3 ways to save money on online shopping – before, during and after checkout

1. Capital One Shopping: Find deals before checkout

With social distancing still in effect, you've probably been doing a lot more shopping online lately. But the big online retailers don't always have the best deals, and they’re counting on you to prioritize saving time over saving money.

Fortunately, a free service called Capital One Shopping can help you save both.

When you’re browsing a big site like Amazon, the Capital One Shopping browser extension will instantly price-check the item on other online retailers across the internet. It even takes taxes and shipping costs into account.

Then, when you’re ready to check out, it will automatically try to apply coupon codes to your order that have worked for its other users in the past.

Alternatively, if you prefer to do your shopping in person, you can use the mobile app to quickly check whether an item is available for a better price somewhere else.

Capital One Shopping helped people save over $160 million in the last year. With just a few clicks, you can start saving, too.

Kiss your credit card debt goodbye

Millions of Americans are struggling to crawl out of debt in the face of record-high interest rates. A personal loan offers lower interest rates and fixed payments, making it a smart choice to consolidate high-interest credit card debt. It helps save money, simplifies payments, and accelerates debt payoff. Credible is a free online service that shows you the best lending options to pay off your credit card debt fast — and save a ton in interest.

Explore better rates

2. Honey: Find promo codes at checkout

If you’re a fan of old-school coupon-clipping, this free browser extension is for you. Honey searches over 30,000 websites to find promo codes and automatically applies them to your cart when you checkout online.

For Amazon shoppers (and who isn’t one?), Honey can also help you search for better prices at other stores. And now that they’re part of the PayPal family, Honey users can benefit from the free PayPal Rewards program. Users can earn points on eligible purchases, which can then be used toward cash back or store gift cards.

Another neat feature is Honey’s price tracker, Droplist. If you have eyes on an item at a particular site, Droplist will alert you when they detect a price drop.

Honey’s website claims it saves online shoppers an average annual savings of $126, and an average discount of almost 18%.

3. Fetch: Earn rewards after checkout

There's a good chance that groceries are one of your biggest regular expenses, and a solid cash-back rewards app like Fetch will ensure that you get a bit of money back every time you stock up.

The beauty of the app Fetch is that it’s so simple to use. Just snap a photo of your receipt and you’ll automatically earn rewards points.

Once you’ve collected enough points, you can exchange them for gift cards from your favorite stores and brands, including Apple, Macy’s and T.J. Maxx.

Fetch works at virtually any grocery store, as well as many convenience stores, liquor stores and big-box retailers.

And don’t worry if you’ve been buying most of your groceries online lately due to the pandemic. You can connect Fetch to your email or Amazon account and earn points on all of your digital receipts as well.

Fetch is totally free to use, and it only takes two minutes to sign up.