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Vancouver on the Cheap: The Daily Deal

If you were to create a Venn diagram where one circle was labeled "cheap" and the other labeled "awesome", the middle point where they cross over could be labeled "Vancouver on the Cheap".

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If you were to create a Venn diagram where one circle was labeled "cheap" and the other labeled "awesome", the middle point where they cross over could be labeled "Vancouver on the Cheap". In other words, this is a weekly series on things to do and places to go in Vancouver that fall into that magical category of being both cheap and awesome.

These days you can't throw a chunk of binary code without hitting a daily deal. Groupon, Social Shopper, Wag Jag, Deal Find, Deal Radar, Indulge Living, Living Social, Vitamin Daily Deals, Ethical Deal, and oh my goodness there are still so many more it's crazy. Daily deals can save you a lot of money if you play your cards right. Here are some Cheap-o-Matic tips on how to rock the daily deal in Vancouver:

Step One: Be Honest With Yourself

Remember, a deal only saves you money if you're using it to get something you would have bought at full price anyways, so be honest with yourself: are you the type of person who will spontaneously purchase everything that comes their way, or can you rock the self-control and only buy things you actually need?

Now ask yourself: "are spa services and fitness-related classes a regular part of my life?" If you get a lot of manicures, pedicures, hair removal sessions, or use weight loss programs, month passes at gyms and yoga studios, personal training sessions, or dance classes of any kind, you will clean up on the daily deal. Seriously.

Tickets to sporting or cultural events come up somewhat frequently as well - I've seen lots of tickets for sports, ballet, theatre, and concerts (hello Hanson, shall we mmmmBop together?). Then there's the other random offerings like TOSEL certifications, reiki training, and horseback riding - all awesome in their own right, but I can't guarantee they'll come up again anytime soon.

Step Two: Sign Up

Sign up for every daily deal service you can find. This brings up our next important question: how stressed out does a full inbox of what will probably be junk make you? If the idea of opening your email every morning and seeing an inbox that looks like this:

stresses you out, then you should probably stop here. Saving a few bucks is not worth making yourself angry every morning - really, it isn't.

If, on the other hand, a quick scan-and-delete sounds totally acceptable to you, then go for it. Sign yourself right up. You'll vastly improve your chances of finding a deal that will actually save you money the more offers you have coming in. Plus, you'll start to see the trends of what deals come up more often, and what companies seem to offer a lot of deals. Then you can play the system and wait until one comes around again before you buy.

For those of you who said no to the full inbox, you still have an option: Vancouver Deal of the Day. It's a website that amalgamates some (but not all) of the daily deal offerings for Vancouver in one place. So instead of getting email notifications, you can just saunter over to the website every day and see what's new. Remember, some of the sites keep the same deals up for a few days, so they might not have daily change over.

Step Three: Stay Strong

Now you're getting a multitude of daily emails, all clamoring for your attention and your hard earned cashola. Be brutal, be strong. Every morning, give the subject lines a quick skim and see if any of the deals sound interesting to you. Delete everything that doesn't grab you instantly without opening it. Only open the ones you think you might actually want to buy. Then check the fine print - what are the limitations and where is the business actually located? A lot of these sites say they are Vancouver deals, but the businesses can be as far off as Surrey. Sure, it's still technically the GVRD, but if you buy a one month gym membership for $15 and then realize that it's a 45 minute Skytrain ride away, how often do you think you'll use it? Remember: the makers of these websites are using all the fancy writing and psychological manipulation skills they can muster to get you to buy stuff without thinking about it too much. Don't let them win!

Step Four: Actually Use Your Deals

Obvious, right? You'd be surprised. Remember, it's easier to actually use your deals if you only purchase ones for things you would have done anyways. Also remember that in most cases, the companies are obligated by law to honour the money you have spent on their establishment, even if the deal has expired. So you might not get the deal you purchased, but you should at least get something for the $20 you threw down and then forgot about if, heaven forbid, the worst were to happen and you let it expire.

And that is it! You are now super savvy in daily deals. Go forth and let enjoy the savings.