Making the Most of Discount Opportunities

As we approach April, there are going to be more articles related to pressing time-sensitive issues—things like completing your taxes, saving for coming months, and getting ready for summer. For now, however, we’re going to continue with the theme of one of the financial resolutions for the New Year: saving more money.

Saving money can be tough when it means cutting down on your purchases, so thankfully there are other ways to save your money as well. Perhaps the easiest is using different discount opportunities available online, either to students or the general public, to buy things that you were going to buy anyway.

Of course, following through on this recommendation is not always simple; that’s where this article comes in handy.

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One common mistake that people encounter when they go to purchase something online is that they forget to input a discount code or to access the retailer’s website from a certain discount link. I’ve had this happen to me quite a few times, and while I’ve occasionally been able to get the discount honored by producing the receipt, it’s much easier to just apply the discount from the beginning.

How can you remember to use discount codes when they’re available? An easy option is to consolidate the number of discount providers you use so that you don’t have to comb through a bunch of different websites to find out if you can, in fact, save money on the purchase. Instead, you can just quickly scan the core one or two that you use, and then you can be on your way.

The two discount providers that I most recommend for this purpose are Ebates and Student Advantage. I’ve written about Ebates before, but it’s essentially a platform to earn cashback on most purchases you make online. You also get a pretty nice check from them in the mail when you make your first purchase—I’ve done this and it actually works. As long as the lure of cashback doesn’t cause you to spend a lot more than you otherwise would have, you’re in a good position to be better off financially with Ebates.

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Student Advantage is a little different in that it is geared toward students and the types of purchases that they tend to make—books, clothing, school supplies—rather than those of the general population. It’s also different from Ebates in that there’s a membership fee to sign-up, but the resulting discounts are much larger. Plus, if you ever travel on Amtrak or purchase even one relatively big-ticket item through Student Advantage, you can earn back the sign-up fee very, very quickly.

It probably took me about a month to earn back the sign-up fee, but now I have the card for the next four years, and it continues to save me money. If you sign-up through here, you get a free $10 gift card, so it's even better.

Another good technique is to bookmark the different lists of discounts that are available to you through your various programs. Although it might seem intuitive, you would be surprised by how long it took me to realize I didn’t have to navigate through a series of websites and links every time I wanted to check for a purchase. Streamlining the process has made it much easier to earn the discounts that I’m entitled to without having to figure out how to reach a webpage, and it’s definitely saved me money in cases where I otherwise might have given up.

Discount websites seem pretty universally appealing, especially when they’re free, but people often fail to capitalize on them. Instead, they’ve wasted their time and given the website operator some of their personal information without much gain. By choosing fewer rather than more of these sites, and by keeping better tabs on those in which you do participate, you can overcome this trap and really start saving money when you shop online. There are few things that are truly free when it comes to e-commerce and different electronic purchases, but if you’re going to make a purchase anyway, it makes sense to get the best deal on the product that you possibly can.