Yes, I’m super late to the game here, but I honestly just made this up this morning because I was getting so overwhelmed with all the Black Friday sales and what to buy where… My head was spinning. I don’t buy a lot of high-end, high-tech, expensive stuff, but what I do buy I want to get the best deal on.
So here’s an example of how I got my act together. I’ve used an item I helped a friend with so as not to give away any of Santa’s plans. I found this item on sale many places all for about the same price, but was having a hard time figuring out which was actually the best because I use multiple discounts and cash back sites – I needed to just write it all out.
The first column is the item, then the store and price. I’m also a fan of Ebates and Shop.com because they both give cash back and you can use both at the same time rather than having to choose, so the next 2 columns are the cash back percentage for Ebates and Shop.com, respectively. I left a column for extra discounts, like loyalty cards, coupons, etc. then did the math. Make sure you account for coupons and discounts before figuring out your cash back because you’ll only get cash back on what you actually spend.
Obviously, one store came out way ahead in this example. But I can also see a clear 2nd choice – and it’s a store I don’t typically shop at – just in case the lowest price store is sold out.
Here’s the printable!
Comparison Shopping Calculation Sheet
What are your comparison shopping tips? Share them in the comments?
