With less than 45 days before Christmas, major online-selling platforms are doubling down on discounts and promotions.
It’s the time of the year when people are in the mood to buy gifts or are stocking up their pantry for the upcoming Holidays.
While conventional wisdom will say that most store sales are aimed to make you spend more than your budget, you can take advantage of these platform sales to get real savings – and not the feel-good manufactured type so you end up spending more.
To get you guys on the right track we’ve listed 6 budget saving tips that will make sure you get the best savings possible.
Get all your essentials first
Save up on commute, traffic and potentially exposing yourself to the virus when you shop in store by buying all your essentials online.
It’s a whole lot easier to spend a few minutes browsing through various Official Shop pages than to go through countless grocery stalls looking for that one item you need.
The great thing about gunning for essentials when you go online shopping is that you already have the daily/weekly/monthly budget for it.
You know how much soap, shampoo, or toothpaste you consume and more or less have a regular list of what you need to buy.
This alone will help you mitigate excessive overspending.
During double-digit sales, daily essentials like personal care, diapers, even food, joins in on the platform sale and will get a huge discount (anywhere from 35-60%).
Buy in bulk and get more discounts
These online platforms reward you for buying more.
So, if you can, buy in bulk and not only will you save money for now, but you also won’t have to spend for essentials for a good period of time.
Take for example a skin-rejuvenating Apricot Scrub from St. Ives. If you check it on the online stores, the price is already discounted for the 11.11 sale but drops further if you buy a set of three bottles which gives you additional savings of around 40 pesos.
Plus, the three-bottle set could last you about three months before you need to refill.
These additional set discounts can be seen in various categories as well like food and drinks.
Make sure to purchase within the first 2 hours of the sale period
The first two hours of any double-digit platform sale is the most crucial, so brands tend to pack a lot of additional freebies, gifts, deals and flash sales from 12 midnight to 2 am.
It’s best to take advantage of these just so you can have either more savings or a lot of extra freebies (that you may or may not need).
Don’t forget to get all the discount vouchers possible
Don’t forget to check the various vouchers scattered along the Official Brand pages and the main shopping platform page as well.
In most cases the vouchers stack so you can have, for example, a free shipping voucher care of the platform, and an additional discount voucher care of the brand when you hit certain shopping conditions (i.e. get extra Php 100 off for every Php 1500 purchase).
Check every nook and cranny on these sites to truly maximize your savings.
Get additional discounts from your bank, payment partners and third-party providers
Shopping platforms aren’t the only ones giving discounts.
You can also get discounts from your bank, credit card and cashless payment apps like PayMaya.
There are instances when credit cards would give additional discount voucher codes you can use on top of all the discount vouchers already used on the platform.
For the ultimate shopper, you can take advantage of various shop-back apps like, well, ShopBack wherein you can get cashback points whenever you shop on these platforms.
The idea is to signup on ShopBack, use it as your way into the shopping platforms like Lazada and Shopee, and check out normally. You’ll eventually get cash credited back to you depending on what you purchase.
Additionally, the shopping platforms themselves offer cashback incentives if you use their own cashless payment wallets.
So best to read up on which e-wallet platform best suits your needs.
Account for everything
Lastly, to make sure that you spent within your means, you must create a logbook of sorts – even just a digital one.
List everything down so you can monitor how much you’ve spent and saved.
It can be as simple as an excel sheet or download various free expense tracking apps.
If you can constantly see where your money is going, you are already doing a much better job at being on top of your finances than a large portion of the spending populace.
To fully enjoy your online shopping experience, make sure that your internet connection is strong and stable like the ever-reliable Smart 5G Network.
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