Dec 3rd, 2008
Combining Discounts
Not quite coupon stacking, but I try to do whatever I can to combine discounts. For instance, if I want something from Apple, I may use my educational discount in combination with a ShopDiscover 5% reward to get my final cost down as low as possible, or combine a sale item on Amazon with the Amazon Visa for increased rewards and/or extended warranty.
It’s not enough for me to just find a sale price. I’ll also try and figure out the best reward I’ll get as well as the longest amount of time between when I actually have to give cash out of my pocket. This will often involve card timing (paying for something with a credit card around the day that the card closes for the month, giving me another few weeks to come up with the cash) and/or ShopDiscover or similar credit card offers to maximize rewards. Even when I was in a difficult situation with renting a car this past week, I was able to use ShopDiscover combined with Hotwire.com to get a 5% cash back reward.
Discounts are one of your last weapons to use in the whole system of frugality. You’re already at the point you know you need to spend some money, you’ve tried to find the best price you can for something that’ll meet your requirements, and now you’re figuring out if there’s any last things that can happen to make your purchase the least expensive and/or most rewarding you can. Research whatever discounts you can just before putting your money down; it can help in small amounts, but small amounts can really help!
Oh, I’m like that too. I have to fight off instant gratification of running out and buying something or researching online to see how much I could save but having to wait a week for my item to arrive. have you heard of Fatwallet.com or ebates.com? They are great!
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