I’m not going to sugarcoat this...the idea of paying retail makes me crazy. And in this day and age where there are all kinds ways to save, there really is no reason to lay out more money than you have to. While I use a number of sites, Chrome extensions and cashback apps, it’s the apps I go to first. So it just seemed natural for me to start this particular money saving micro blog with my 3 favorites. As I give you the information on these three, I’m also going to give you the referral links to each one to get you started. Also, using these links (click on their names) will also benefit both you and I and help support this site. I’m also throwing in some tips that I’ve picked up along the way and of course as future posts come up, there will be more information on these and other money savers that I use. All of these are super incredibly easy to use, but wanted to include the little things that will benefit you the most. Learned a lot of this stuff after using these over a few years so let me share it with you now so you don’t have to wait years to pick it up. Here we go! My top 3 are Ebates, Ibotta and TopCashBack. Ebates (now Rakuten): Rakuten is the queen mother of the cash back programs. They do the big stores, including Amazon, Walmart and Target. It's SUPER easy. You're going to shop online anyway, you just go to the site or the app first and click on the store and shop as normal. That's it. Now having said that, sometimes you do need to go into the different offers to see what's what as each store may offer different percentages back depending on department. To me, the best time to use it is during their big offer days. They will send you the emails and/or notifications to let you know when they do that and you can really score some major cash back deals. Just an example...Walmart can be as low as 1% but on everything (not just by department). But I've hit it on big offer days and gotten as much as 10-12% back. Also, Rakuten does four payouts per year. You can opt for a check, PayPal or if it's below a certain amount or not, they may even offer your cash back via gift card. If that's the case, then you get to choose where the card will come from (so you can score a card for a favorite place) AND 99% of the time, they will offer you more money back if you choose this option. So say you have $10 coming to you and they send you the gift card option. They will offer anywhere from 6-12 to choose from and you may have the opportunity to get up to say $15 instead of your $10. Btw, you can also link your payment cards (credit or debit) to your account and choose stores to link to it. For example, I linked Bed Bath and Beyond to my debit card through Ebates and then did a big shopping trip one time. I used one of their famous coupons and because I linked my card, got cashback on top of it. Once you link it, it's linked. You don't have to remember before each trip and they rotate them as well. So you can be on the lookout for new stores. They once did CVS; my holy grail.(look for future posts on CVS) I used my extra bucks, my extra care card sales, got cashback from ebates AND had scored a cashback deal from Bank of America. It was a good, good day. Before I forget, if you use Chrome or Safari, you can download the Ebates/Rakuten extension and when you go to a site that it offers cashback for, the icon will both light up and offer a drop down button that will let you know that they offer cashback and you just hit it to activate it and then just shop. So it catches you in time to make sure you don't lose out on an offer. Note: as of 5/13/2019 the name change from Ebates to Rakuten is new although they’ve always been a Rakuten company. I’m hoping, as many others are as well, that the name goes back to Ebates. Stay tuned. IBOTTA: Ibotta. Is. Awesome. You don't just use this for online shopping. This is my favorite for grocery shopping. You can go into your grocery store, pick your offers, upload your receipts to it and it's added to your account. Boom done.They have GREAT bonuses that add to the cash back. And to top it off, once you sign up, when you share your referral code code your friends are then added to your ‘team’ and the savings really add up!. Let me start by saying, no one can see what you shopped for so no worries there. Example of team earnings: Say my friend, my mother and I are part of a 'team'. When one of us shops and there is a team bonus, you'll just get a notice that say "Patti just scored $1.10 back at walmart" and her purchase goes towards the team bonus. Can get as much as $10 for team bonuses. Over Christmas they ran an awesome individual bonus offer. 8% back from Walmart.com, + a $5 gift card. They've never done that before. Came in handy for my next trip. lol Ibotta does online shopping and for the 'in person/receipt upload' shopping: groceries, liquor stores, restaurants and bars (including some delivery), convenience stores, travel sites, clothing, pharmacy, etc. Love love love this one and their bonuses can really add up. They have recently added the option to add your store loyalty cards as well. If you do that, there is no reason to upload the receipt and your store purchases are automatically scanned for their offers and then added to your account. Unlike Rakuten, you can cash out when you hit a $20 minimum. My Mom for Christmas, used it as a sort of savings account. She let it accumulate to almost $300 for the year and then cashed out to use as extra holiday shopping money. For me personally because I always need every little bit, I cash out as soon as I can. So it's up to you how you want to do it. TOPCASHBACK: My new favorite! So this one has jumped to the top for a couple of reasons: 1) they have a TON of online stores to choose from. 2) many times, they have a bigger cashback percentage on some of the sites I frequent. 3) no minimum for payout 4) they run really fun games where you can win money (and I have) I'll start with the games...this has become something I look forward to. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve discovered lots of new places to shop because of them. I will say this, the games can't be done on the app and have to be done on the site. No biggie. They post clues on their facebook page (or site page) that lead you to the page on their site of a vendor. So say the clue leads you to their Gap page. When you click on the page, a hummingbird (their logo) will fly across the page, you click on him and he gives you a present. It's either money, or an icon (collect all the icons in a series and win a cash prize) or a drawing entry. The best part of this game is that when you go to their facebook page, other members will post where other clues were found and you can find up to 5-10 a day. :D Game aside, you can cashout at any time. Their customer service is awesome and I recommend them the most for cvs.com purchases. Many times they offer 8% back instead of 2-4% on Rakuten. The only downfall with TopCashBack is that they don't do in person shopping and are strictly online and no bonuses but again, many times you can find some better deals and with no waiting for payout, it's a wash. However having said that, they do offer matching and for online shopping, this has turned into a major go-to for me. You can find higher offers for shops as well as the bonus of using their coupons along with the cash back offers which adds to the savings. (You can really luck out with these and many stores offer both the cashback AND coupons.) ~~~ There are other sites and apps I use as well but these are the top 3 I use the most and I thought this would be a great place to start off this particular micro-blog. If I'm looking for a particular item, I will go to all three first to see who has the better deal. Amazon is always a test of this. One site may be running a special one day deal while the other isn't. I know it sounds like a lot of trouble, but honestly, it's takes less than a minute to check and it will end up saving you some good money. Happy Saving!
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