Money Changer

Score deals your friends won’t quite believe by keeping an eye on these budget-focused sites.

By now, we’ve all heard that money’s tight, that we’re on the end of the verge of financial apocalypse, and that everyone will have to cut back. But don’t start lining your shoes with cardboard and cooking beans over a garbage fire just yet. Stripping out luxuries may be one way to stretch your dollars, but for the careful shopper, being frugal need only mean looking a little harder to find deals, and the Web can take a lot of effort out of the process.

We’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite deal-hunting Web sites, where you can find everything from sales and discounts to coupon codes, daily specials and even outright free stuff.

What’s the catch?

No matter which sites you end up using, keep in mind that deals come and go faster than Michael Jackson’s fortune, so you’ll need to make a habit of checking every day – sometimes multiple times a day – to score the best stuff. They call it bargain hunting for a reason, and you’ll need to be in the right place at the right time if you want to bag a buck or two
FatWallet

Consider FatWallet the mother of all money-saving sites. It combines a deal forum, coupon search, and in-house cash back program, making it a one-stop destination for all things bargain-related. Though it specializes in online deals and sales, you can also use FatWallet for comparing other purchases too, like seeing which gym offers the cheapest membership, which car company offers the best rebates to combine with the government’s new cash-for-clunkers program, or where to find cheap lobster.

Fat Wallet

SlickDeals

You’ll never find a group of more stingy, clever or well-researched folks than the Internet dwellers at SlickDeals, which makes it one of the best user-driven communities out there. Every day’s list of hot bargains comes directly from the community, and they’re rated up and down based on the same collective hive mind, so you don’t have to cut through much clutter to find the primo deals. A string of comments on every deal can also help you find other coupons and offers to stack on top of existing offers, or steer you clear of products and stores that aren’t quite as great as they’re made out to be.

RetailMeNot

Plenty of sites offer coupon codes, but RetailMeNot organizes them into one of the most intuitive directories we’ve found. Just enter a site (like Amazon.com) and RetailMeNot drums up a list of active codes. Since restrictions and expirations make some codes more reliable than others, the site even ranks them based on success rate, so you don’t even up wasting time with codes that haven’t worked for other people.