How To Save Money on Makeup
So this isn't something I'm super good at... but when I look at my collection... there are only a few palettes I've actually paid full price for and there are a lot of good ways to get high end products for a more reasonable price. ReadySetGlamour just did a video on this, and she had a lot of useful tips and I thought I'd put my tips in also.
Join Rewards Clubs
The easiest way to get some free stuff is to join the free rewards programs that stores offer. If its something you have to pay for... I'd pass on it. To be honest, if a store is asking you to pay for their rewards club... its a sign that store isn't doing so well and might be closed soon. Borders did that, FYE did that... which is still open but they aren't open in many malls (that I've seen at least) and The Body Shop did that and they are no longer at my mall either... other than the Stubs program from AMC, I would avoid signing up for any of that.
Anyway back to the free beauty rewards clubs. Sephora has their Beauty Insider Program. This isn't my favorite of the beauty programs, but they always have 100 point rewards, 250 point rewards and 500 point rewards that have deluxe samples of products that they sell in stores. Sometimes they're pretty good, they had small rollerballs of the Elizabeth and James Nirvana perfumes. They always have mascaras. Its a good way to try things out before buying them. Sephora also does a few coupons. If you're a Beauty Insider there are 2 coupons a year usually and if you are VIB or VIB Rouge there are 3 or 4. There's a VIB sale, there's Sephora's regular sale, they give out a $20 off $50 coupon (or $25 for rouge) and there is a 10% off coupon when you become a VIB or a VIB Rouge... plus they send offers a lot for free products or free samples of products. Thats how I got to try the Philosophy Purity face wash... so that was nice. Always useful to try things out!
CVS also has a good beauty rewards program... and I'll talk about them in a little bit too. I don't go to CVS all that often, but they do give a lot of coupons in general and they give a $3 off coupon on your birthday and depending on how much money you spend you'll get more coupons or something. They just send a lot of coupons in general so thats just a good store to buy things from in general.
And my favorite Rewards Program is from Ulta. Ulta gives points back in the form of cash. If you're a regular beauty club member it expires at the end of the year... if you're platinum, it doesn't expire as long as you remain platinum. This is awesome because if you save your points you can get some really nice high end makeup for a really affordable price. I saved my points and got the Lorac Ultimate Unzipped set, which had the 2 Unzipped Palettes and the Unzipped Cheek Palette and a lipstick. So that was an awesome reward to get for free.
You can also get points a lot faster when you're platinum. Which is awesome. They give a lot of bonus points offers and they sometimes give bonus points on top of bonus points... so you can get a ton of extra points... and it adds up really fast and its awesome.
And Ulta gives a lot of 20% off coupons and a lot of times they work with prestige brands as well... so that is awesome!
Birchbox has a similar reward system to Ulta. For every dollar you spend you get a point and whenever you get so many points you can buy things. I don't think the points ever expire. If you subscribe to Birchbox you can do surveys for extra points and you can get more points. I don't subscribe to any subscription services... its just not my thing... but Birchbox is good, if you do subscribe to it, thats good. I've shopped from the site before and would continue to do that because its a nice site and I do like the rewards. They have a lot of brands there too.
And if you live in the New Jersey or the Metropolitan Area, Beauty Plus Salon also has a good reward program and the points never expire. They have Nyx, some high end haircare and nail polish. They usually have the best prices on these things, every holiday they do a sale for 20% off or 30% off if you buy 3 items... and if you work at a mall with a Beauty Plus Salon, they give a mall employee discount also... which is awesome. So I would recommend that.
Set Budgets For Yourself
This is something I find pretty useful. Set basically a guideline of what you wouldn't want to spend on something. For example I personally don't want to spend much more than $50 on any one product. It is just a personal thing. I think that most of my palettes are under $50 and you can get things on sale. There are a lot of great drugstore palettes. If there is a holiday palette that is around $60... I try to resist. Holiday palettes are nice... but as many you tubers have pointed out this year... they aren't always made with great ingredients and they are not always the brands best. I have some Tarte holiday sets that I love, I have one from Stila that I love... but its just something to be aware of.
