11 Ways to Resist Wasting Your Money on Groupon and Other Deal Sites

Whether it's Groupon, LivingSocial, Redeemio or a host of other daily deal sites, those bargains for half off can be almost too enticing to pass up. Who wouldn't want half off a spa treatment or dinner at a restaurant they've been thinking of going to but never did because it was too expensive?

And that's a large part of the reason why Groupon has prospered and spawned dozens of copy-cat sites jumping into the white-hot deal space. People can't resist a deal. Trouble is, is it really a deal when it's for something you weren't likely to purchase in the first place? Most of the services offered are decidedly more luxury than necessity (unless you view those golf lessons as a necessity). One such site, CoupMe.com, has reported that 80% of new customers to businesses that offer the deals wouldn't have gone there without the coupon.

In this economy, the first lesson in how to be frugal should be how to resist the lure of offers on deal sites bombarding your inbox: Don't buy something if you don't need it. Yes, it's 50% off, but it's still money spent and might be money saved if you didn't have the deal to entice you.

Here are some other tips to keep you from wasting your money on deal sites, although "wasting" is subjective. What's an affordable deal for one person might be a luxury someone else can't afford.