The holiday shopping season has arrived! Aside from decorating your home and embracing the spirit of Christmas, the holidays also mean that you’re going to spend a lot of cash. But wait, before you burn your wallet in the coming weeks, let me tell you more about being a frugal holiday shopper.
Whenever I hear the Christmas bells ring, in some weird way, I also hear Destiny’s Child’s song— Bills, Bills, Bills. That’s because, for one, the bills won’t stop coming in during the holiday shopping season, which means that you have to set aside money for the bills and then set aside another budget for your holiday shopping. And when I say holiday shopping, there’s shopping for yourself (because everything’s on sale!) and then shopping for presents. But girl, you don’t have to feel bad about treating yourself to a holiday shopping spree, you can be a smart holiday shopper and I’ll tell you the secrets!
Read, Set, Shop! Be The Master Of Frugal Holiday Shopping With These 9 Tips
There is NO shame in being a frugal shopper, especially during holiday shopping. Why buy something a $100 pricier if you can get it for a lot cheaper? Christmas is the time to also pamper yourself and give gifts to your loved ones. After all, Christmas is all about sharing. Lucky for you, I’m here to save your bank account or at least, help you save a good amount of cash. Are you ready to become a frugal holiday shopper now? Let’s do this!
1. Use Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime is an absolutely ah-mazing service. I use it all year round, but especially around this time of year.
There are thousands of items that qualify for Prime FREE 2-day shipping, perfect for all you last-minute shoppers. It’s $10 a month, which is completely worth it if you even order two things a month from Amazon. Before I became a Prime member, I was only ordering a few things a month from Amazon, but you’ll become addicted fast once you discover all of the great discounts & free shipping Prime offers to you.
The service also offers “add-on items” which are very discounted, but you can only get that price if you buy $25 or more of merchandise from the site. So order your friends & families gifts all at once to take advantage of the add-on items price points!
2. Download the Honey Browser Extension
I only recently started using Honey, and oh boy is it awesome!
It’s a convenient little weirdly-named browser extension that searches any site you’re on for coupon codes! If you’re on a supported site (basically any site that sells merchandise), the little honey icon will turn orange.
All you have to do is click the icon & press either the “coupon” button or “sales” button. The sales button tells you what promotional sales the site is running at the time, and the coupon button will give you coupon codes. This is probably the simplest way to save money while doing your online shopping.
3. Make Retailmenot.com your best friend
Retail Me Not is like the OG Honey, but the other way around. Instead of a browser extension, you’re going to do your coupon business in a website. We love coupons and you can really save tons of money using these things.
So how do you use the website to your advantage? All you have to do it type in the site you’re shopping at and hopefully lots of coupon codes will appear. These are all submitted by fellow shoppers, so some work and some don’t. Trial & error will get you the best deal!
4. Shop on Black Friday/Cyber Monday
This one might be obvious and a bit scary, but trust me on this. You WILL save the most money by waiting until the weekend after Thanksgiving to get the majority of your shopping done. As you may very well know, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can get really chaotic and that’s because everyone wants to save huge money! I’ve done it before and it will really test your patience. But at the end of the day, the frugal holiday shopper in me thinks it is worth it!
5. Do your research!
I get it, you’re busy. But taking the time to check different stores’ prices before buying can really save you money. You wouldn’t buy a plane ticket without shopping around first, right? Treat your Christmas shopping like this. Look around and keep looking if you’re still not satisfied with the prices you see. With frugality comes extreme persistence…so research wisely!
6. ALWAYS ask about price matches
Most stores will price match places like Amazon or Walmart, all you have to do is ask. Best Buy is extremely good at this, they usually even look up Amazon prices for you so you don’t have to. Comparing prices can really do you good because obviously, not every store prices the same item exactly. So if you’re keen on saving a few dollars, do price matching.
7. Sign up for store newsletters
Subscribing to newsletters is really a great way to keep tabs on the latest offers and discounts from a specific store. Although sometimes, your Inbox can get pretty crowded with the promotional emails, you can still benefit from the promos for your holiday shopping. Every store will be sending out flyers of current sales, coupon codes this holiday season, so you really don’t want to miss out! Anyhow, you can unsubscribe on December 26th since you’ll practically need a shopping hiatus anyway.
8. Don’t fall for the gift card trap
If you’re doing your shopping in-store, most sales associates will ask if you need any gift cards when you’re checking out. It’s easy to say “sure, I’ll take one for $20” thinking you’ll gift it to someone you may have forgotten about. But realistically, you won’t really need it for anyone. Plus, I personally feel like I spend less when gifting actual items rather than a gift card. I over estimate on gift cards, and when I start shopping for someone, I realize I can get a lot of little gifts they will enjoy for less than what I would spend on a gift card.
9. Wrap the gifts
Please don’t pay someone to wrap your gifts and PLEASE don’t spend over $3 on any form of gift wrap. Sure, Target has some adorable boxes & wrapping papers, but are your friends & family really going to care what you wrap their gifts in? No, they are not. Get plain wrapping paper, doodle on it, use stamps or add some festive stickers. It’s cheap and more personable. Also, make sure to pick up boxes at any clothing retailer. Any store will give them out free of charge if you’re buying something.
Excited for your holiday shopping weekend? Here’s a video from Youtuber AlishaMarieVlogs to quench your shopping thirst!
So ladies, have I brought out the frugal holiday shopper in you? Yes? Awesome! Consider it a new challenge this holiday season–challenge yourself as to how much you can save from all the holiday shopping when you follow these useful tips. Enjoy!
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Becky Kung @ Velvet & Vino says
Hi there, really cute post and great tips. Please note, I don’t mind that you’ve used my image for your post and thank you for linking back to my site, however you have titled my site wrong in the link – we are called “Velvet & Vino”, not “All Dubai”. Thank you so much for making that correction. 🙂
Becky Kung @ Velvet & Vino says
Hi there, really cute post and great tips. Please note, I don’t mind that you’ve used my image for your post and thank you for linking back to my site, however you have titled my site wrong in the link – we are called “Velvet & Vino”, not “All Dubai”. Thank you so much for making that correction. 🙂
Elle Jones says
Hi Becky!
Thank you so much for letting us know. We apologize for this, we have edited the name of your site. 🙂