Just about 15 years ago, I got my first “real” job out of college. I was excited, but I also had to move from my home town city of over 650,000 people, to a quaint, but dinky town in the Berkshires. Despite it’s charm, I was a big city girl used to having every chain store at my disposal. Suddenly, I was living in a town where the closest Home Depot was an hour drive and so were any of the decent sized malls. In fact, one of my out of town visitors had pointed out that they had never seen a single story mall before.
Well, since I did like my job and the convenience of being able to mountain bike after work, my solution was simple: online shopping. In fact, since I’m taller than the average girl, I have to mail order a lot of my clothes anyway, because it’s rare that I will find tall sizes in the local stores.
Keeping it Simple – Reducing Junk Email
At first, I went about my online shopping in all the wrong way. I signed up for email updates for coupons and promotion codes. It certainly was nice to get a discount off my order, but it wasn’t long before I was deleting hundreds of emails for every one that I used. What a time suck, so I went and unsubscribed from all of them and did something much simpler instead.
Use Promotional Codes
All I have to say is thank god that in the checkout section of every online site, there is a box that says “promotional code and/or gift certificate number.” It reminds me that I should do a quick search on a site like PromotionCode.org to see if there are any current promotions running. At the very least I usually get free shipping.
Due to the outdoorsy nature of my locale, one of my favorite shopping spots is Sierra Trading Post. They often have killer discounts and are almost always running a promotion with an additional 20-25% discount on top of their clearance items. I just checked to see what the latest discount is and I did find a coupon for Sierra Trading Post.
If All Else Fails, Google it
One thing I did notice is that not all sites have the same list of promotions, so it’s always good to have a favorite go to site, but to also google your favorite store as well. I usually do 2 searches. If we’re still on the Sierra example I’d do “Sierra Trading Post Coupon Codes” but I’ll also google “Sierra Trading post promo codes.” Usually the drop down box tells you the most popular search words too so that helps.
Babci and Computers
My computer is a mysterious and powerful thing to Babci. Whenever she asks about something I bought online, I say “I bought it off the computer.” I haven’t actually explained how it all works, nor does she want to know, but she does realize that computers allow me to do all kind of things. She’s actually skyped at my house and she realizes that you can send messages to people, kind of like a telegraph, but better. She also knows I work “on the computer.” She also thinks that in college I learned how to use a computer which enabled me to get a job where I use computers all day. It’s pointless to explain to her that computer are used in just about every profession these days not only for business but also for pleasure. She just thinks I have this special talent with computers and that’s what’s opened the doors for me with different careers. “Oh it’s because you know how to use a computer that you got this job.”
In fact, she was overjoyed the first time I got an office job “working on a computer”. For a while I was doing hands on experiments at our R+D center. It was a fun job, operating equipment, making parts and driving fork trucks around. In my mom’s eyes, there are only 2 kinds of jobs..dirty jobs and clean jobs. She was overjoyed when I got myself out of the plant (dirty job) and started working in an office (clean job). Isn’t it amazing how there’s this technology out there that is so ingrained in our society and there are still people out there that have absolutely no use for it?
So just out of curiosity, how long have you been buying online? Do you remember the first time you told an older relative that you bought something “off the computer” and they looked at you like you had 5 heads? Do you remember what year you bought your first computer? Which decade was it? I can tell you that I didn’t get my first personal laptop til last year, but my husband’s had computers since the 80’s.
Note. This post was written by me, on behalf of Promotion Code.org and is a sponsored post.
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