Thursday, September 8, 2011

Because I'm also cheap: the guide to group buying sites

I love eating in new restaurants. Unfortunately, I'd go broke if I ate out as much as I wanted. Luckily, I have found a nice workaround that has allowed me to double, if not triple, my restaurant budget.

By now, pretty much everyone has heard of group buying sites such as LivingSocial or Groupon. The concept behind the sites is this: you pay a small amount, such as $20, to get a larger amount, say $40 or so, in credit with a local merchant. These blow deals Restaurant.com out of the water. There's no minimum purchase to get the credit, and usually few or no restrictions on how to use your certificate.

So, none of this is news, so why I am telling you? Because I want to share a couple of my strategies for getting even more out of my discount:

  1. Buy your certificate through a site like SwagBucks. Swagbucks gives back an amount of points that turns out to be about $2 back. Sadly, they no longer offer Groupon deals there, but, you can still buy EverMore and HomeRun.
  2. Buy your certificate through eBay. They pay out 5% in eBay bucks. EBay bucks, of course, can only be used on eBay. However, I shop there enough that I always wind up using my bucks.
  3. Buy through eBates. They usually offer 3% back, but sometimes double to 6%.
  4. Make sure you buy using a rewards card. My rewards card of choice is my PayPal debit card, where I get 1.5% cash back each month.
  5. Think you won't use a deal before it expires? Resell it on Lifesta. On popular deals, you can even make a profit.

2 comments:

  1. Wow that's pretty amazing...I definitely will have to try that. Thanks for tell us about this :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great tips for saving money on these deals.

    ReplyDelete