Welcome back to my last post in my saving money series! I taught you how to coupon, how to save money on groceries, and how to save money on household products…The only thing left to show you is how to save money when buying clothes and makeup! This is one of my longest posts yet so grab a coffee or glass of wine, I have a lot of tips for you!
*aff links are used. For more information see my disclosure policy
For me, whenever I want to buy something, I always go through the laundry list of saving ideas that I have in my head. Can I get a gift card for that? Do I have enough money saved up on that survey site for this? Yes, I do take surveys because I am a poor college student and this blog isn't making me 20k a month like I want it too. Anyway, I always try my best to save as much money as possible and spend as little out of pocket that I can. I am itching to place an order for some new clothes and makeup, but I am required by mother bear to wait until my birthday! *aff links are used
If you haven’t already, you can download my budget and couponing printables here
Before I show you how to save money on clothes, I am going to first show you how to save money on makeup. By the way, if you plan to go on a shopping spree with all of the great tips you're going to learn in this post, please share it with me!
Believe it or not, with a few easy choices you can save tons on makeup and clothes. You just have to shop smart. Whether your shopping at ULTA, Sephora, or a CVS you will have this money saving thing down!
Save money at ULTA
For those of you who don’t know what ULTA is…Sorry, Vermont, it is a CVS on steroids but for all things makeup. You won’t find any diapers here! It has both drugstore and high-end beauty brands also known as prestige. Here they let you try the products before you buy them. It’s a really good way to make sure that you get what you are looking for before you buy it. Okay okay, I’m done blabbing. Here are my tips for saving money here:
Sign up for the rewards program
This is obviously a no-brainer. ULTA has one of my favorite rewards programs because it is so easy to earn points and so easy to use them. (I highly suggest hoarding them until you get 2,000 because you will then get the maximum point value and save over $121.
Look for 2x, 3x, and 4x points day
ULTA does a lot of Xx points days on any products as well as specific collections. If you wait for this, you’ll get closer to that 2,000 points without spending all that money!
You can use double the coupons - their normal coupon and then newspaper coupons
YOU CAN COUPON STACK HERE. Sorry I got a little excited. Because ULTA has drugstore products here, you can use printable and newspaper coupons at this store. They also always have a coupon out that is normally “$3.50 off a $15 purchase”. You can stack this with your other coupons to get maximum savings.
Don’t shop online if you don’t have too
This goes for Sephora too. If you do have to shop online, then make sure you can get free shipping. Most of the time, these stores will have more sales going on in-store versus online. That being said, you may only get one “Free gift with purchase” instead of four or five. This happened to me over the summer. I purchased a few things in store and ended up getting four free gifts with purchase. I didn’t even know that was possible. But because I hit a “free gift with $50 purchase” and a “free gift with a $30 It Cosmetics purchase” and a few others, I managed to get more than one free item.
Wait for a time when you can use your 20% prestige coupon
ULTA gives a prestige coupon that can be used on the high-end cosmetics in their store. Normally they give you a code for the store and a code online depending on where you are located so that everyone can use it. You can actually use this coupon twice. The coupon states it’s a one-time use coupon, valid either in-store or online. But the in-store code and the online code are different. So first, use the 10-digit code for your online purchase, then take the coupon in-store to use again. This way you can get double the savings and get more free gifts in store! They just gave me my first prestige coupon but it is only valid for a few days so make sure you pay attention to that!
Save money at SEPHORA
So, Vermont we do actually have this. (It’s in J.C Penny’s!) This is like the same that as ULTA but just a different name with a few different products and a different loyalty program. A lot of brands will launch specific collections with Sephora or ULTA and then you have to shop at both. Well, you don’t have too but you can. Here are my tips on how to save money at Sephora:
Take advantage of the fact that you can take home 3 samples per department This means that you are going to go into a Sephora tell the nice people there that you are looking to throw out all your old makeup and try some new stuff and get samples to figure out what you want to come back and buy. You can get samples of almost anything in the store. This would be really smart for you to do before going on vacation or a business trip. Their samples are a pretty decent size as well, so you get an enough for a few applications.
Never buy travel sized anything
If you can get free samples…why would you pay for travel sized items?
If you don’t like the products, you can return them. Even if you’ve used them.
This goes for ULTA too, if you don't like a product you've used, bring it back and they will accept it. You just have to have 75% of the product in the container
Save Money on Clothes:
ThredUP
I feel like I have preached ThredUP for the last two weeks straight through Her Campus Hofstra articles and now on my blog! ThredUP is a thrift shop on high-end steroids. You can find top brands like Express, Banana Republic, Calvin Klein and even Coach on this website. It has a super easy to use interface and will only show you clothes in your size (Which is great. They don’t get your hopes up for something you can’t buy!) If you sign up through my link here you will get $10 to spend on your first purchase. What they don’t tell you, is if you make your first purchase within 24 hours of signing up, you will also get an additional 15% off your order. This can amount to you getting most of your products for almost 97% off! You do have to spend $79 to get free shipping but it isn’t really needed. That would be a TON of clothes depending on how much each piece costs. Shipping only cost $5.99. Here is how I look at that: If you have $50 in your cart after all of the discounts, why would you spend another $29 to get $5.99 shipping…? You would end up spending way more money than what you needed for really nothing.
TJ Maxx
There are TJ Maxx’s everywhere and they do have some pretty good deals! For me, I feel as if they are a little expensive, however, if you really look you CAN find some amazing stuff here. TJ Maxx is not just good for finding clothes. You can also find some really discounted makeup here.
Clearance
You should always check the clearance rack wherever you are. Whether its Target, Walmart, American Eagle, Express, Home Depot…. Anywhere. You can not only find clothes here but also other things that may be helpful for you around the house that you can save money on.
Always shop online (when you can)
I know I am contradicting myself a little from the statement above, but when shopping for clothes, you can probably get a better sale online than in store. The reason for this is because clothing stores send out A LOT of coupons through emails and if it happens to be your birthday month, you can get an extra coupon. You can then stack that % or $ off coupon to the clearance rack online to save a ton of money! For your birthday, they normally give you a % or $ off anything in the store so you can use it on clearance. If it isn't your birthday, that’s okay! Wait for them to have a sale that is “an extra % off clearance”. Make sure you keep your eye out for this though because if you come to the party late, you won’t find anything you like or in your size!
Shop on Black Friday for expensive things like jackets, shoes and other items
If you are in the market for a new jacket, then you’re going to want to wait for Black Friday. The biggest and most amazing day of the sales period. I say wait because you can sometimes save up to 75% or more on an expensive item which otherwise you wouldn’t be able to save on. It is obviously amazing!
I hope these tips will treat you well. Feel free to let me know how they worked for you! Did you use them? Is there a favorite store of yours I missed? Maybe there's even a favorite tip you use that I missed! Let me know in the comments below!
As always, feel free to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to see what I am up to and to catch up on my latest news! You can also subscribe to my blog to be the first one to know about giveaways and other fun things!
1 Comment
|