Also note: I did pay full price for the Stila Whole Lotta Love Palette and that was $59... but I had a $40 mall gift card that I got for free... so really I was only paying $19 for it... so yeah. And thats another thing...
Enter Contests and go to events with free gifts
Entering contests can sometimes be tricky... but you can get a lot of great stuff from it. It can particularly be good if you follow smaller youtubers. I won a contest from a great you tuber called Makeupbysheaa and I loved all the stuff that I won. It was all really fun and useful and she's so nice. She does a lot of giveaways and her channel is fun and a lot of other small youtubers do things like that and thats a fun way to win some makeup. Lol. I'm not saying only subscribe to people for giveaways... but I think supporting smaller channels is always helpful. You can get very honest reviews from that are just as good as people with a bunch of subscribers... so yeah!
And if you see that your mall is doing something where the first however many people get something... go to it if you can! My mall had anything from $5-$500. My mom only got a $5... but still thats something good! You can get 5 hand sanitizes from Bath and Body works with that (thats how we spent it. Lol.) I got a $40 one and the people in line behind me got that also... so thats extra good.
Idk I tend to have good luck with that... so thats why I feel okay with doing these things.
Know which places have the best sales and the best prices
This is one I think is important. I know CVS usually has the best deals, they'll have like buy a certain amount from a brand and get extra care bucks or buy one get one half off or something like that... which is awesome... but if you don't want to buy that much from one brand then buying it from CVS or Wallgreens might not be the best bet. For me, Harmon usually has the best prices. They are owned by Bed Bath and Beyond, so you can use those coupons and stack them to get the best deals. They also tend to have the newest selection from the drugstore... so that is always useful.
Look at the Clearance Items
Whenever I go to target and I check out the beauty aisle and see a little red sticker... I get excited... because usually when there is one red sticker, there are other red stickers around it. I've heard Thursday or Friday is when Target does their beauty clearance... I've always had the best luck finding clearance items on the weekends. Sometimes its great stuff too... I don't always think its things that are about to be discontinued... usually theres some good stuff there! So definitely look for red tags!
Check description boxes on youtube videos
This is always something useful. Most youtubers have a discount code for things that they recommend. The coupons aren't necessarily affiliate codes, it just lets the brand know what channels you watch so that they can send PR to those channels and continue to give them coupon codes and things like that. I just ordered some things from Ofra because Kathleenlights had a 40% off discount code. I know there are other youtubers with 30% off codes too that I think still work (I think Sarah from BeautyBuzzHub has a code... I really like the things I ordered from ofra... so if you're looking for a code... use it! Lol.)
Kohls Cash
Kohls has a lot of good brands and you can't always use your Kohls coupons on the prestige brands (you can use them with brands like Real Techniques) you can always use your Kohls Cash with them. I got $20 in Kohls cash a little while ago and I ordered a Real Techniques Brush set and I pretty much got it for free... I just had to pay shipping. So that was awesome! I would recommend that if you're looking to try something from The Balm or Lorac or something.
Hautelook, Nordstrom Rack, CCO, TJ Maxx
Good sale websites. Nordstrom Rack doesn't have beauty online, but they have a lot of good high end brands on sale. CCO also has some good deals that pop up. Places like Dollar Tree and Big Lots have makeup too... so check those out too... but if you want some good high end products, I would recommend those.
Ohhh and TJ Maxx. TJ Maxx has some Marc Jacobs perfumes! I have been wanting Dot for years and finally got it for $30 at TJ Maxx. They also have Philosophy, Elf, BH Cosmetics, Nume. Some good brands for really great prices.
Target Beauty Boxes, Wallmart Beauty Boxes, Influenster Voxbox
I'm not a subscription box person... but I love the Target Beauty Boxes. They have a lot of full sized drugstore makeup, and usually deluxe samples and some full sizes of skincare and haircare products also. There usually aren't any foil packet types of things... usually they have hair ties, which is great. And they're $5-$10. Wallmart has something similar, they have mostly samples and a lot of coupons and they are $5... so if you would rather sample a bunch of things, go for wall mart, if you'd like to have full size and deluxe samples of a few things... go target.
