Special Edition: Holiday Shopping Deals Start Now

Trae Bodge (0:00)

This is the time to be savvy about shopping, and part of that is shopping during these big sale moments, like next week.

Erica Mandy (0:08)

Today is Saturday, October 3rd. Ready or not, the holiday shopping season is already getting started. Amazon's October Prime Big Deal Days is just days away now, which means a lot of deals, a lot of influencer links, and a lot of pressure to buy right now. So how do you know what's actually worth it? What to buy now versus waiting? And how to take advantage of sales, AI and other tools without getting sucked into the hype? Today, we're joined by Trae Bodge, a consumer and money-saving expert who has specialized in retail, entrepreneurship and smart shopping for more than a decade. Today, she's helping us to shop smarter this holiday season.

Welcome to The NewsWorthy special edition Saturday, when we sit down with a different expert or celebrity every Saturday to talk about something in the news. Don't forget to tune in every Monday through Friday for our regular episodes where we provide all the day's news in less than 15 minutes. I'm Erica Mandy. It's now time for today's special edition Saturday.

Trae Bodge, thanks for joining us here on The NewsWorthy once again.

Trae Bodge (1:06)

So great to be back. Thank you.

Erica Mandy (1:09)

So I want to start with the upcoming Amazon Prime Day, especially as we look ahead to the holidays later this year. People are probably going to be seeing a lot of influencers on social media posting their must have deals and their affiliate links. So what do you think shoppers need to understand about how these links work?

Trae Bodge (1:27)

This is such a good question because obviously, the influencer economy is driving a lot of the way we discover products, how we shop, what we buy. And so if you are on a social media post with your favorite fashion maven, and he or she is talking about something fabulous and they have an exclusive code, that's a great thing to have. Just always keep in mind that they are making a little money off of this. And so they may be more motivated to push that product versus another product. And so I like to read some of the top reviews and then some of the maybe one stars, and just get a sense of what that product looks like and how other people feel about it, and then make your decision accordingly. So you don't want to take that influencer's opinion as gospel, you want to do a little bit of digging before you make your purchase.

Erica Mandy (2:24)

Okay. So those are great tips in terms of what to look for, like the reviews. Is there anything else that can kind of tell you, this may actually be worthwhile versus an unnecessary impulse buy on my part, or even that there are some red flags from the influencer beyond what you typically see?

Trae Bodge (2:40)

I think with influencers is they're consistently selling things. That is a red flag for me. I find this a lot in the supplement space, and I'm just like, how on earth are you taking that many supplements every day? I don't need to take 50 supplements a day and neither do you.

That for me is slightly problematic, so I really like to follow influencers who have a nice cadence of products that they're recommending. They're not selling something all the time.

Erica Mandy (3:08)

I love that you said that actually because I had to stop accepting supplement companies as sponsors because I was like, wait, I can't take all these and I ended up not doing them anymore. I was like, I have to start rejecting them even for advertisers for our podcast.

Trae Bodge (3:22)

It's interesting. I actually stopped writing about supplements for the same reason. Not to say that aren't good products out there, but I can't really test all of these things.

Erica Mandy (3:32)

Right. Not that that's what we're going to be buying for the holidays, but it's just that kind of idea.

So when we actually follow the affiliate link or we're looking for something specific and we see on Amazon or wherever else, there is a deal. How can we make sure that it's actually a deal and not just marked as a deal?

Trae Bodge (3:53)

Sure. So what I used to say is you should search the name of that item on Google Shopping or Yahoo Shopping to get a sense of where it's sold and for how much. And, you know, I still stick to that, but what's fantastic about Amazon and how quickly they're progressing, they actually give you price history right there.