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Happy Friday friends! We have made it to the weekend and I am so excited to have a couple days to sleep in and just relax. Throughout the week I was brainstorming some more blog post ideas and while I was thinking of different routines and products to share I realized that before I even start sharing my “favs” of categories, I should probably provide some guidance on where/how I get to those products. It’s easy to pick up items here and there throughout the year but if I left myself to that method, I would be picking up things more here rather than there meaning like all the time. Since last year was the first full year that I worked full-time rather than working and being a college student, I could budget better for every month since I had a steady source of income. I am going to share with you some of my secrets to shopping sales and not feeling like you’re breaking the bank.
There are a few sales that I look forward to every year which I plan most of my purchases around. I shuffled back through my old receipts and order invoices from last year to create a simple list of the big sales I mainly shop. I wanted to provide this list to y’all for both planning purposes and for myself to be held accountable. Remember when I said I was still a little nervous to continue blogging? Well if I share these shopping events with you, I’m more inclined to keep engaged and on top of my content for all of you. Anyways, back to the fun stuff- shopping sales. I don’t know about you, but I hate that feeling of “oh this just came up” when I see a really good sale happening or a shopping event I’ve been wanting to place an order with but it just popped up to me. This might mean, I overspent on my fun money that month or I had to forgo purchasing that time. Usually it was the former of the two… who’s with me? I have stepped away from that mentality and gotten more organized with both my spend-plan, or budget if you would like to call it, and planning for specific sales. I could have made a huge list with all the retailers and sales that I would’ve liked to shop but I try to keep the big shopping orders to a minimum and I also like to spread them out through the year so I don’t feel overwhelmed. I chose my favourite sales to feature in this post where you will find my breakdown of details below❣️ I have linked all websites to the brands so you can shop around on each site.
- Sephora (spring) savings sale
Last year and most years before that the Sephora spring savings sale was in April and spanned a little over a week. This sale is opened up slowly by tier level or your Sephora status with ROUGE being allowed to shop the sale first, followed by VIB and then as an INSIDER. This is one of the best times for me to stock up on repurchases and try out any new products in time for summer. I typically wait to buy any high-ticket items until this sale opens since these discounts applied are the highest Sephora typically offers. Luxury items, hair tools, and perfumes are great items to put on your wishlist before the sale goes live. I anticipate it will be in April again of this year and I will link you to my previous blog post about this sale here for my thoughts on 2020’s sale.
- Gymshark summer/birthday sale
Do you even lift bro? All jokes aside, Gymshark is an athletic brand that I trust because of all of the high quality items I’ve purchased over the past couple years. This UK-based company is always releasing new designs but keeping the quality consistent. This is something that is hard to achieve in athletic wear but this company achieved it. I actually discovered this brand when I was living abroad in the U.K.. I still like to order from them since I have really grown accustom to their products and I have never had a problem with them shipping internationally. Gymshark typically only has two sales a year, their summer or birthday sale and then a Black Friday sale. Since Black Friday tends to be pretty hectic, I chose to cover their summer/birthday sale in this post. Last year, I was able to snag such good pieces and I think I had about 10 items in my order for less than $200. I highly recommend checking this brand out if you haven’t already. I anticipate their summer/birthday sale to be in late June or early July this year.
- Amazon Prime Day
Everyone knows Amazon… the question is does anyone know when their Prime Day sale is going to happen this year? It is typically in July but specifically last year due to COVID, it was pushed to October. I will be keeping an eye out for when they release the sale information this year. This is one of the best sales that Amazon has if you are a Prime member. I bought Prime as a college student a few years ago and even though the annual fee has increased since I’m no longer a student, I think the Prime membership is well worth it. For this sale, there are lightening deals, daily deals, and full prime deals… something for everyone to enjoy! Some of the supplements I take I buy from Amazon are included in the deals so I wait to stock up on those. There are also some great kitchen and electronic deals during this time. Once I have my own kitchen, I will definitely be placing a large order for some kitchen gadgets.
- Nordstrom Anniversary sale
Ahhh the Nordstrom Anniversary sale, otherwise known as the NSale. This is like the Super Bowl of shopping events…. as I had to explain to my boyfriend last year. It is typically in July but last year it was in August and it did not open to everyone right away like in years past. Instead they opened it up by tier system, similar to the Sephora sale I mentioned above. I assume that this is how it will be done again this year because it was a good way for them to accommodate all of the traffic on the website due to an increase of online shopping. Unfortunately, this also meant a lot of items sold out very quickly the first few days when only top tier shoppers were allowed to place orders with deals applied. Since this is the sale that Nordstrom introduces their fall line and many fall fashion finds, I do most of my shopping during this event. Most items are new and exclusive to the year before the season even starts at a discount so it’s a great sale to shop. Once I finish shopping this sale, I typically don’t have to do anymore fall or winter shipping for the remainder of the year. I’m so excited to cover the NSale this year as apart of my blog! Nordstrom is hands down top 3 places I like to shop!!
- Sephora (holiday) savings sale
The Sephora holiday savings sale is essentially the same type of sale as the spring one but in November instead of April. This is the perfect sale to stock up on previous purchases that may have run out through the year and to get some holiday shopping done. Sephora releases many gift sets during this sale at an excellent value so that shoppers are able to purchase items for their family and friends as gifts. I like to have a little list before I shop of the people I am planning on buying gifts for and then I look through various brands to see if I can find products that I think those gift recipients would like.
I know, information overload. I know this post is getting lengthy so right before I wrap up, I wanted to walk through very briefly how I plan to budget for these events. Since let’s face it when it comes down to shopping, many people just see $$$$💰. Now that I know ahead of time roughly when these shopping events are going to take place, I am able to plan better financially. There are two potential ways you could do this. For me this year, I have looked back at my old order invoices from last year’s various sales and roughly round those numbers up so I can have an idea of how much money I would spend on each sale for this year. Then I know where I can save a little more for one or the other. Once I have those numbers written down, I can either determine if I want to pull from that shopping sales events month to use money from that paycheck OR to set a certain amount aside every month and only use that saved money for that sale. This is the optimal way for me to shop this year since I already have shopped all these sales last year. Perhaps if you are unsure if you are even going to shop sales this year, you could set a realistic budget for shopping events this year and then split that among all 12 months (like a sinking fund) to accommodate for your purchases without overcommitting. For example, you could say you only want to spend $500 on any of these big sales for the whole year. If you divide $500 by 12 months that means roughly you would save $42 every month from your paycheck to and put it aside specifically to use for these various sales. This is a great starting method if you haven’t shopped these big sales before especially since it will also aid in not falling into the “oh this sale just came out of nowhere” trap we sometimes find ourselves in.
I hope all of this information was helpful! I want to share as much of my experience as I can with y’all so you don’t have to go through the expensive learning curve I did. Please reach out to me if you need any clarification or if you want to talk more in-depth about any of these shopping events/budgeting for them. I have also attached a blank sales schedule graphic above so that you can add in your own favourite retailer sales that might mean more to you than the ones I have listed. I can’t wait to go more in-depth about each one as the year progresses on. Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful relaxing weekend as we prepare for March next week💗
XOXO
–Sara💋
**All opinions are my own and websites are linked to retailers included in this post.
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Sara Elise 