How to Save Money on Clothes: Budget-Friendly Fashion Tips

One thing that defines our country is our love for shopping. We will buy anything. Recently, we have seen people buy the most outrageous things.

For example, a while ago, Nordstrom sold out a rock that was useless for $85. Amazon has a page exclusively for useless gifts with products selling for up to $50.

Apparel is a major industry in the country. On average, we spend more than $1,700 on clothing every year. But, with the following tricks, you can save a lot of money when shopping for clothes.

Hire Clothes

If you are going to an event, say a red-carpet event or a wedding, you might consider hiring a dress instead of buying.

In most cases, we rarely put on the dresses we buy for these events. Therefore, spending thousands of dollars for a gown, you will rarely put on does not make a lot of sense.

You can hire these dresses from companies like Rent the Runway, Le Tote, Stylelend, and Poshare among others.

Creating and Sticking to Budget

Buying clothes is always tempting. We tend to buy clothes when we see a good trend online, on billboards, and on fashion magazines.

To save money on this, you should always have an annual budget on clothing. Then, you should do your best to avoid impulse buying.

Some of the ways you can avoid this is to avoid going to the fashion section of the shop, avoid following fashion shops on Instagram and Pinterest, and having an app like Mint to help you monitor your spending.

Using Coupons

Fashion is one of the easiest industry to enter. Who can’t source clothes in China and sell them online?

As a result, this tends to create a lot of competition in the industry. To attract clients and increase volume, companies offer coupons.

Before you buy clothes online, I recommend that you go online and check whether the retailer offers any coupons. Alternatively, you should check out these coupons from the standard Android and iOS apps.

Buy Directly from Manufacturer

Most of the clothes you buy are manufactured in Asian countries for pennies. To save money, it is possible to bypass the retail markups by buying directly from the manufacturers.

One way to do this is to use a company called Wish. Wish provides mobile apps that connect you with manufacturers mostly from Asia. In the app, you can find quality clothes selling for less than $5.

Take Sign Up Offers

In the fashion industry, sellers take customer data very seriously. As such, many online sellers will give you a discount just for giving them your email address. Take advantage of such offers and save good money.

Unsubscribe

Most fashion companies like Red Dress Boutique and AdoreMe will collect your email address. They use the address mostly for marketing purposes.

In most cases, you will be tempted to buy the items they advertise. To avoid this temptation, you should unsubscribe from those emails. Every time you receive an email from them, you should find the unsubscribe link and exit.

Alternatively, you can use free services like Unroll.me to find all your subscriptions and unsubscribe.

Compare Prices

Do you know that many websites sell similar products for different prices?

Before you purchase your clothes online, I recommend that you spend time comparing prices. Fortunately, there are free tools that help you do this.

A website like Price.com searches hundreds of sites within seconds to give you the cheapest product. There are other apps and extensions that will help you make similar savings.

Ignore the Brands

Many times, we are tempted to pay a higher price for apparel because of the name attached to it. We assume that the expensive product is always the best.

The reality is that you can look better in a $20 dress than a person wearing a $100 dress. Therefore, to save money, I recommend that you ignore the brand and go for a high quality cheaper product.

For example, in leisurewear, you don’t need to spend $140 on leggings while you can get a similar product for $10.

Sell Your Used Clothes

Another way to save money on apparel is to sell your used clothes. That dress you rarely wear or that skirt you don’t like.
By selling these clothes, you can make money to buy brand new ones. To do this, there are tons of websites you can use. Some of the ones I recommend are ThredUp, Poshmark, Tradesy.

Discount Stores

In an era when everyone is shopping online, we tend to forget the discount stores. Over the years, I have saved hundreds of dollars shopping in stores like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Stage Stores.
These stores tend to buy overstock and slightly defective products from other retailers and then sell them for a fraction of the cost.

You can save a lot of money by visiting these stores and searching for the best products.

Don’t Buy Because of the Discount

Many times, we find ourselves buying products we don’t need because they are on sale. As a rule, if you were not prepared to purchase apparel, just don’t pay for it.

Remember, a 40% discount is not worth it for something you won’t put on for 90% of the time.

Don’t Pay for an Apparel You Can’t Afford

While you want to look good, it is not worth using your credit card to buy apparel. If you have clothes already, you can stay for a while until your finances are in order to buy new clothes.

Ignore Subscription Boxes

New companies like Stitch Fix, Rachel Zoe, and Dia & Co are offering a new model for fashion shopping. In this model, you subscribe to receive a box of clothes, which are sorted according to your preferences.

While it is good to try these boxes, I recommend that you unsubscribe from the monthly deliveries.

By following these simple tips, you will be in a better position to look good while saving hundreds of dollars every year.