Tips to save you money

My mum called me a month ago about Christmas presents for the kids. She starts when the first buds of spring appear – well before Mariah Carey starts her regular rotation on supermarket radios.

I was always a last-minute, Christmas Eve, Westfield-dash kind of guy until I started writing about money-saving and realised that mum and her fellow early bird Christmas shoppers are not only saving a lot of last-minute stress but potentially saving a lot of cash too.

I like to divide Christmas shoppers into “mugs” and “smugs”. The mugs do it all at the 11th hour in bricks-and-mortar stores. The smugs, these days, exploit a series of big online sales and a range of new online tools throughout November to have it all done by December 1. Then they go to the beach.

We’re now halfway through this year’s online sales season. Don’t worry, there are plenty of bargains left to be had. Click Frenzy (an Australian version) was last week, as was Singles Day (originally from China). Black Friday (a US import) is next Friday, followed by Cyber Monday (also from the US). But in reality, they now run for weeks all around the world and blend into one another, making most of November an excellent time to buy gifts.

We’re expected to spend $6.2 billion over the four-day Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend alone, according to the Australian Retailers Association and research firm Roy Morgan.

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In fact, there are so many deals that the real challenge is now navigating through it all without wasting hours online and overspending. So, here’s my strategy for how to cash in on the sale season, without getting sucked in:

1. Make a list. Who’s been naughty? Who’s been nice? Who’s getting what, and who’s getting diddly squat? This will keep you focused on the goal, which is to save on your Christmas shopping, not to meander the aisles of the internet making a series of impulse buys.
2. Don’t browse. You’ll be there all day. There are so many deals that browsing is like putting your mouth over a fire hose. The goal of big online sales is to get you browsing. Once you’re browsing, you’re like a deer in headlights and liable to end up buying stuff you don’t want or need.
3. Instead of browsing, use Google Shopping. You search for an item on your list and this site shows you who’s selling it and for how much. These results should include the big sale discounts as they’re pulled straight from the retailer’s website. My search for “Sherrin leather AFL replica training ball”, for example, listed results ranging from $49.99 to $75.90.
4. Get cashback too, if you can. It’s often possible to stack sale discounts with cashback offers from the new breed of cashback websites. For example, last week Bonds was offering 40 per cent off and Cashrewards was paying an extra 20 per cent cashback if you visited Bonds via their site. So those socks and undies you were buying for dad could have cost less than half price.

Other useful tools include Getprice.com.au, a price comparison website out of the UK, and CamelCamelCamel, a site that tracks the price history of a product on Amazon so that you can see whether the current price is cheaper than in the past or vice versa (particularly useful for knowing if a sale price is, in fact, a bargain). Amazon, eBay, Kogan & Catch all have dedicated daily deals pages if you are determined to browse.