Cyber Monday can be a great opportunity to save some serious money on any gifts you want to buy for your loved ones (or yourself!).
But selling on Cyber Monday is only half the battle. You can regularly save 30% or more on your online purchases with just a bit of a strategy beyond what stores offer. Combine these tricks with Cyber Monday and you’ll save a mind-boggling amount of money.
Let’s take a look at 10 things you can do to maximize your savings this coming Cyber Monday.
1. Subscribe to the store’s newsletter
No one likes getting thousands of emails in their inbox, but if you subscribe to mailing lists or newsletters from stores you frequent and value, chances are you’ll be rewarded with lots of Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and discounts – or on at least considering what discounts you can expect (and on what products).
2. Always shop online
If online shopping portals are no longer a frequent component of your online shopping, your savings account may be hundreds (or thousands!) of dollars less than it should be.
Online shopping portals are so easy to use that it’s mind-boggling that they even exist. You can earn tons of cashback and bonus points for simply going to a merchant’s website through a third-party link. The shopping experience is 100% the same.
There are many dozens of trading portals to choose from. To find the best payout for a particular store, use the Cashback Monitor. This will give you the top 10 or 20 portals with the highest return rates, saving you the hassle of sifting through each portal manually.
One of my favorite trading portals is Rakuten. This is because you can earn either cashback or Amex Membership Rewards points. I usually get at least 2 cents per Amex point when I use them for travel, so I prefer to earn them.
Screenshot courtesy of Rakuten
You can find anything through the trade portal. Just be aware of two pitfalls when using them:
- If you buy “cash equivalents” (such as vouchers and gift cards), your purchase will almost never earn bonus money or rewards.
- Adding coupons/promo codes at checkout can sometimes cause the shopping portal to stop tracking your purchase. The trading portal should write down its rules in small print.
Also, it’s often better to list the product you’re looking for rather than the store. This is because the same product is probably sold in several different stores with different cashback offers.
Take a look at the messenger bag below: it’s made by Fry, so the first thing you should do is buy it from Fry. But Neiman Marcus is selling it too, which is currently offering a whopping 5% cashback higher than what you get by going to Fry.
Screenshot courtesy of Rakuten
3. Sign up for store loyalty programs
Have you ever noticed how many stores have their own loyalty program? Almost everything. Unless you’re a fan of online shopping, you probably won’t bother to sign up for things like this. After all, it’s hardly worth the time to earn $4.07 in rewards for a store you’ll never return to.
But Cyber Monday could be the time to opt out of loyalty programs. Sometimes you can find big return bonuses, and even if you don’t, Cyber Monday is a big spending day. You can get a significant cashback if you make expensive purchases such as electronics, home appliances, etc.
4. Find the best prices with a comparison site
One of the best Cyber Monday strategies to ensure you find the right prices is to compare them online. While many companies claim to offer the “best deals” on a particular item, they are rarely the only ones running sales, and they usually don’t disclose their competitors’ prices.
You are probably at least heard sites like Capital One Shopping and Honey are services that help you find the lowest prices online for what you’re looking for.
The reason these sites are so effective is because they also offer browser extensions that follow you while you shop online and alert you when it finds a better deal for what you are looking for. something else.
My favorite browser extension is Capital One Shopping. I have saved over $800 since I started using it a few years ago.
Screenshot courtesy of Capital One.
To be honest, these savings include a small portion of the money I made through Capital One’s own trading portal, but that figure is basically the money the site saved me by redirecting me to another site that sells the item I want for less.
Read our full Capital One Shopping review.
5. Find coupons and promo codes
Sites like RetailMeNot and Slickdeals are great sources of promo codes that you can use at checkout. Not to mention Capital One Shopping, the browser extension is great for automatically running verified discount codes.
Some retailers also allow you to “stack” coupons. In other words, you can use more than one coupon in the same offer. Look for coupons from both the manufacturer of the product and the store you’re shopping at and combine them to get the best deal.
Read more: Best Websites to Find Coupons and Deals Online
6. Find the best deals before Monday
To make sure you find the best prices for everything you need, it’s a good idea to check the websites. a week before Cyber Monday. Most companies will announce their prices well in advance. In this way, you can minimize the time required for research.
