Breakdown of a Recent Cash Back Transaction

   Too much talking and not enough doing does not make Steve a very interesting blogger.  So I thought that I would occasionally post a recent cash back transaction that I did, so you can see the thought process and the savings realized.

   I have started to take up cooking, just to throw a little variety into our chicken-fish-meat-fish dinner routine.  Through one of the many "hot deal" aggregator sites on the Internet, I came across a 6 qt. slow cooker at J.C. Penneys, originally $59.95, now on sale for $29.95 plus S&H.  I probably would not have bought it, except that there was a checkout code that whacked another $10 off the price, bringing it down to $19.95.  Now I was interested!

   Here is how I proceeded.  I first went to the evRewards site to see which cashback portal was offering the best deal that day.  Ebates was offering 4% cashback if I used them to make my purchase at the J.C. Penney website.  Then I went to Gift Card Granny to see what kind of discount I could get on JC Penneys gift cards.  It turned out that you can buy these giftcards at a 13% discount through Cardpool, 14% through Plastic Jungle, and 15% through giftcards.com.  I already knew that I could get an extra 1% if I used Mr. Rebates to buy a Cardpool giftcard, which was the only site at the time offering Ecodes.  Since I was buying online and the sale was of a limited duration, I wanted my gift card fast. I paid for the giftcard with my 1% back credit card, bringing the total savings up to 15% for the giftcard.

  So I went ahead and purchased an eCode giftcard to J.C. Penney through Cardpool using the Mr. Rebates portal.  Then I went to Ebates, selected J.C. Penney as my merchant and was directed to the J.C. Penneys website.

   I placed my order, earning 4% back from Ebates on my $26.69 total purchase, and paid with my J.C. Penney's giftcard Ecode, for which I had just paid 85% of face value.  Net savings were 19% off the already heavily discounted price of $19.95.  

  It was a very small purchase, but it illustrates the power of stacking cash back rewards.  My slow cooker was shipped this morning.  Hopefully, by next week, I will be burning my first crockpot pot roast!