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!

Discounted Gift Card Sites

   I use discounted gift cards frequently for my everyday purchases. The two sites that I am going to tell you about today represent the most professional of the sites out there.

First, why use discounted gift cards?  Well, they are easily purchased in the amounts you need, the discount savings are significant (up to 30% off), and you don't need to buy a store "loyalty" credit card to get the savings.  It is an easy, safe and guaranteed way to put money back in your pocket. My only caution is to buy only what you will use in the next 2-3 weeks, as your money is locked up in these cards until you use them.


The biggest of the discount  gift card sites is Plastic Jungle.  They offer more cards for more merchants than anyone out there.  They also tend to offer the highest discounts on many of the popular merchants. Register now, because you do not want to take the time to register when your favorite card shows up, or you could lose it.

The 2nd most popular site is Cardpool.  This firm is good at getting some of the hard to come by gift cards, like Amazon, Whole Foods and Walmart. Each morning at 7 a.m. Eastern, they put a fresh batch of cards on their site, and I have found this to be the best time to grab the hard to come by cards.  These cards usually are sold within 10 minutes.

So how do you know which site has the best deals for your merchant?

Well, I use Gift Card Granny.  This site is an aggregator of all of the top discount giftcard resellers, and also includes giftcards being sold on Ebay. I go to this site virtually every day to find giftcards I am interested in, and it is a good way to see who offers the best discounts on any given merchant.

Let me share a bit of advice, however.  I would NEVER buy a giftcard from the Ebay site.  The giftcard resellers guarantee every purchase to be as represented for up to 100 days.  No Ebay seller will do that.  I personally had $388 in Whole Foods giftcards that would not work.  I notified Cardpool and my credit card was credited my entire purchase price the same day.  That is the type of service you will get from these companies, and I can sleep at night because of it.

In a future post, I will go through the analysis of why I think discounted gift cards represent the fastest, cleanest way to big discounts; and if you purchase with a cashback credit card, the savings just multiply.