A couple of days ago people experienced Black Friday’s madness. This year the competition was fierce with most retailers opening their doors on Thursday afternoon. The intent was to get a head start on having the highest sales of the season. But what about Thanksgivings as a tradition? … Nah forget about that, my perception is that for the average Joe is all about shopping and not about stuffing your belly with turkey and pecan pie.

If you read my post “As Thanksgiving Approaches Think About This” you will notice that I’m not against buying stuff during the holidays or any time of the year. My point was around awareness and thinking of expenditures in the context of time.

At the end of that post, I mentioned that our plan was to get a couple of things worth 6-8 hours of my precious time. In the end, we stuck to our plan and it all worked out.

Smart Shopping

I don’t think there’s such a thing as “smart shopping”; however, there are strategies that can help stretch our dollars if we play our cards right. 

Ibotta

Walmart, Costco, King Soopers, Safeway, Sprouts, and Trader Joes are our go-to places to get everything we need. Despite our efforts in cutting costs by having a shopping list, buying store-brand products, and using store cards to get the lowest price in places like King Soopers & Safeway, we have not been able to move the needle dramatically in 2017.

Recently we started using Ibotta. If you haven’t heard about it, Ibotta is an app that allows you to earn cash-back on in-store products and mobile purchases with receipt or purchase verification. The process is as follows:

1. Search for the item(s) you intend to buy at one of Ibotta’s partnered stores and add the offer(s) to your account.
2. Go shopping and redeem the rewards via:
   • Manual receipt submission,
   • Preferred partner or loyalty card submission and
   • Mobile shopping submission.

In an attempt to give ibotta a chance, we’ve tried adding offers prior to going to the store. The problem is that most of the items on our list never have any cashback. We haven’t given up but for your reference, our current lifetime earnings are sitting at $1.50 but hey!! we are at least trying. If you want to check Ibotta feel free to use my referral code Imxeeri.

So aside from Ibotta, what else are we doing?

Our strategy is simple. Since lowering costs in this category is somewhat limited, we did research and decided to get the Blue Cash Preferred credit card by American Express.

With the Blue Cash Preferred we get these benefitsL

• Six percent (6%) cash-back on groceries (excludes Walmart, Target & wholesalers such as Costco and Sams Club) up to $6000/year,
• Three percent (3%) cash-back on gas and,
• One percent (1%) on everything else.

It comes with an annual fee of $95 but it is totally worth it. Doing the math suggests you need to spend a minimum of $1583.33 ($95/0.06) in a year to cover the annual fee.

When we signed up for the card it had a $200 welcome bonus with $1000 spend in the first 3 months from account opening. This essentially takes care of the annual fee for 2.1 years.

Other Apps that I really like because they’re 100% effortless are Drop and Dosh.

Drop

Drop lets you shop for a bunch of different brands on one cohesive platform allowing you to earn points by simply using any debit or credit cards linked to the app. The best part about Drop is that it’s effortless. While you continue spending at your favorite places, you earn points that are independent of the bank loyalty program you’re already participating in. Meaning, there’s no interruption of your daily spending habits.

Dosh

For Dosh, you link your debit or credit card (they pay a $1 sign-up bonus per card), and when you make a purchase at a qualifying store, you’ll earn cash-back automatically without having to scan a receipt.

For Everything Else …

We use a shopping hack that requires the following things:

1. A credit card to maximize rewards,
2. MileagePlus X app to get United miles,
3. Ebates to get cashback,
4. Store cards for Target & Amazon and finally,
5. An optimizer called Walla.by.

Credit Cards

We’ve signed up for credit cards that come with attractive sign-up bonuses (50K up to 100K points) and great benefits.

To get the sign-up bonus most cards require cardholders spending X$$ in ~3 months. In our case, we use the card to pay for all fixed expenses until we hit the minimum. I recommend visiting nerdwallet, magnifymoney, travelmiles101 or the Mad Fientist to check the latest and greatest on best credit cards available in the market.

MileagePlus X

The MileagePlus X app is a great tool to earn United miles. It works like a traditional shopping portal where you buy electronic gift cards from retailers and get 1 – 5 bonus miles for each dollar spent. Below is a short video that explains how it works.

Ebates

Ebates is a company that gives cash back for shopping through their affiliated stores. It has relationships with thousands of stores and offers discounts or cash-back when you shop at these stores through Ebates.com.

