I have to admit I'm not really a patient person, so I rarely wait for sales to get the items I want. But, when browsing the shops off- and online, I do tend to check out special offers and discounts, and I seem to find really nice deals. I thought this was the best it could get, purchasing that overpriced handbag for half of its original $$ worth.

I've never really paid attention to coupons and cut-out rebates at newspapers and magazines, for the simple fact of being too lazy to cut it out, store it somewhere and take it with me when I go shopping. But after reading 'Beauty is in eye of coupon holder' from Pocono Record. As the article states, you can get significant discounts:

Last week I bought name-brand cosmetics by combining several savings strategies at CVS. The store featured a "buy one item, get one item at 50 percent off" sale, as well as an automatic rebate promotion giving a $5 ExtraBuck reward for a minimum order of $15. On top of that, I had a $3 store coupon, and I had $2 off coupons from the Sunday newspaper for each item. At the end of the order, I paid $4.23 for $20 of cosmetics - a nice savings of 79 percent.

The author, Shopping Mom, also talks about on-line rebates and coupons, store loyalty cards and other saving options for all major drugstores online!

In light of my just-learnt-wisdom, I typed in beauty coupons to the search box and voila, online coupons galore! Free Coupon Mania has a couple of nice beauty and cosmetic deals, Refund Sweepers list interesting savings, sales and rebates for a number of well-known stores while Style for Free has the most extensive beauty product savings directory.