The tricks to help you use more than one deal and get the biggest savings when you shop.
You all know I love getting the best value I possibly can for my money, and one of the best ways to do this is via deal stacking.
It’s a very simple concept. You first find one deal for what you’re buying, and then you get another deal on top, and hopefully another on top of that, maybe even more if you’re lucky.
Sadly, its not always so easy. Often discounts explicitly state “cannot be used with any other promotion”. Other times websites will only accept one discount code. And some of the other ways to stack rely on shopping at the right time in the right place. Luck plays a part too. In fact, some of the best deal stacks are down to glitches – online errors which have somehow slipped through the net.
So there’s certainly a bit of hunting around required, and trying different combinations to see what works. But it’s well worth it for the savings. And you can just stack one discount with cashback if you’re short on time.
It’s best though to see how stacking works in real life.
Some of my deal stacking savings
Quadruple discount on Amazon Echo speakers
You can save big on an Echo speaker by combining different Amazon offers. There are a few different promotions running right now and these four are a great stack (remember these deals are time sensitive so if you’re reading this a while after this article was published the deal stack will likely be over).
- 20% off Echo speakers for Amazon Student members (remember anyone can get this, even non students)
- £20 off for Prime members
- £10 credit when you top up in store by £40
- £5 off £25 spend when adding Amazon Assistant plugin
So with these deals combined it’s £36.99 rather than £89.99, saving 59%. If you’ve already done steps three and four you won’t be able to do them again, but even so it works out as £51.99. I didn’t already have two I’d be very tempted!
>> How to get these Amazon offers
Cinema tickets for a few quid
I hate paying more than a fiver for cinema tickets, and I’ve plenty of articles sharing my tricks to pay less. This is one of my faves though.
- Get a Meerket Movies membership for £1.50(ish) so you have two for one tickets on Tuesday or Wednesday.
- Use your NUS card to get a student price
- Go to an Odeon to get an extra 25% off student tickets (Monday to Thursday)
- Use a discounted Odeon gift card from Zeek to save another 10% (approx).
Excluding the cost of the NUS card and Meerkat Movies (I’m assuming you’ll use these again and again), this brings down the cost of two tickets at Odeon Tottenham Court Road from £30 to £7. That’s £3.50 a ticket – in Central London!
>> All the best cinema deals
Supermarket stacking at M&S
Another fave is to get higher quality Marks & Spencer food for a lot less. For example:
- Get a Dine in for Two for £10 deal
- Stock up on three for £10 offer on meat and fish
- Top up with reduced food or other promotions
- Use £5 off £25 spend on food Sparks loyalty card voucher (sent every couple of months).
- Pay with free £125 M&S gift card from bank switching.
Using a mix of these tricks and others it really lowers the bill, such as this £41.53 shop for £18.06.
Almost free t-shirts at Gap
This was one of those act fast or you’ll miss it deals I took advantage of last Black Friday
- Twin pack discount
- £5 off when you spend £10 deal code
- 40% off everything code
- 10% cashback at TopCashback
- £2.50 bonus when you spend £10 via TopCashback
The two t-shirts should have cost £19.90, but I ended up paying just £1.67.
Tricks to stack your deals
So you get the idea. To help you do the same, these are many of the money saving tricks I combine to bring down the prices I pay.
Compare prices
Look for the best price you can. Use comparison sites and check price history. You can often set price alerts too.
Don’t rule out higher prices listed in Google or comparison sites immediately. It’s worth clicking through to see if there’s an extra discount code you can add.
Wait! Shop when there is a sale or code
If you’re happy to wait a little it can be well worth it. For example, I know shops like M&S, Habitat, House of Fraser and Body Shop regularly have promotions giving 20% off or more. I’ll only shop there when these deals run.
Likewise, big events like Black Friday, Prime Day and the Christmas/New Year sales can (though don’t always) have the biggest discounts.
Stay informed
Sign up to retailers’ emails for flash sale alerts and you’ll be first to know about special offers and discounts. I also share some of my top picks each week in my newsletter, so do subscribe if you haven’t already.
Check for extras
As I shared in my recent podcast I’ve been picking up a number of appliances for our new kitchen, and one deal I’ve seen a lot is cashback by redemption – i.e. you claim money back from the manufacturer after purchase. Just don’t forget to do it!
Or it might be extras thrown in such as a free Blu-Ray with a new player and so on, or a discount if you buy more than one. Though it you don’t want these extras don’t pay more to get them.
Get an NUS card, even if you’re not a student
Lots of retailers and venues will give you a student discount if you have an NUS card, which anyone can get via certain online learning courses.
It’ll cost you around £4 for the course, and another £12 or so for the card, but it should be easy enough to cover the cost with your savings.
What’s great about it is you can often use this alongside other deals.
>> How to get an NUS card even if you’re not a student
Try more than one code
This won’t always work, but see if you can use more than one code, for example get free delivery on top of another deal.
These codes are often listed on the shop’s homepage, but you’ll also get them via newsletters and it’s worth a quick Google too. However, you might not be able to use them alongside cashback sites.
Try price matching
The lowest price isn’t always at the retailer you want to shop at, but it’s worth seeing if you can price match.
Why bother? Well, you might get free delivery, a longer guarantee on tech, or be able to combine with other discounts.
Use cashback sites
Once you’ve found where you’ll buy it, close the shop’s website down and go back to it via a cashback site to save more.
>> Not joined TopCashback or Quidco? Get a £10 bonus for signing up
Zeek and cashback payouts
One deal you can almost always combine with other offers is paying via gift card, and these are often available for less via Zeek. Here’s my full Zeek review
An extra stack is to boost your Zeek spending power by getting cashback paid out as Zeek credit. Quidco and TopCashback both offer 15% extra if you do this rather than a bank transfer.
Cashback credit card
One of my constant extra savings is to pay as often as I can with a cashback credit card. You can earn up to 5% back from purchases, on top of all the other savings – as long as the retailer takes American Express. If it doesn’t, you can get around this by using PayPal.