The process is simple. You go to Ebates.com, search for the store you want to shop at, click the “shop now”, and shop at the online store (as you normally would). Once you’ve made a purchase, a percentage shows up in your Ebates account.

If you want to make this even easier, I suggest downloading the Ebates chrome extension which will automatically pop up and ask you to activate the cashback if you’re browsing one of their affiliated stores.

Maximizing Your Rewards

Now that you have a better idea of some of these tools let me show you how we combine them to maximize returns. This is what other bloggers call “stacking”.

1. Download MileadgePlusX and sign in with your UnitedMiles number and password. If you don’t have an account with United you will have to create one at united.com.

2. Go to My Account and add the credit card you’d like to use for purchasing the gift cards. Note that if you add a United or Club card you automatically qualify for a 25% bonus on every purchase. Keep in mind you can do this and still pay with a different credit card.

3. Go to Nearby and check available offers in terms of miles/dollar. Press Pay Now and enter the amount you wish to purchase. Be advised some merchants allow you to specify the exact amount of the purchase (between $5 and $1000) but others such as Amazon have pre-defined denominations ($25, $50, $100, $250, and $500).

4. Type in your United password to confirm the transaction. Once completed you will see the gift card on the screen. You can proceed with providing the information to the cashier or if online proceed with step 5.

5. Go to ebates and check available cash offers from thousands of affiliated stores. Once you see the store of interest press shop now and you’ll be taken to the store website where it will be business as usual.

Conversely, you can also download the Chrome extension (as mentioned previously) and bypass ebates. Once you get to the retailer website you’ll be prompted to activate the coupon right away.

6. Once you’re ready to check out, choose gift cards as the option of payment and paste the code you received on the MileagePlus X app. Complete the purchase and voila.

Let me share an example from a recent purchase we made at oldnavy.com:

1st Kicker	Credit card (1.5X ultimate rewards points)	183.63 points or $1.83
2nd Kicker	MileagePlusX (Old Navy – 10miles/dollar)	1224 miles or $12.24
3rd Kicker	Ebates (Old Navy – 8% cashback)	$9.79

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In terms of savings, our $122.42 purchase came down to $98.56!!!

We could go for a 4th kicker and perhaps a 5th kicker by linking a United Card. This automatically gives a 25% booster and uses United’s Shopping Portal which instead of giving cashback like Ebates gives customers additional miles per dollar spent.

Personally, we prefer cash instead of miles. Even though we’re getting United miles, we prefer Chase Ultimate Rewards point. They give us the flexibility to fly partnered airlines instead of being 100% committed to United. Nonetheless, be aware that is an option if United is your airline of choice.

Target & Amazon Prime Store Card

These are not officially part of our hack but I thought I’d bring them up. Target offers the Red Card that offers 5% off on qualifying purchases both in-store and online plus free shipping regardless of the purchase amount.

Amazon offers the Prime Store Card which gives you 5% cash-back on every purchase or special financing based on the purchase amount. In order to qualify for these benefits, you need to have an eligible Amazon Prime account.

Walla.by

With Wallaby every time you shop, you have the ability to see the best card to use and why. You’ll be in the know about special bonuses with just a tap. Once your credit cards have been added you can start maximizing rewards, minimize interest, and optimize your cash flow.

The app suggests which card to use based on reward potential. It has a built-in credit card advisory system that will empower you to optimally maximize your credit card rewards 24/7.

Why keep up with a cheat sheet with your individual credit card benefits if you can have an app that does it for you for free?

Final Thoughts

• Listen, I didn’t write this post so you could go on a shopping spread to get a few dollars back. If that’s your takeaway you missed the point big time.
• Every dollar saved, especially on fixed expenses, is a major win as it translates into a dollar that can be invested.
• Once you know your fixed expenses are what they are, consider some of the shopping hacks shared on this post.
• We will continue to use ibotta, dosh, and drop.
• The Blue Cash Preferred credit card by American Express has the highest % cashback on groceries at 6%. If you forget about the 3% cashback on gas, you only need $1583.33 to make it a wash with the $95 annual fee. For us is a no brainer.
• When combining a solid credit card that gives you 1 or 1.5% cash-back with MileagePlus X and Ebates, you can save a substantial amount of money.

What do you think about these shopping hacks? Curious to hear about yours so feel free to share in the comment section.

Until next time … JJ