As your life coach – aka your mum – would say, “seize the day”. This is particularly good advice when we find ourselves facing tough decisions or if we are feeling a bit grey. Recently though, the saying has taken on a whole new meaning…

If you’ve never heard of ‘group buying’ sites or ’daily deal’ sites as they are often known, you’re not alone. The concept is simple; one deal per day. It started in the States (where else?!) where it’s going great guns and has finally trickled down to blighty.

We can all save ourselves a bundle by seizing the deal, be it restaurant meals, beauty treatments or days out. Its gonna catch on!

There are heaps of sites, some better then others and this is how they work:

One deal per day: As it says on the tin, there is one main deal per day (sometimes there are a couple of side ones too).

Very big discounts: You can get up to 90% off in some cases.

24hrs only: The deals last one day only.

Per city: Different deals for different cities so make sure you select yours.

Tipping point: This basically is a minimum number that have to commit to buy before the deal is activated.

Enjoy: When you buy a deal, you tend to get an e-voucher emailed to you for you to redeem.

Each site does something different but typically the kind of thing you can get your paws on are spa treatments, restaurant deals or even the odd cheeky cocktail offer (tempting, tempting and um, definately tempting!).

Our four favourite sites are:

Wahanda

Mycitydeal

Groupola

KGB Deals

Checking all these sites every day can be a bigger pain than a bunion but don’t worry, we have taken care of that.  Every day, we do a round up of the best deals and put them into our Daily Chic section (which you’ll find on the right of your screen).  So all you need to do is take a peak and see them all in one place.  We only breakdown as far as Manchester, London and Birmingham but if you click through to the deal, you can select your city and treat yourself.

One final point to make is that you can buy the e-vouchers as a gift for someone else (without it showing the discounted price) which should earn you stacks of brownie points.

If you’re asking, we love spa days…