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!

Merchant Cashback Strategies: Amazon.com

   Each week, I hope to feature an article detailing the best strategy I use for getting the maximum cash back from a particular merchant.  I have decided to start with Amazon.com, one of, if not the largest retailer on the Internet. During the holidays, Amazon's business soars, and so remember to bookmark this post for when you do your holiday shopping.

   

   Amazon is one of the few major Internet merchants for which there is not a cashback discount offered through any of the cashback portals that I recommend. 

So what options are there? 


   Basically, one has 2 options.

  1.  You can apply for the Amazon Rewards Visa credit card.  If you qualify, you will receive 3% cash back on all of your Amazon purchases, a $40 signup bonus, 2% back on gas station, restaurant and drugstore purchases and 1% back on everything else.  There is no annual fee, and the card carries a variable interest rate of 13.24% to 21.24%, depending on your creditworthiness.  Surprisingly, in my opinion, Lifehacker readers just last week voted the Amazon Rewards Visa as the best cash back Rewards credit card available in the market.  Perhaps it was because of the demographics of their readership, but I find the card relatively unremarkable.  To read the Lifehacker article, click here.

2.  The 2nd option is to purchase an Amazon online gift card Ecode through one of the gift card resellers I have recommended in my earlier blogs, such Cardpool or Plastic Jungle. My experience has been that Cardpool seems to more frequently offer the Ecodes and their discount runs 3%.  There are two other benefits to using this option.  First, if you use the Mr. Rebates portal to reach Cardpool and purchase your card or cards, the Mr. Rebates cashback discount brings the total savings to 4%.  The 2nd benefit is that you receive your gift card Ecode within a couple hours, and if you buy the gift card with a cashback credit card, the total savings can go up to 5-6%, depending on your cashback credit card.  A side benefit is that you do not have to ding your credit rating by having one more credit card in your wallet.  The one negative is that one does not get the onetime $40 signup bonus that the Amazon card offers. As I have recommended before however, do not buy more gift cards than you can use in the short term.  There will always be more available for purchase at a later date.

   The choice is yours, but I recommend using Cardpool via the Mr. Rebates portal.