Shopback Australia ran a competition offering a $250 Cashback Prize for the entry that offered the best money saving tips based on creative merit and the usefulness of the tip.
With over 400 comments on the post we are going to read through every single one of the tips and put together our top 10 money saving tips from the entries on the post.
Firstly, let’s talk about the winning entry judged by Shopback Australia as the most creative and useful money saving tip.
Organise a group present and then use Shopback to save a little bit of your own $$ input
This is a great tip and not only can you use this tip for a group present you can use it for group holidays or traveling.
Shopback offer usually between 5-10% back on Booking.com bookings through the app which means if you were booking for a group of 10 for the week and the accommodation was $8,000 you could potentially get $400-$800 cashback from using the app.
We have used this tip many times but rather than just using the cashback to save money on our own personal input of the purchase we divide the total savings amongst the group once the cashback has been confirmed.
If you are planning on using this tip for a group present or group accommodation and you aren’t going to share the savings we recommend not telling the rest of the group about your savings as it can have mixed responses and some will feel entitled to the money you saved so keep that in mind.
The runners up money saving tip as judged by Shopback Australia
Using the Woolies gift cards for an automatic 5% off groceries also helps to budget my weekly food bill with the pre purchased gift card.
There are many different ways you can get the 5% off the Woolworths gift cards so use that saving to your advantage. If your weekly shopping bill is $150 that’s $7.50 saving per week or $30 per month that you can use towards other things.
The second runners up entry in the money saving tips competition
I always do thorough research of all options in different stores And sign up to different loyalty programs! And of course USING SHOPBACK TO SAVE MORE MONEY!
Doing your research is one of the most important aspects of any financial decision not just saving money.
It’s also true there are some great loyal programs out there if you’re willing to take advantage of them.
This particular entry represented a lot of similar entries in this competition where the tips were ‘Use Shopback to save money’, ‘use promo codes to save money’ and a lot of different variations of the same answer.
We went through all 400 comments on the post and picked the money saving tips we though were the most creative and useful for people looking to save some extra dollars.
And here are our picks
Top 10 Money Saving Tips From The Shopback Community
Our favourite tip came from Erin
1. Freezeweeks – not allowed to spend any money for a week… have to use up all the food in the pantry. Saves a bucketload plus uses up all the food which would otherwise just sit there for years!!
What a great idea!
Now if you are going to implement this idea you definitely don’t have to take it to the extremes that Erin has gone to but if you look in your cupboard and see all these food products that have just been sitting there, challenge yourself to have a week where you try to utilise as much in your cupboard that you already have available to you.
It could be the pasta in the back corner or frozen meat in the freezer whatever it is see if you can implement this tip in some form.
2. Installing the ShopBack plugin on my work computer so whenever I need to shop for work or for my boss I easily know which sites can get cash back from.
This is perfect if you are buying a lot of stuff at work and you have the opportunity to make some extra money on the side with the Shopback App at no loss at all to the business it make sense.
This also works well for software and programs you need at work, if there is a big program the office was looking at getting or something they needed for their website you could sign up as an affiliate first and then buy it for the business through your affiliate link.
3. I give myself ‘X’ amount of dollars to spend each fortnight… no matter what sales pop up… and once I’ve spent that money, I have to wait until next fortnight to internet shop again.
This is a great tip from Maddie.
It is essentially setting yourself a budget, you are saving money by spending less.
Having a budget or at least knowing what your income vs expenses are is an important step in saving money.
4. A tip I have is putting all $2 coins in a 1.25L coke bottle!! Once full, it adds up to nearly $1900! & of course Shopback
This is a creative twist on the money jar saving technique, filling a coke bottle with $2 coins.
So many people ended up trying this that it actually became a known as the $2 Coke Bottle Challenge
With a cashless society quickly taking over there might only be a short period of time left in our lives to enjoy little challenges like these.
5. Subscribe to newsletter/email updates for the website you’re planning to purchase from first as I often receive a discount code in the confirmation email
Welcome bonuses and incentives to make your first purchase are quite common. This is a great tip from Lauren especially if you are looking to save every last dollar on your purchases and get the best possible price.
6. Turn on everyday round up on your bank app. I have saved $400 by doing this in the last 5 months. I don’t notice it ‘missing’ from my account. Easiest way to save for a shopaholic like myself.
Great insight Filipa, if you shop regularly some bank apps have the round up feature you can use as a compulsory for of saving. It won’t save you money on the actual purchase itself but will round your purchase up to the nearest dollar and put the left overs into another savings account.
If you purchase something that’s $86.72 it’s going to round it up to $87 and put the $0.28 into a savings account. All these little micro amounts start adding up quickly if you are making a lot of transactions.
7. If you want to buy something, wait 24 hours and if you still want it after that time, then buy it. Don’t impulse buy!
Understanding the psychology of your buying habits is one of the best pieces of advice. When we buy things, often we get caught up in the impulse of buying and later regret buying that particular thing or after 24 hours wondering if you really needed it.
Delaying that instant gratification and dopamine hit of a buying something knew can give you a clearer mind when buying and you give into impulse buys a lot more.
This is happens all the time when a business has a ‘sale’ and people buy the item for $50 because it’s usually $100. But did you really save $50 on the sale item or did you just spend $50 that you wouldn’t have spent if you didn’t give into an impulse buy.
8. You’re a couple of dollars away from free shipping? You can actually save money by adding something small to your cart that reaches the target.
This 100% works and it’s something we have tried. We needed some new batteries for some our cameras but we were $2 off saving on the $15 dollars shipping so we added a $3 sticker to the order and saved the $15 on shipping.
In many ecommerce stores you can sort the products by price lowest to highest. Buying the lowest price item to get you over the free shipping threshold can save you some money.
Tips 9 & 10 are the tips were talked about earlier that Shopback chose as their winner and runner up. Reviewing all the entries these two definitely should be in our top 10 so we are going to add them to this list.
Reading through all these entries its easy to see which answers stand out and which ones have some creativeness that might put them in a position to win a competition giveaway like this one.
If your answer looks like everyone else’s the chances of you winning are slim to none.
Using any of these 10 tips is going to help you save a bit of money.
Thanks to Shopback Australia for running this promotion we love seeing businesses that give back to their communities and Shopback Australia is really good at it.
If you’re not currently using Shopback and you would like to save some money on your purchases use this $5 referral bonus for a little extra dollars.