How I saved £527 on Christmas shopping with HotUKDeals

In association with HotUKDeals

God I love Christmas.

I harp on about it, but I really do love it. Mainly I love the shopping and the twinkly lights which yes, I know, is totally NOT what Christmas is about, but YOLO, as I’m sure the three wise men would have said if they’d have thought about it.

What I’m not so keen on is the ‘spending vast amounts of money’ aspect, so I do like to make savings where I can. I’m one of those really annoying people who will buy presents in April if I see something on special offer, (although if it makes you feel better, I will then put said present away ‘somewhere safe’ and forget about it until January.)

I am also, thanks to the bargain hunting skills of an ex-boyfriend, well trained in the art of sniffing out an online deal. HotUKDeals was in fact one of his absolute favourites and he’d browse it regularly, in a kind of excited/guilty way, like other people might look at the profiles of exes on Facebook.

He knew what he was doing though as HotUKDeals is a great way to save cash, whether you’re buying gifts for Christmas or looking for things for around the house and garden, as I am ABOUT TO PROVE…

DUM DUM DUM!

HotUKDeals set me a shopping challenge – exactly how much could I save by exploring the special offers listed on their site?

Let’s see shall we?

The deals on HotUKDeals are pretty easy to navigate. You can either go to the main deals page and see what’s hot, or you can use the drop down menu to explore deals by department or by retailer. Members use the temperature gauge to vote on deals so other users know that the hotter the deal, the stronger the offer.

Deals could be anything, from someone having spotted cheese slices at half price in Morrisons to £100 off a mattress. Literally anything, so it’s always fun to see what new offers have been listed.

Now, my mission primarily was Christmas presents, but then browsing through the main deals page I came across this kettle, which I thought would look very nice in my kitchen, and which was reduced from £80. When you find an offer you like the look of you just click on it to find out more and then get linked through to the retailer where you can either buy directly or find out more.

So I accidentally bought that for myself. Well. I saved £40 – what can you do??

(Also remember – you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. First rule of Christmas, or life, or something like that.)

THEN I got a little bit distracted thinking about other things that might be handy around the house, given that we’ve just moved, and ended up kind of also accidentally buying myself some tools and bits and bobs for the garden. Still, I spent £35 and saved £48, bargain fun times!

Christmas shopping for kids at HotUKDeals

Time to focus now. I picked ‘kids’ from the drop down menu, as I have a lot of younger children that I like to buy presents for at Christmas. It can sometimes be tricky to know what to get, as there always seems to be some kind of new fad, but I always think Lego or Playmobil is a pretty safe bet, so I picked out some of the best deals for these.

That’s £70 saved just on those four items – not to be sniffed at right?

Then I broadened my search, browsing the kids’ area to see what caught my eye. I found some great looking board games and science kits for half price, an absolute bargain of a play kitchen and I loved the look of these neon sign kits from Argos at £7.49 instead of £15. I thought these would make great gifts for kids and for grown ups, so I bought quite a few of these.

On this assortment of items then I spent just £191, compared to the total RRP which I reckon would have worked out at £422. That’s a saving of £231.

Christmas gifts for grown ups on HotUKDeals

As well as a great kids’ section, there are plenty of grown up offers on HotUKDeals too, with lots of categories to explore. I found the items below for a total of £107 instead of £246, meaning I save £139 – more than half the RRP. (I bought two books and found that the Johnnie Walker was actually a higher RRP than listed.)

Overall then, I calculated that I spent a total of £469, compared to the RRP, which would have been £996, giving me a saving of a whopping £527.

I was pretty impressed by this.

The thing to remember with HotUKDeals, when you click through to the retailer websites, is that it’s not HotUKDeals GIVING you the discount, it’s site members FINDING them for you. So yes, while in theory you could shop around and find all of these offers individually yourself, would you really?? Using HotUKDeals is like having a team of crack bargain hunters do it all for you and bring it together in one place.

Some deals will have changed by the time you find them, but in some cases I found there was an even better discount than first listed, so you never know what you might find.

Browse the deals at HotUKDeals now to see how much you could save and follow them on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates.