Happy Holidays Internet! Bah Humbug!

It's the Internet Shopping Holiday today so I thought I should say a few words. Just a few though because I have to work, then go to school, and then try to get to bed before 1 am.

I am a little disappointed at how late all of my emails are arriving on this very special day. It's not like online retailers didn't know this was coming. Ebates started their double cash back promotion at 10 am PST. Who goes by PST? We in the east have been up for many hours at that point. I am also disappointed at the offers I am receiving. Mostly free shipping and the occasional 15% off is just not enough to get me excited and motivated to buy something I absolutely don't need.

So instead of whining about my utter disappointment in Cyber Monday thus far, I will share a few tips with you regarding getting the best bang for your buck online:

1) Join a loyalty program or two - MyPoints, Ebates and others have great benefits for shopping through them. Upromise let's you save money for college by either shopping through their site or registering your credit cards for qualifying offline purchases. Most of the airlines have a rewards site you can shop through to earn more miles. I have about 20,000 MyPoints points I am saving up to redeem for a lifetime supply of Starbucks cards!
2) Check for coupon/promo codes - you can go to Google and type in "(insert online retailer name) coupons" and you'll get a bunch of results. Or you can check some of these great coupon sites (they aren't pretty but they get the job done): Dealsea, CouponMountain, Dealtaker, and Fatwallet.
3) Sign up for emails - some merchants still give better deals to their subscriber base than to the general public so sign up for the email list and see what they offer.

GO CRAZY KIDS!!