5 Hacks To Save Money On Online Purchases
There was once a time when most of us would read catalogs and fliers to see what the deals were for the week at brick-and-mortar stores, and we had to wait until the store close to us was finally selling something we wanted for cheaper. These days, though, you can simply browse what you’re looking for and find an endless list of sellers with varying prices for that one product.
Now, online shopping has become so common that e-commerce sales are around $5 trillion per year and it’s only going to keep going up. Are you really getting the best deal when you’re adding your hard-earned money to that pool, though? Let’s take a look at online shopping and five hacks that you can use to save money when making online purchases.
Sign Up For Mailing Lists
The first thing that you should do after this is to create an email account that you use solely for online shopping. Use the new email address to sign up for newsletters from all of the websites you shop with the most, and even the online stores that you’ve at least considered in the past. You’ll end up getting a lot of coupons sent to you via email and this will end up giving you the best price on many products.
Some of these businesses will have rewards programs that will save you even more money. Right around your birthday, you’ll also likely get a coupon or a free item that makes things even sweeter. Just try to avoid using the email address that you’re more likely to use for work or other personal uses as these mailing lists can fill up your inbox and cause you to miss an important message.
Make More E-Mail Accounts
Now that you have your email account for receiving newsletters, don’t stop making email accounts whenever you visit a new site. It seems that almost every e-commerce site has a discount that only applies to those who are registering a new e-mail address.
Take advantage of this whenever you can and create e-mail addresses until your fingers become numb from typing. Just make sure to keep a spreadsheet that has all of the email addresses that you create, list what websites they have been used on, and use a password manager to help you balance all of your login info.
Price Alerts
Thankfully there are more apps, extensions, and programs being introduced that have an algorithm to detect when prices are at their lowest. Even Google uses an extension of its own through Chrome that will tell you that an opportunity to save money has arisen. This has been helpful in recent years as it helps to get around some of the marketing that companies have done for generations.
When a company says something along the lines of “Our lowest price ever,” the algorithms from these apps can tell whether that’s fact or fiction. You can also see charts that show what time of month or year prices tend to drop, allowing you to cash in on the best deals possible instead of having to write it all by hand.
Go Incognito
Incognito mode is used by many people that don’t want to leave a browsing history on their computer for various reasons we won’t get into. However, the most beneficial reason to use incognito mode is for shopping. This is because e-commerce sites can use cookies to see how often you’re looking for a particular item. If you’re buying an item frequently, they can mark up the price because they assume you’ll buy it no matter what.
When you browse in incognito mode, however, these sites won’t know your history as cookies aren’t enabled. This allows you to avoid dynamic and history-based pricing throughout the internet. While it’s a myth that it can save you big money on flights, it can still save you a few dollars here and there on your regular shopping.
Pay With Credit Cards
If you have a credit card, there’s a good chance that you have a cashback or other reward option through that card. When you’re pulling out your wallet to finalize shopping, leave the debit card behind. Instead, use the credit card so that you get the rewards, then instantly pay off your credit card balance using your debit.
It will end up costing you the same amount of money either way, but if you use your credit card, you’re at least maximizing the benefits. Credit card companies also offer the best chargeback systems for any form of payment and have the strongest fraud protection. Simply put, if you can pay your bill in full each month, you don’t accrue interest and get all of the added bonuses.