Urban Outfitters – SnipSnap

The $5 Sundress: Your Budget-Friendly Spring Wardrobe

February 27, 2013

Hooray! We’re in the last few days of February. Which means March is almost here. Which means it’s almost spring! (Spring starts March 20th, FYI.) Scarves, hats: I love you, but I’m ready to move on. I’m done with the darkness and the snow. I’m ready for long, warm nights and patio parties. I’m dying for barbeque.

If you want to dress frugally, the first thing you have to change about how you shop is when you shop. If you wait until the next season is in full swing, you won’t have time to pair coupons with store sales. You won’t have control over what you buy. If you shop last minute, you’ll end up buying clothes at any cost because you need them. Buy ahead, and you’ll have the luxury of purchasing pieces because you love them/need them and they’re great deals. So, when should you start shopping for your spring wardrobe? Now.

I started shopping for spring in January. That’s right! And because huge crowds weren’t clamoring around the sales rack, I was able to hand pick pieces I love at ridiculously low prices. One of my favorite places to bargain-shop is Forever 21, because you can usually score an additional 50-75% off already reduced items. I picked up some fabulous floral rompers for four bucks a piece.

Yes.

Want to do even better than I did? There’s a 10% off coupon for Forever 21 in the SnipSnap app right now, and it’s valid on any $20 purchase, so you can shop the sales rack until your heart’s content. (Want to follow all my mall coupons? Follow me in SnipSnap 2.1 and subscribe to my “Mall” coupon bundle.)

Other top picks for spring shopping? This online offer for $20 off your $100 online Urban Outfitters purchase expires tomorrow. UA has some amazing sales going on right now too and you can use the coupon on markdowns or regular price items. I’m also really into shopping at Old Navy and Express for spring. I always, always start in the sale section and work my way out from there.

Subscribe to my mall shopping bundle and stay up-to-date on all my latest SnipSnap happenings. Have you already scored some exceptional spring shopping deals? Let me know!

How to save $100 on a Holiday Shopping Haul with Your Smart Phone

December 19, 2012

I’m obsessed with holiday shopping. I love buying gifts, but sometimes I get depressed when I think about how much my holiday spending could add up to. People go broke over the holidays. They actually accumulate debt. It’s scary. It doesn’t need to be that way if you have a smart phone and you know how to use it. I took a trip to the mall last night to do some holiday shopping with a friend and we took advantage of store sales, promotions, and four different shopping/couponing apps to save over $100 on stocking stuffers and holiday gifts.

First order of business? Shamefully, I needed to get a wee bit of personal shopping out of the way to start. My purse strap broke in the shopping mall parking lot so I needed a new hand bag. I perused the new Shopular app for store sales and I discovered a one-day promotion at Urban Outfitters: Save 15% off anything with your college ID (even if it’s old!) Since I’m a sentimental girl, I still have my undergraduate college ID card in my wallet. I found this gorgeous motorcycle bag already on sale from $69 down to $39.00. With my ID, I saved another $5.85, which brought my total to 33.15 + tax! It wasn’t a bad way to start off my trip.

My friend Chris and I headed to Macy’s, where we unlocked 70 walk-in kicks in shopkick and then stopped by the jewelery counter so he could do some of his Christmas shopping. He found a gorgeous pair of sterling silver earrings, on sale from $45.00 to $22.50. We used this shopkick Macy’s WOW Pass coupon to save an additional 15%, which brought the total down to $19 and change plus tax.

TIP: If you’re buying more than just one item at Macy’s (which you almost certainly are), make sure you SnipSnap these higher value coupons:

I then headed to H&M to pick up a dress for my mother. H&M is having a giant clothing sale right now, with blouses and dresses just $10-$20. I found this absolutely gorgeous cranberry dress marked down from $39.00 to $20. I received an additional $5 sale discount at the register and then I redeemed a free Wrapp H&M gift card my friend gave me. Total cost: $5. Sweet!

We were starving after all that shopping, so, instead of paying a ton of money for grub at the mall food court, we SnipSnapped a coupon for $1 off Auntie Anne’s cinnamon sugar snowball pretzel nuggets. YUM.

Well, there you have it! We just about hit $100 dollars in savings on this mini shopping haul alone. We saved $35.85 on the purse, $25.87 on the earrings, $34 on the dress, and $1 off our post holiday snack, bringing our total to $96.72!

Shopkick 3.0 Update: Unlocking Walk-in Kicks, New Scans, New Stores

October 23, 2012

Recently, I blogged about the new shopkick update: 3.0. (Read my original review of the old shopkick here.) After my first impressions, I was definitely less than impressed with the reduction in walk-in kicks (many stores’ walk-in kicks were cut in half). However, shopkick’s new “lookbooks” are now allowing users to “unlock” extra walk-in kicks on certain days, in certain stores. Today, I tried out this new feature in Target, Crate & Barrel, Old Navy, and Aerie. All I had to do was open the app and enter the main screen. Shopkick supported stores appear in little cards you can either swipe through or stretch out.

Stores with locked kicks have a lock icon in the upper right hand corner. Open that store’s “lookbook” to preview merchandise, swipe through all the pages, and unlock bonus walk-in kicks you’ll score the next time you visit that store. For example, here’s a page from Best Buy’s lookbook:

Ordinarily, I’d get just 35 kicks for walking in Best Buy (50 with the old version of the app), but now, if I spend 30 seconds with the Best Buy lookbook, I can earn a 100 kick walk-in.

You can only unlock extra walk-in kicks on certain days, so part of successful shopkicking means checking out what the app has to offer and planning your shopping trips on lucrative kick days.

Shopkick is adding a ton of of new stores like Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, and DSW, which is really exciting. Right now, you can only score a couple one-kick bonuses in these stores’ shopkick cards but I hope that, soon, they’ll dish out walk-in kicks too.

Shopkick is currently offering some pretty good scanning opportunities. I earned 100 extra kicks scanning easy to find items in Aerie today. However, there is some store overlap when it comes to scans. I scanned a few items in Target today, and now those same items no longer qualify for kicks if I scan them at CVS. Bummer.

When I originally blogged about the shopkick update, I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to score as many kicks as I was used to. Now that the “unlock walk-in kicks” feature is accessible, I’m not too worried that kicks will be hard to find. I earned over 500 kicks on a brief shopping trip to the mall today, without really trying.

Buy & Collect is getting bigger. More stores, like Crate & Barrel are offering kicks for purchases.

TIP: The new version of shopkick will seriously drain your iPhone’s battery. I used to leave shopkick running while I made my rounds at the mall; now I’m going to have to close the app between walk-in kicks, if I’ll be shopping at one store for a while. Nothing will put a damper on a shopping trip more than a dead smart phone, so I’ll have to be smart about when I have shopkick up and running.