Influenster is another great site for beauty products. Its like a review site, anyone can join as long as you have some sort of social media outlet. They send you free products for testing purposes. Its good if you need something to write about for your blog or an instagram post or youtube video. I recommend that. Its just useful and I've gotten a lot of great stuff from the boxes. They do brand badges too where you could get a lot of stuff from a certain brand if you do contests. I got a lot of rimmel makeup from doing that.I just got some St. Ives products with that. Its nice.
Useful Bloggers and apps
So there are a few useful bloggers, instagrammers, apps youtubers that you should follow if theres a sale.
First and foremost Nouveau Cheap. Here you can find out all the weekly drugstore makeup sales, all the new drugstore products, sales on high end makeup, reviews on high end and drugstore makeup... its a helpful blog. Just great overall.
Tati also does coupon videos every once and a while too. She posts them on mondays, she will go to CVS, Wallgreens, and Rite Aid and say which ones have the best sales and deals for the week and she shows how much she paid for everything. Pretty good.
And there is also Dupethat. They are 2 girls on instagram that dupe high end makeup or limited edition makeup. Its easy to find dupes for things out there... if you're looking for something like Mac's Whisper of Guilt, which no longer exists... this website has dupes. Its good! I'm a new follower to them, you could probably just google dupes or something like that too.
Also every Sunday morning, JenLuvsReviews does a makeup news shows called What's Up In Makeup where she goes over all the new releases everywhere. She has Sephora, Ulta, Drugstore, indie... all sorts of things and she'll announce things that are on sale. Its good.
For Apps Target Carwheel always has deals on all kinds of things, including beauty. There's usually great deals on Up and Up, which has great brushes and they have other good beauty things too. There are other things too, but Up and Up is target's own brand and its almost always on sale.
Retailmenot also has some exclusive coupons and they post all the coupons. You can use your location to track down deals in wherever your shopping. Its good.
And the Tati app. Thats just an app Glamlifeguru created that people that like makeup post on... and they'll let you know whats good and a lot of them post infos on sales and coupons that are out! I post there when I find out some good coupon or something... and its just a fun community. Everyone is really nice there and I like it! If you're here from the Tati app hi!! Lol.
That is it! Also gifts with purchases are usually good. I don't think thats a reason to buy something... don't fall for that... but its always nice to get a gift.
Byee! Hope this was hopeful!
-Shannon
Join Rewards Clubs
The easiest way to get some free stuff is to join the free rewards programs that stores offer. If its something you have to pay for... I'd pass on it. To be honest, if a store is asking you to pay for their rewards club... its a sign that store isn't doing so well and might be closed soon. Borders did that, FYE did that... which is still open but they aren't open in many malls (that I've seen at least) and The Body Shop did that and they are no longer at my mall either... other than the Stubs program from AMC, I would avoid signing up for any of that.
Anyway back to the free beauty rewards clubs. Sephora has their Beauty Insider Program. This isn't my favorite of the beauty programs, but they always have 100 point rewards, 250 point rewards and 500 point rewards that have deluxe samples of products that they sell in stores. Sometimes they're pretty good, they had small rollerballs of the Elizabeth and James Nirvana perfumes. They always have mascaras. Its a good way to try things out before buying them. Sephora also does a few coupons. If you're a Beauty Insider there are 2 coupons a year usually and if you are VIB or VIB Rouge there are 3 or 4. There's a VIB sale, there's Sephora's regular sale, they give out a $20 off $50 coupon (or $25 for rouge) and there is a 10% off coupon when you become a VIB or a VIB Rouge... plus they send offers a lot for free products or free samples of products. Thats how I got to try the Philosophy Purity face wash... so that was nice. Always useful to try things out!
CVS also has a good beauty rewards program... and I'll talk about them in a little bit too. I don't go to CVS all that often, but they do give a lot of coupons in general and they give a $3 off coupon on your birthday and depending on how much money you spend you'll get more coupons or something. They just send a lot of coupons in general so thats just a good store to buy things from in general.
And my favorite Rewards Program is from Ulta. Ulta gives points back in the form of cash. If you're a regular beauty club member it expires at the end of the year... if you're platinum, it doesn't expire as long as you remain platinum. This is awesome because if you save your points you can get some really nice high end makeup for a really affordable price. I saved my points and got the Lorac Ultimate Unzipped set, which had the 2 Unzipped Palettes and the Unzipped Cheek Palette and a lipstick. So that was an awesome reward to get for free.
