A Personal finance blog for saving money and earning more and thus having a better life
Black Friday is just around the corner and most consumers are beyond excited to be able to get a hold of unique discounts and perhaps score some expensive items in a really good deal.
Discounts might sound extremely appealing when you are not swimming in cash, but it is especially when you are in a financially precarious position that you should be extra careful with how you spend your money.
You must be using paper coupons for achieving discounts for the last few decades. The advancements of time and technology are now saving you the tedious task of cutting paper coupons and staying updated on valid coupons.
When Coupons are Helpful, When They are Not
The choice is up to you whether you’d like to spend your entire paycheck over your grocery every month or spend a few hours searching for coupons that ensure savings for your household.
Lately, we have been shopping big ticket items only online. We recently had a baby and almost all the nursery furniture we got were bought online. We found that things are cheaper online than at retail stores. Not only furniture but, electronics and even clothes as well.
But not always you get things cheaper online. There are some exceptions. As a policy, we don’t buy food items or any perishable item online. We also don’t buy clothes online. We prefer to check them out in the fitting room before buying. so we do look for deals and discounts at the retailers as well.
Nowadays, nearly as many people have a credit card as own a mobile phone, and whether we are purchasing online or from a physical store we will probably be paying with a card of some sort. Whilst cards are often a safer alternative than carrying cash, using your card to shop online carries its own risks.
If our card or wallet gets stolen we notice immediately and can notify our banks to cancel them and stop the further fraudulent activity. However on the internet, our information can get into the wrong hands without us even knowing it. As recent cases have shown, this can also happen with reputable websites who have highly secure systems, thus it’s important that everyone checks their credit card statement regularly.
Being able to shop online is the best thing that ever happened to the Internet. Forget about Facebook or Google for a moment and picture the wonderful benefits you get shopping in your favorite online store. You know they are many, right? But let’s look at the ten most amazing benefits online shopping gives us.
We go shopping occasionally mainly because there’s nothing else to do and we live 5 mins to an outlet mall. So, mostly our in-store shopping are mainly window shopping, except for groceries and home depot stuff. We are recent homeowners so we like to spend at least a few hours every week at Home Depot. Because that’s what you got to do when you buy home!
In order to be a smart couponer, it used to take lots of determination, a scissor and magazine subscriptions and more and more. Online coupons have substantially reduced lots of burden of couponers by providing them an opportunity to make the easy shift. Things are definitely moving fast towards the enhanced facilities which need us all to make a fine move as well. People (families) who are cutting coupons since ages may feel a little attached to organizing activities. But, this change is better in so many ways. Foremost, if you will take a chance, you will notice the major time-saving benefit, not so away from you. Other benefits like the variety of discounts, shipping ease and access to unlimited options are solid as well.
If you are more often on the deal hunt, you might have already tried online coupons and if you have not, you probably will in near future. In UK and US people are shifting to digitalized coupons with their own set of strong reasons. It may be series of apps and more for the graph of digital couponers rise higher than 53million, according to credible internet research.
Marketers in near future are going to go digitalize to reach their target segments and massive numbers of couponers are going to follow. But who will have more benefit out of it? The balance is critical and in the hands of both couponers and businesses.
These days, it seems there’s no end to what’s available to buy in supermarkets. A wide range of household provisions has always been available, but in recent years, the range has been increased dramatically to include services too, such as life insurance, auto insurance, car breakdown services, Internet access and many other services. This greater freedom of choice brings with it more temptations to spend money, so it’s important to be cost-conscious. There are great savings to be made in supermarkets; you just need to be aware of them.
Add to it the McDonald, Subways and Pizza huts right beside the supermarket entrance. If you give it a pass while entering, you may not pass it on your way out. So it’s not only the products you buy but also the products and services you are made to pay for, goes to your super market shopping list.
I have a quick and simple way to determine if you are over spending at your grocer.
Bloggers are always fed constantly with various survey reports and studies. being a personal finance bloggers, I do get daily dose of emails containing press releases and market trends. Last week I received an email from a well known market research firm, about the latest trend in consumer buying experience. It reported declining over the counter sell and increasing online sells over the Black Friday weekend.
Spending at physical stores declined by 2.9 percent compared to the same four-day period last year beginning with Thanksgiving day. Whereas Cyber Monday sales soared 21 percent over last year. Also, this year’s Cyber Monday was the biggest online shopping event to date.
Not a long back posted how online coupons increased our spending. Since then we have learnt to use coupon in correct way. One example, every Friday night we go out for dinner, sometimes just two of us, sometimes with our friends. We like to try different cuisines and restaurants. Today we combined saving money and experimentation by having an account with restaurant.com, where we search for great deals on great restaurants, every Friday.
Also, recently I had to go for car servicing, regular price in our area for that model was $40+. Upon searching in our mail box I found a 10% off coupon which reduced my servicing expense.
Most of us use coupons. Coupons help us spend less. We previously posted How to Effectively use Vouchers and Coupons here. Sometimes the use of coupons does increase spending. Basically, manufacturers and distributors use a coupon to lure customers into shopping. I wrote about this in the article How Online Coupons Increased our Spending. This post covers the same subject with a different perspective.
The little dollars you see in discount coupons may not be something much to talk about; it might seem so on a cursory look. The truth is otherwise. Once a coupon is exhausted shoppers tend to forget about it altogether. To understand how your family has benefitted from using coupons, you need to keep track of the savings. You should take time off and get your numbers right.