Sometimes, all of us need to shop online, and with a little research you can save quite a lot. I was listening to a great personal finance podcast from www.money-guy.com done by Brian Preston where he gave great tips on saving money on online purchases. The moral of the story is that you should compare prices to find the best deal and then buy it in a way that gives you some free money back. Below is what you should do based on the podcast recommendations and my own research.
1. Compare prices -
- Search for products and check prices on Froogle.com
- Compare prices using Pricegrabber.com
Froogle.com is Google’s product search engine and Pricegrabber.com is another great product-comparison site.
2. Get FREE money back -
- Use www.bing.com
Bing is Microsoft’s search engine and a direct response to Google. In order to win customers and get market share Microsoft is giving you FREE MONEY just for using their search engine. It’s very easy to use and a totally legal to game the system. Once you know the product you want look for it on Bing under the shopping tab, see which store offers it, click on the store’s link and as the site loads you’ll see a box saying how big of a percent of your purchase will be set aside into an account associated with a hotmail.com or live.com account. You can save anywhere from 4% up to 20% or more. You will have to sign up for a cashback account with Bing. Once you accumulate at least $5 in savings on purchases you’ve made and that you haven’t returned for about 2 months Microsoft will deposit the money in your PayPal account. Follow this link to learn about the program:www.bing.com/shopping/pages/howtouse.aspx
*****Until the end of August (or when it runs out of money for this promotion) Bing.com is offering double saving days where the amount of cashback offered by most stores will be doubled. Just in time for back to school.
- Check out www.retailmenot.com
You can search for available coupons on websites you shop at for additional money off your purchase. I really like that the coupons are arranged by how well they have worked for others.
Remember the keyboard I bought for my computer? Here’s what I did. I used the product search engines listed above to find the type of keyboard I wanted. I then went to www.bing.com to see which stores offered a good cashback. I bought the keyboard with 8% cashback that will be deposited to my PayPal account. That made me a happy man.
I hope you enjoyed this post and definitely let me know of more cool ways to save money.