You can also get points a lot faster when you're platinum. Which is awesome. They give a lot of bonus points offers and they sometimes give bonus points on top of bonus points... so you can get a ton of extra points... and it adds up really fast and its awesome.
And Ulta gives a lot of 20% off coupons and a lot of times they work with prestige brands as well... so that is awesome!
Birchbox has a similar reward system to Ulta. For every dollar you spend you get a point and whenever you get so many points you can buy things. I don't think the points ever expire. If you subscribe to Birchbox you can do surveys for extra points and you can get more points. I don't subscribe to any subscription services... its just not my thing... but Birchbox is good, if you do subscribe to it, thats good. I've shopped from the site before and would continue to do that because its a nice site and I do like the rewards. They have a lot of brands there too.
And if you live in the New Jersey or the Metropolitan Area, Beauty Plus Salon also has a good reward program and the points never expire. They have Nyx, some high end haircare and nail polish. They usually have the best prices on these things, every holiday they do a sale for 20% off or 30% off if you buy 3 items... and if you work at a mall with a Beauty Plus Salon, they give a mall employee discount also... which is awesome. So I would recommend that.
Set Budgets For Yourself
This is something I find pretty useful. Set basically a guideline of what you wouldn't want to spend on something. For example I personally don't want to spend much more than $50 on any one product. It is just a personal thing. I think that most of my palettes are under $50 and you can get things on sale. There are a lot of great drugstore palettes. If there is a holiday palette that is around $60... I try to resist. Holiday palettes are nice... but as many you tubers have pointed out this year... they aren't always made with great ingredients and they are not always the brands best. I have some Tarte holiday sets that I love, I have one from Stila that I love... but its just something to be aware of.
Also note: I did pay full price for the Stila Whole Lotta Love Palette and that was $59... but I had a $40 mall gift card that I got for free... so really I was only paying $19 for it... so yeah. And thats another thing...
Enter Contests and go to events with free gifts
Entering contests can sometimes be tricky... but you can get a lot of great stuff from it. It can particularly be good if you follow smaller youtubers. I won a contest from a great you tuber called Makeupbysheaa and I loved all the stuff that I won. It was all really fun and useful and she's so nice. She does a lot of giveaways and her channel is fun and a lot of other small youtubers do things like that and thats a fun way to win some makeup. Lol. I'm not saying only subscribe to people for giveaways... but I think supporting smaller channels is always helpful. You can get very honest reviews from that are just as good as people with a bunch of subscribers... so yeah!
And if you see that your mall is doing something where the first however many people get something... go to it if you can! My mall had anything from $5-$500. My mom only got a $5... but still thats something good! You can get 5 hand sanitizes from Bath and Body works with that (thats how we spent it. Lol.) I got a $40 one and the people in line behind me got that also... so thats extra good.
Idk I tend to have good luck with that... so thats why I feel okay with doing these things.
Know which places have the best sales and the best prices
This is one I think is important. I know CVS usually has the best deals, they'll have like buy a certain amount from a brand and get extra care bucks or buy one get one half off or something like that... which is awesome... but if you don't want to buy that much from one brand then buying it from CVS or Wallgreens might not be the best bet. For me, Harmon usually has the best prices. They are owned by Bed Bath and Beyond, so you can use those coupons and stack them to get the best deals. They also tend to have the newest selection from the drugstore... so that is always useful.
Look at the Clearance Items
Whenever I go to target and I check out the beauty aisle and see a little red sticker... I get excited... because usually when there is one red sticker, there are other red stickers around it. I've heard Thursday or Friday is when Target does their beauty clearance... I've always had the best luck finding clearance items on the weekends. Sometimes its great stuff too... I don't always think its things that are about to be discontinued... usually theres some good stuff there! So definitely look for red tags!
