I'm not really sure if this belongs here, but I wanted to share how my family buys "fancy stuff". Although we live frugally in some ways, we like to splurge on high end stuff sometimes. The key is to get the high end stuff for ~50% off the original price so it doesn't break the bank.
Let's say I'm shopping for a product called "x". I went to one of those websites that has "daily deals". It's basically a list of user-submitted deals from all over the web. I scrolled down until I found a website that sells x. Let's call the website example.com. The deal I found was "20% off clearance items". I could copy and paste the discount code to use at checkout.
When I went to example.com I found a few different product options. An "affordable" x was $100 originally, a "mid-range" x was $160 and an expensive x was $350. Each of these products were on clearance. Because of the deals website, there would be an additional 20% off the clearance price.
Next, I went to online gift card retailors. I could find gift cards for example.com that were between 5% and 20% off. I found one on eBay that was heavily discounted (from a reliable seller).
Next, I would use an eBay gift card that I purchased using a rewards credit card. This would net me an additional 5% off. For example I have a credit card that gives me 5% cash back at pharmacies this quarter. So I could go to a pharmacy and buy a $100 eBay gift card and get $5 back.
Lastly, I would place the order through a credit card marketplace. I simply log into my credit card account and go to their online marketplace and type in example.com. In this case it's an additional 5% cashback.
Below is a table showing the step-by-step cost comparison for the different price points, depending on how much work you want to put in to save money. Obviously, the more you spend and the more expensive the items are, the bigger the savings.
| How You Buy It | Discount | Affordable | Mid-Range | Expensive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No effort | original price | $100.00 | $160.00 | $350.00 |
| Buy it on sale | sale price | $69.97 | $129.97 | $279.97 |
| Buy it using discount code | 20% off | $55.98 | $103.98 | $223.98 |
| Buy it using gift card | 10% off | $50.38 | $93.58 | $201.58 |
| Buy gift card using rewards card | 5% off | $47.86 | $88.90 | $191.50 |
| Buy it via credit card marketplace | 5% off | $45.47 | $84.46 | $181.93 |
Yeah, it can be a pain to shop like this, but if you shop online a lot it'll help. And of course you don't have to do all the steps. I just included all the steps that I've used before to show how low the prices can get.
May 13, 2017 at 12:35AM
