Home Exchange Vacation
Some websites charge, this one is free. You swap houses with someone else for free vacation lodging. It is safe as you are staying at their home at the same time and there is much interaction leading up to a swap. Looks like an adventure!
Fat Wallet
Along with thousands of coupons to help you save money and online forums that will enable you to steer clear of bad deals and find hidden gems, Fat Wallet also offers cashback shopping. That's right, you can get anywhere from 1 percent to 50 percent of your cash back on purchases you make through Fat Wallet and hundreds of retail partners.
While only a few stores offer cashback deals of 20 percent or more, there are many great cashback offers of 3 percent to 12 percent from top-tier retailers such as Nordstrom, Home Depot and Orvis.
www.fatwallet.com
eCoupons
Like many other coupon sites, eCoupons offers hundreds of online and printable coupons on everything from electronics to clothing. One of the things that sets eCoupons apart is its grocery coupon swap meet, which invites you to mail in unwanted, unexpired manufacturers' coupons to receive credit in your eCoupons account. You can then exchange those credits for grocery coupons you can actually use.
eCoupons also has lists of coupons for individual colleges and universities. Students can bookmark those pages and quickly find coupons they can use at stores on campus. Like Fat Wallet, eCoupons also offers cash back on purchases from a lot of outstanding retailers.
www.ecoupons.com
Prices and Coupons
Shopping on the Internet often goes like this: you spend a lot of time comparing prices online, and then go in search of coupons for the store with the best deal to see if you can lower the price of your purchase even more. It doesn't have to be that way. Prices and Coupons combines coupons and comparison shopping, automatically taking into account any applicable coupons and discount codes to give you the best possible deal every time. Perfect!
www.pricesandcoupons.com
Craigslist
Craigslist is the ultimate Internet success story. Founder Craig Newmark started the site as a hobby in 1995 as an email service that kept his friends informed about events and activities in San Francisco. From that humble beginning, Craigslist has grown into one of the most popular websites in the world, offering classified ads on 700 local sites in 70 countries. Users publish about 50 million new classifieds each month, offering information about everything from jobs to housing. It is a great place to make money by selling stuff you don't need anymore and to get things super cheep. I recommend it for furniture. With Hailey we were going to go to Ikea to get her a new bed but instead checked Craigslist first and found an Ikea bed never used still in box for 1/4 the price. Chaching!
You can find just about anything on Craigslist, often for less money than you would pay elsewhere.
www.craigslist.org
Zilok
Instead of buying something you may only need to use once or twice, why not rent? Zilok has been described as "Craigslist for rentals." It offers peer-to-peer renting for whatever you may need—power tools, camping gear, a disco ball for that special evening—from people or businesses just down the block or across town. Conversely, if you're interested in earning a little extra cash, you can offer some of your own belongings for rent.
Zilok, which started in France and Belgium and now operates in several countries, can also help you offset the cost of big-ticket items you do want to purchase. Rent out your new kayak a few times, and it could pay for itself in short order.
www.us.zilok.com
DealCatcher
DealCatcher bills itself as "an online community that helps shoppers save money and make educated purchases." Fair enough. The site offers online coupons, products, sales, reviews and rebates as well as a large and active forum community with thousands of members who provide information and answer questions.
The site offers a price comparison engine and a list of featured deals, some of which can save you hundreds of dollars on a single purchase, and is update regularly throughout the day.
www.dealcatcher.com
Groupon
If you live in a major metropolitan area in the U.S., chances are you can find Groupon deals. Businesses offer goods or services through Groupon that are usually 50 percent or more off the regular retail price, for example, $20 for $40 worth of food at a restaurant, half-off the cost of four guitar lessons, or 75% off teeth whitening.
The list of deals in each city changes daily and only lasts for 24 hours, and checking in daily is easy: at the Groupon site, through a free downloadable Groupon app on your smart phone, or by signing up for daily email, Twitter or Facebook feeds.
www.groupon.com
TechBargains
If you like technology and gadgets, TechBargains is a little slice of heaven. TechBargains is staffed by experts who do extensive hands-on research on technology products, sorting through all the hype and information, to "help you figure out what is best to buy, why it's best, and where to buy it at a good price."
TechBargains features a Low Price Search Engine to help you find the lowest prices, and coupons for most of the major online stores to save you even more. The site is continuously updated with the latest sales, bargains, coupons and deals. You can also subscribe to a free newsletter, or set up a Deal Alert to receive email whenever there's a new deal on a product that interests you.
www.techbargains.com
Retail Me Not
Saving money couldn't be easier than with Retail Me Not, which offers a huge database of online coupon codes as well as printable in-store coupons. Every coupon offered by Retail Me Not has a reliability score based on user feedback, which can save you time and frustration as well as money.
The site has a Firefox add-on that tells you how many coupons are currently available for the online store where you're shopping, and provides a link so you can retrieve and use those coupons before you check out.
Retail Me Not also has a printable coupon search engine that helps you locate and print manufacturers' coupons and local offers. Type in your zip code and something you want to buy, such as pizza or sporting goods, and the search engine will provide a list of printable in-store coupons for retailers in your area.
www.retailmenot.com/
Overwhelmed yet? I saved the best for last....
BillShrink
BillShrink is a free service that can help you save money on everyday expenses such as cell phone bills, credit card plans, gasoline, and cable or satellite television service. BillShrink quickly analyzes your bills and compares what you're paying to the best deals available. According to BillShrink, eight out of 10 consumers overpay on their credit cards. The service can help you lower your credit card interest rate and increase your earnings and rewards, or recommend the savings accounts and CDs with the best yield. And with BillShrink, the extra savings and earnings don't stop. Because credit card rates and options change constantly, BillShrink notifies you when card offers change so you can save even more. I do have to say though what we do is best in the area of credit cards, we don't use them!!! Cut them up! We go the Dave Ramsey way and try to pay cash and not buy anything until we have the money for it - what a novel idea;)
www.billshrink.com
Well good luck and happy shopping! I must say though, the best way I have always found to save money is... TO NOT GO OUT!
Great list, Tracy! We love Groupon around here. In fact, for Mike's birthday we got a deal on a wonderful, upscale local restaurant--$13 for $40 worth of food! I am going to have to check out Billshrink and Retail Me Not off of your list!
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