Check description boxes on youtube videos
This is always something useful. Most youtubers have a discount code for things that they recommend. The coupons aren't necessarily affiliate codes, it just lets the brand know what channels you watch so that they can send PR to those channels and continue to give them coupon codes and things like that. I just ordered some things from Ofra because Kathleenlights had a 40% off discount code. I know there are other youtubers with 30% off codes too that I think still work (I think Sarah from BeautyBuzzHub has a code... I really like the things I ordered from ofra... so if you're looking for a code... use it! Lol.)
Kohls Cash
Kohls has a lot of good brands and you can't always use your Kohls coupons on the prestige brands (you can use them with brands like Real Techniques) you can always use your Kohls Cash with them. I got $20 in Kohls cash a little while ago and I ordered a Real Techniques Brush set and I pretty much got it for free... I just had to pay shipping. So that was awesome! I would recommend that if you're looking to try something from The Balm or Lorac or something.
Hautelook, Nordstrom Rack, CCO, TJ Maxx
Good sale websites. Nordstrom Rack doesn't have beauty online, but they have a lot of good high end brands on sale. CCO also has some good deals that pop up. Places like Dollar Tree and Big Lots have makeup too... so check those out too... but if you want some good high end products, I would recommend those.
Ohhh and TJ Maxx. TJ Maxx has some Marc Jacobs perfumes! I have been wanting Dot for years and finally got it for $30 at TJ Maxx. They also have Philosophy, Elf, BH Cosmetics, Nume. Some good brands for really great prices.
Target Beauty Boxes, Wallmart Beauty Boxes, Influenster Voxbox
I'm not a subscription box person... but I love the Target Beauty Boxes. They have a lot of full sized drugstore makeup, and usually deluxe samples and some full sizes of skincare and haircare products also. There usually aren't any foil packet types of things... usually they have hair ties, which is great. And they're $5-$10. Wallmart has something similar, they have mostly samples and a lot of coupons and they are $5... so if you would rather sample a bunch of things, go for wall mart, if you'd like to have full size and deluxe samples of a few things... go target.
Influenster is another great site for beauty products. Its like a review site, anyone can join as long as you have some sort of social media outlet. They send you free products for testing purposes. Its good if you need something to write about for your blog or an instagram post or youtube video. I recommend that. Its just useful and I've gotten a lot of great stuff from the boxes. They do brand badges too where you could get a lot of stuff from a certain brand if you do contests. I got a lot of rimmel makeup from doing that.I just got some St. Ives products with that. Its nice.
Useful Bloggers and apps
So there are a few useful bloggers, instagrammers, apps youtubers that you should follow if theres a sale.
First and foremost Nouveau Cheap. Here you can find out all the weekly drugstore makeup sales, all the new drugstore products, sales on high end makeup, reviews on high end and drugstore makeup... its a helpful blog. Just great overall.
Tati also does coupon videos every once and a while too. She posts them on mondays, she will go to CVS, Wallgreens, and Rite Aid and say which ones have the best sales and deals for the week and she shows how much she paid for everything. Pretty good.
And there is also Dupethat. They are 2 girls on instagram that dupe high end makeup or limited edition makeup. Its easy to find dupes for things out there... if you're looking for something like Mac's Whisper of Guilt, which no longer exists... this website has dupes. Its good! I'm a new follower to them, you could probably just google dupes or something like that too.
Also every Sunday morning, JenLuvsReviews does a makeup news shows called What's Up In Makeup where she goes over all the new releases everywhere. She has Sephora, Ulta, Drugstore, indie... all sorts of things and she'll announce things that are on sale. Its good.
For Apps Target Carwheel always has deals on all kinds of things, including beauty. There's usually great deals on Up and Up, which has great brushes and they have other good beauty things too. There are other things too, but Up and Up is target's own brand and its almost always on sale.
Retailmenot also has some exclusive coupons and they post all the coupons. You can use your location to track down deals in wherever your shopping. Its good.
And the Tati app. Thats just an app Glamlifeguru created that people that like makeup post on... and they'll let you know whats good and a lot of them post infos on sales and coupons that are out! I post there when I find out some good coupon or something... and its just a fun community. Everyone is really nice there and I like it! If you're here from the Tati app hi!! Lol.
That is it! Also gifts with purchases are usually good. I don't think thats a reason to buy something... don't fall for that... but its always nice to get a gift.
Byee! Hope this was hopeful!
-Shannon
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