Let's face it: almost everyone could use some help saving money these days, with the cost of living crisis and various inflationary pressures still prevalent around the world, among other factors that can wreak havoc on their finances.
I've certainly counted the pennies here and there, but one area where I've slowed down a bit is surfing the internet. I've of course been aware that there are ways to save money using extensions for my chosen web browser – Chrome – but I just haven't gotten around to doing anything about it, or using any of those useful add-ons. to install us.
That's all going to change. Read on to see the extensions I'll be enabling in an effort to save me some money over the course of 2024, in case you might want to follow in my footsteps.
Honey, I reduced the price tag
Why haven't I used Chrome extensions before to help with online shopping? That's a good question, one to which I don't have a good answer. However, “procrastination” sums it up.
Anyway, to save money, the recommendation from my colleagues (Ny Breakingians, if you will) is that one of the most important extensions to look out for is Honey (pun fully intended, in all its awfulness).
What is honey? It's an extension of PayPal that's essentially an online shopping assistant, so when you buy a product in Chrome, Honey also searches the web for coupons to get the best discount. These can then be applied and somehow I hope I will save some money. Additionally, it is possible to get cashback reward points as a bonus for those who have a PayPal account in 'good standing' (but only at participating retailers).
There will probably only be small savings here and there, but as they say, it all adds up, and over the next year I hope to be noticeably better off by the time the online shopping dust settles.
Camel companion
3 tips to save money with your Windows PC
1. Energy settings
Type “power” in the search box on the taskbar and click the “Power and sleep settings” option. Here you can set your monitor and PC to go into sleep mode after a short period of non-use, saving you some energy on your utility bill.
2. Energy settings part deux
In the 'Power and sleep' panel, look for the 'Additional power settings' link which will allow you to specify more efficient power plans if you really want to reduce the running costs of your PC (but remember: this will affect performance).
3. Tab taming
Tab Wrangler, one of Ny Breaking's best Chrome extensions, is great if you're a tab addict like me. It automatically closes tabs that aren't being used (but you can easily launch them again), saving you a little bit of power consumption.
The Camelizer is another expansion that I want to get in the new year as a Honey partner to save money on my online purchases. It is widely used by the Ny Breaking team throughout the year, but especially during shopping events such as Prime Day and Black Friday.
The Chrome add-on is especially useful for anyone like me who is a Prime member and regularly orders from Amazon, as it tracks historical Amazon prices.
For most Amazon products, the extension provides a graph of how prices have fallen and risen over time. That way I can be sure if an item is really a good price, or if it's likely to drop quite a bit again (perhaps at the next big sale), so I can wait and save more if that's likely. expectation. This extension also gives me the option to get an alert if a product drops to a certain price level – quite handy.
If you're in the US, the aforementioned Honey also has a price tracking feature for Amazon. However, I live in the UK and Honey doesn't track anything other than Amazon.com (US) prices, so myself and everyone else around the world need an alternative.
The Camelizer extension (and another alternative, Keep one) are purpose-built for this purpose and provide more detailed price history information than Honey (including listings on third-party marketplaces and second-hand prices too, for that matter).
Redeem with cashback
Another recommendation given to me by Ny Breaking's online shopping experts is TopCashback. The savings made with this service – in the form of cashback returns, as you might guess, on purchases – can be quite significant. I have seen the evidence of this and need no further convincing. Plus, the Chrome extension is a great way to access these benefits.
The idea is simple: a lot of companies sign up with TopCashback and when someone makes purchases from those retailers, TopCashback gives the buyer a certain percentage of cashback on the spend.
The normal service requires the user to go to the TopCashback website and search for the retailer to see if they have signed up for the program and what items may apply. It's all a bit clunky, but the great thing about the Chrome extension is that it automatically checks every site visited and highlights available cashback offers on products, which is much more convenient.
To get cashback, all you have to do is click the 'Activate' prompt that appears when you make a purchase. This Chrome add-on also highlights some voucher codes as a bonus.
The small problem with the expansion is that not every retailer is supported. But most are, and the convenience aspect is what makes the difference for me. I don't really want to have to constantly navigate to the website to do pre-purchase searches (and realistically, I'll probably forget to do this half the time anyway).
I'm also going to risk the temptation of filling my Chrome toolbar with more extensions than the three I mentioned (Honey, The Camelizer, and TopCashback). Although I am aware that there are numerous others (including Rakuten, Fake spot and more), I'm starting the year with that golden trio – and if you fancy saving some money in 2024, you should.