3 Quick Money Saving Tips for Holiday Shopping

Before any online purchase, check coupon and rebate sites

Black Friday is quickly approaching and apps like Rakuten, Fetch, or the cash back portal on your favorite credit card (mine is Capital One) have incredible deals! These sites have deals with companies that provide an extra rebate if you click through their app before making your purchase, saving you a percentage on money you planned to spend anyway.

If you’ve never used Rakuten before, use my link to sign up and get an additional $40 after you earn your first rebate. I always check this site before making a purchase on Booking.com, HostelWorld, Viator, or paying my yearly subscription to Nord VPN (at the time I posted this, the rebate on Rakuten was 95%!). If you’re an online clothes shopper, there’s a good chance your favorite stores are on there as well.

Use a browser extension like Honey to automatically search for coupons and discounts while shopping online.

Never let your subscriptions auto-renew

Okay, if you’re a daily Netflix binger, then pay for your Netflix! No shame here. But if you signed up for a service to do a specific thing, and you’re no longer doing it? Drop that subscription!

I use Libby (a free library app) for most of my reading, but I’ve recently connected with a lot of indie authors who publish primarily on Kindle Unlimited! For $11.99 a month, I can read a bunch of books at no additional cost, and directly support authors I love!

But I was racking up a lot of Libby holds that I kept pushing back to read titles on KU. So when my month was up, I canceled my subscription, and got to reading all the titles I had available on Libby. I’m 100% going to get my subscription back, but it’s been over 2 weeks now so I saved 50% by just canceling my account and re-subscribing when I’m ready to active use it again. 

If you sign up for a free trial where you had to give payment information, most can be turned off auto-renew immediately without losing access to your free trial benefits. This should be the first thing you do after signing up. If you choose to continue the subscription later, you can always go back and turn it back on, but then it will be a conscious choice and not an oversight costing you money.

Remember values-based spending

Are you buying gifts for people just to check off a box or seem like a nice person?

One of the most annoying parts of working at a public school was the constant expectation that I would be buying gifts or donating money to people. Including ones I barely knew! Birthdays, retirements, baby showers, engagement parties, Secretary’s Day, Boss’s Day (seriously?!), etc. etc. If it’s easier to just donate $5 and get on with your life, then so be it, but don’t let yourself feel bullied into buying expensive gifts or donating large amounts to acquaintances when you’re on a budget.

Similarly, at home, Christmas would always feel so stressful for me. Despite my sister and I being fully grown adults, there’s still all this pressure to buy gifts for the family that they probably don’t even want. A few years ago, I switched to paying for experiences, and I’ve never looked back.

I value spending time with my family more than I do putting boxes under a tree. We’ve gone kayaking, ziplining, solved an escape room together, and all of those moments are now memories we share rather than material things they didn’t need and might never look at again.

Black Friday deals are coming up. Look for discounts, search Groupon, and reach out to operators near you. Rather than loading your loved ones down with expensive stuff this year, see if you can use your money to make new memories and have new experiences.

Try axe-throwing, a sip and paint night (you can also DIY this for an even cheaper experience), or laser tag. Bowling, mini-golf, the local zoo or wildlife sanctuary. Is there somewhere within an hour or two of your home that you’ve always meant to visit, but never had the time? Plan it as a holiday surprise for your loved ones!

Gift giving is better when it makes everyone feel good. Don’t go into debt or fall behind in your goals for a holiday. The people who love you will understand.

And if you have one… make sure you’re putting all those purchases on a travel rewards credit card that’s earning you points towards free flights and hotels!