Want to be Runway Ready at Rock-Bottom Prices?
I am 20 years old, a mom, and on a budget, but does that mean I have to dress like a mom on a budget? Heck No! To a woman my age sometimes retail therapy is the only escape but I only do it at affordable prices. Here are a few tips to get you runway ready at rock-bottom prices.
My first tip: Find reward programs that offer some type of incentive for an action from you. Here are a few I have found, keep in mind there are many more but these are the ones I use quite often.
- RecycleBank.com- This program offers reward points for taking their short quizzes on how to “green” your life. Questions are generally one sentence long and your answers are selected from A-D options, Super Easy Right?! Those earned Reward points can be redeemed for an abundance of different coupons from K-Mart, to Sears, to even Macy’s.
- NoMoreRack- This program offers a couple of good things for you and your friends. When you sign up you automatically receive a FREE $10 Credit which you can use on their daily deals, which in themselves are awesome. Also with this program if you get your friends to sign up and confirm their email address you can earn some hot freebies from a hair straightener to a 46” Plasma screen T.V.
- Have and Iphone or IPad2? Download the “ShopKick” app. With this app you can scan products at your everyday grocery store and earn “Kicks” that can then be redeemed for Gift Cards. I have earned restaurant.com gift cards and American Eagle gift cards to help get my retail therapy fix. If you download the app use the code “hermes7404.” This code will get you 50 FREE kicks to start you off, but hurry because that code and only be used within 24 hours of downloading the app.
My Second Tip: Go to all of the websites of your favorite stores and sign-up! You wouldn’t believe how many coupons and gift cards you will receive for your birthday. On my birthday, I received a FREE $15 Gift Card to Express, $10 in FREE JC Penny Cash that can be used on clearance, so if I shop smart I can get plenty of product for cheap or free! Also for my birthday I received a Gift Card to Victoria Secret for $10, that got me one of their items up by the registers for free and much more!
My Third Tip: Before ANY shopping trips always check the sites/facebook pages of the stores you plan to shop at, also check your emails for money saving offers or coupons. Stores like Old Navy, which happens to be my favorite store, quite frequently releases money saving coupons. $5 off $25 and $10 off $50 are the types of coupons you can expect to see from them. Or money-saving offers such as the one they had for 4th of July weekend, where you bring in personal care items to donate to the soldiers and get an EXTRA 10% off your entire order. Since we are all are up to our ears in personal care items from couponing it’s a good thing I didn’t miss out on that offer. J Also shop the clearance with the offers/coupons and you can really clean up. Often you can completely miss coupon or money saving offer for lack of attention.
My last tip: Always shop the clearance section. Often times I hear complaints of “nothing” being left in the clearance section. “Nothing” being nothing good or of good sizes, but these are the people who walk and at a glance make a decision that there is nothing there that they like. My suggestion is to really dig in the clearance section. Leave no size unchecked, no fallen piece of clothing unpicked up, and no price unscanned. Scanning the price of a clearance item can, a lot of times, prove to be a decision making action. Say you go to scan an item that you really like but the tag says $10, you then take it to scan and it comes up $1.86, I think it’s highly likely that you would purchase that item under those conditions.
Getting the rock-bottom prices of your favorite retailers comes with a little trial and error. Every store is different and every promotion is different. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, ask your friends, ask your fellow deal diva’s, even ask the store employees how a coupon or promotion works. And always have confidence in what your doing, there’s nothing worse then getting to the register and attempting a checkout that is halted by confusion of how a deal works and having to make split decisions. Split decisions can come at high costs and in this economy I’m not willing to pay even a dollar over what I think I should.