7. Use credit card bonus categories
The best rewards credit cards come with strong bonus tiers that can sometimes offer 5% or more refunds on certain purchases. If you can incorporate this bonus into your Cyber Monday strategy, it might make sense.
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For example, Chase Freedom Flex.CM currently offers a 5% refund on spinning bonus categories up to $1,500 on spending each quarter (then 1%) upon activation. Current Revolving Bonus Categories (until December 31, 2022):
Both of them can play an important role in Cyber Monday. Walmart has long been an integral part of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday extravaganza – and they sell just about everything. Even better is PayPal, which has become a ubiquitous way to pay for online purchases. If a website shows PayPal as a payment method at checkout (and most do), you’ll get 5% back if you choose this option and choose to pay with Chase Freedom Flex.CM.
Read more: Credit cards with the best rewards
8. Use Credit Card “Offers”
Some banks issue their own types of discounts and coupons in the form of targeted loans and bonus rewards. For example:
- Chase cards have “chase offers”.
- American Express cards have “Amex Deals”
- Citi Cards have “Citi Merchant Offers”.
You can find them in your online account. If you see something you like, you will have to manually add it to your card and you will automatically receive a credit statement after you complete the offer.
For example, you might see an offer for $100 off $500 spent at Macy’s. That’s incentive enough to keep Macy’s deals on the radar. After spending $500, you will receive $100 on your card within a few days.
Here’s an example of how much I’ve saved over the past year with Amex offers on the American Express Platinum Card. Offers change frequently and you can easily save money on the purchases you make every day if you check back regularly.
Screenshot courtesy of American Express.
All American Express cards are eligible for Amex offers. However, different cards receive different offers. Amex Platinum is more like a travel credit card, so it gets more travel-focused offers.
Read more: Should I buy Amex cards?
9. Get a Credit Card Welcome Bonus
Everywhere you look, absolutely insane welcome bonuses are available right now. Perhaps the most effective way to recoup the cost of your purchases is to use your expenses to secure an initial offer.
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On the Citi Secure website
For example, the Citi Premier® Card currently has a limited-time bonus offer of 80,000 ThankYou® Points after you spend $4,000 within the first three months of opening an account. It costs up to $800 if you use it to travel through the Citi ThankYou Visitor Center (or you can redeem your points for a variety of gift cards). This card has an annual fee of $95but if you want to get something expensive this Cyber Monday and can spend the minimum amount of money, the rewards can more than make up for it.
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Another option with no annual fee is the Citi Rewards+® Card, which offers 20,000 reward points after you spend $1,500 within the first three months. It costs over $300 in travel if redeemed through thankyou.com. Although this is a smaller bonus, you will also receive 15 months of 0% APR on these new purchases, and then 17.24% – 27.24% (variable) Apr.
If you were to open one of these cards, you could shop on Cyber Monday with the card to meet most of the minimum spend requirements. You can then channel all of your daily purchases through the card during the remainder of the three-month window to meet the remaining requirements.
Read more: The best bonus offers when registering a credit card
10. Open a 0% APR credit card for large purchases.
You should never spend beyond your means. But if you want something really expensive and know for sure that you can pay it off in about a year, it might be worth opening a credit card with a zero interest rate per annum.
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Cards with an annual interest rate of 0% are a clutch for anyone who would otherwise keep a balance from month to month. Many bonus credit cards charge 22% or more per annum, meaning the interest can be swallowed up in no time. The best 0% interest rate credit cards will give you 15 to 21 interest-free months, giving you plenty of time to pay off (or at least pay off) your balance.
For example, Pursuit of Unlimited Freedom® comes with 0% APR at the start for 15 months on both purchases and balance transfers (then standard 17.99% – 26.74% Variable April).
Read more: Best credit cards 0% per annum
Summary
Before you spend a dime on Cyber Monday, it’s a good idea to have a plan and a budget. This can help ensure you don’t spend more than you bargained for and miss out on great deals.
There are a few tricks you can use to save money on Cyber Monday and online shopping in general. If the stars align, you will be able to use four or five of these strategies at the same time. in the same time. For example:
- You found an Amex offer for a store
- This store falls under the bonus category of your Amex card.
- You go to the store through the online shopping portal
- You use a coupon code at checkout
Happy hunting this Cyber Monday!