Bargain Shopping: 10 Ways To Find Great Deals For Christmas and The Rest of The Year

Any one who reads this blog regularly knows that I am a gigantic nerd, but what you may not know about me is that I consider myself a top tier bargain hunter. I save hundreds of dollars every month with my bargain hunting techniques. With the economy doing poorly I thought it was time to write a post outlining what I think are the 10 rules to follow to save money not just on Christmas gifts but on other purchases throughout the year.

Kipp’s 10 Commandments of Bargain Shopping

1. Never Pay Full Price for Anything – If you can’t follow this rule than you might as well stop reading this post now and come back to my blog another day. Everything else in the post is useless if you are “ok” paying full retail price for your purchases.

2. Know How Much Things Cost – To ensure that you don’t pay full price for gifts, food, or any other purchases you need to first understand how much the items you regularly buy and items that you consider major purchases cost. Once you have an understanding of the price range these items normally fall into then you can use the next 8 rules to save yourself a lot of money.

3. Free Shipping + No Tax = 10% discount – I am sure it is not a surprise to you that I am a fan of online shopping. I think you can normally find items online cheaper than you can at traditional retail stores because online merchants have lower operating costs. If you can make a purchase from a merchant online or catalog that will give you free shipping and does not charge sales tax then you have given yourself a 10% discount after you combine the savings of not paying tax and not spending gas money to buy the item in a retail store.

4. Know What You are Looking For – Impulse buying is expensive. If you know what you are looking for than you know how much it costs normally, so you can ensure you are not paying to much for it. If you just grab something and throw it in your cart, odds are that you are paying too much. You may think I am crazy but it takes me about 30-90 days to make a major purchase because of the research and price watching that goes into it.

5. Know Where to Look – I have a pretty in depth system for finding the best deals especially when it comes to online deals. I thought I would share some of my favorite sites with you. My top current favorite deal site is Deal News, but I also use Slick Deals, Deal Taker, Bargainist and Woot!.

6. Buy Nothing Without a Coupon – I am serious about this one, if you take the time to look you will find that there is a coupon available for almost every item you regularly purchase. For everyday food and personal care items check your Sunday paper for coupons and then see which stores in your area double or triple them for even bigger savings. For online purchases just do a quick search on Google or Yahoo for “INSERT MERCHANT SITE NAME Coupon Code” and you will get some good options that way. You can also call a company’s toll free number and request coupons directly from them.

7. Do a Purchase Audit – We all have some things that we by regularly that are little vices, one of mine is music. I admit I use to buy some from iTunes because it was so easy, but recently I have started buying mp3s for much cheaper on Amazon MP3 which imports the downloads directly into iTunes for me. So just as easy but the music is easily half the price in many cases than it is on iTunes, that type of savings adds up quickly. Look at items that you by regularly and see if their is a way to purchase them for less.

8. Refurbished and Open Box Are Worth It – Many of my major household items are refurbished or open box items. Sometimes from retailers like Smart Bargains or Amazon you can score really good deals on refurbished items for less than half of retail price. I once bought a $150 coffee maker for $22 from Smart Bargains and it works perfectly 2 years later. Membership clubs like Costco and Sam’s Club often have good deals on returned items but some stores like Best Buy don’t mark them down enough to make it worth buying instead of a new item.

9. Used Items = Big Savings – The fact is when you buy an item it instantly starts dropping in value unless it is a collectible. Why not let some one else take the depreciation hit and buy some of your items used. I never buy new sporting equipment: skis, golf clubs and these types of goods are great purchases second hand. You can sometimes find good deals on Ebay but I actually do searches on Craigslist for items I am looking for and then subscribe to the RSS feed for those search results to ensure I don’t miss a good deal. I like craigslist especially for big items, becasue you don’t have to pay high shipping cost that sellers on eBay charge.

10. Patience Saves – I am a nerd and I love to buy the newest technology, but it is an absolutely stupid thing to do. If you can wait 6 – 12 months to buy most technology items then you can save 20-50% off the initial price. Look at the iPhone $600 at release then a year later $200 that is a big savings for waiting.

I hope my tips were helpful. Have a great holiday season!