $99 per year for it, you can get Amazon prime for a month or two for a monthly cost of $12.99. The savings (and speed) on shipping alone will make it worthwhile.
Another thing I always do is make a wishlist on Amazon and add items that are on my gift list. Many sellers lower the prices even by a little around the holidays to increase their sales.
And finally, look for items sold by Amazon Warehouse Deals. They usually discount items that have been opened and returned but items that are described as “Like new” are usually brand new and have a small scratch or nick in the packaging.
I’ve seen worse damage done by people trying to unwrap their gifts.
Buy Refurbished/Opened Box
This tip only works in certain scenarios as I understand that not everybody wants to give “used” gifts, especially for the holidays.
Refurbished items will often look and function like a brand new product but might have a different package/box.
You can usually pick up great deals on refurbished items on both Ebay and Amazon. Sometimes, manufactures themselves will also offer refurbished at a discounted price.
Manufacture refurbished items are usually the ones to get.
There are several times when the items sold as refurbs are usually brand new items that might be overstock.
For example, I bought a refurbished DJI Phantom 3 from DJI’s ebay earlier this year for my birthday. The unit was brand new and the box was even shrink wrapped. I saved more than $100 vs buying it at Bestbuy.
**Bonus Amazon hack—You might notice certain items on Amazon shows “Add-on” item. This just means that there is a minimum order (usually $25) before you can “add-on” the item at the discounted price.
To get around the minimum order you can use Alexa to purchase add-on items at discounted prices. Simply download the Amazon music app and go into the Alexa tab, then speak a command such as—”Alexa, purchase the Pieface game“.
She will read you the price and ask you if you want to purchase. Easy-peasy.
Over 50% off!
Any tips that you use to save money on holiday shopping?
We’d love to hear them in the comments. After all….
Who doesn’t like to save money right?
