WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH CASHBACK?

Most folks think that Cashback is a very small incentive of which one should not care much. I would like to give you a glimpse of how much can you save with cash-back as well as why it is one of the secret weapon in saving in your day to day life.

Let's start with a typical credit card. Most credit card with offer you 1% Cashback on all of your transaction and have no annual fee on them. While getting 1% is good you can do much better than that! Below is a glimpse on how much you can potentially earn in Cashback with your credit card in brick & mortar stores. The trick is to use specific Cashback card for given category of purchases and the acceptance of Visa/MasterCard/AMEX in those stores.  Below I have listed how much you can earn in Cashback and the specific card/cards which helps you with that. Also certain card's carry annual fees but if you have lot of spend on the card with annual fees it may very well be worth it.


6% Cashback on all the grocery purchases at supermarkets (excluding warehouse club like Costco and Sam's club -- Hey but there is a work around for that as well!! Keep reading!) 
a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees

3% Cashback on gas stations
a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees
b. Costco True Earnings Card
c. Bank of America BankAmericard Cash Rewards

3% at department stores
a. American Express Blue Cash Preferred - $75 Annual fees 

2% on Travel & Dining
a. Chase Sapphire Preferred - $95 Annual fees
b. Costco True Earnings Card 

If you are looking for a no fee card than check out Chase Freedom or Discover More card with its 5% Cashback on rotating bonus category every quarter. (5% cash back on Max $1500 spend in bonus category and you need to register for bonus every quarter)

How to Maximize your Cashback in stores:
1. If you are using American Express Blue Cash Preferred card you can shop for gift cards at grocery stores like Safeway and Kroger for other stores from which you actually want to buy stuff. For e.g. you could buy gift cards for Staples, Chili's, Southwest Airlines, Lowe's etc etc.. and potentially earn 6% on those and then use those cards to do the actual buying in your favorite store. You can even buy gift card's for Shell, BP and Amazon thus earning you 6% for those purchases.

2. If you are using Chase Freedom or Discover More card to do the shopping at 5% category bonus store you should check out those stores to see if they carry the gift card of your favorite store. Essentially these gift cards would already yield 5% Cashback on your future purchases.

3. What if the bonus category store does not have gift card for your favorite store? Do not worry! You could buy an VISA, MasterCard or AMEX Prepaid gift card using your credit card. Make sure you buy the highest denomination card as these cards usually have fees ranging from $3.95 for $25 card to $5.95 for $500 card so it would be worth the hassle if you buy $500 card. This will eventually drop your 6% Cashback to ~4.8% or your 5% Cashback to ~3.81% but its still better than getting 1% Cashback.

How to Maximize your Cashback for online purchases:
1. Using your credit card and going through Cashback portal to your favorite store: You could shop by first checking Cashback website's such as CashBack Holics, Evrewards & Topcashback to find out the portal which awards best cash back rates for your favorite online store. The good ones in my opinion are Ebates, MR. Rebates, Topcashback, Ultimate Rewards (Only for Chase customers) and ShopAtHome. You could even earn Cashback for your flight reservation, hotel booking or bidding as well as for your dream vacation. So do not miss to cash on this opportunity

2. Buying gift card's for your favorite stores and then using those gift card's to make online purchase: There is huge secondary market which sells gift card's at discount of anywhere from 3% to 30% for most of the chain stores you wish to shop online at. You can compare the rates at Giftcardgranny before you start. Two of the popular gift card resale sites are Plastic jungle and Cardpool. You can even earn cashback while buying gift card using Topcashback. So essentially this creates a "double-dip" situation where you buy the gift card online at a discount and then use the discounted gift card to make the online purchase at your favorite retailer online store through a Cashback portal giving you some more Cashback. You can even do a potential "triple-dip" with a little more work by first buying VISA/MasterCard/AMEX branded prepaid gift card from your 5% or 6% credit card Cashback awarding store and using the prepaid card in turn for buying gift card online. Do note some online stores DO NOT award Cashback when buying stuff using the "store gift card", so you might want to check the terms for Cashback.

3. Using the VISA/MasterCard/AMEX prepaid gift card for Online shopping: So you bought this gift card at a 5% Cashback category bonus store or 6% Cashback grocery store. You can register these cards on your name and use them for the online purchase as well earn Cashback from the online Cashback portals. Since the Cashback from online Cashback portal ends up in your account with that portal and NOT to your prepaid gift card, you do not need to worry about the gift card once the funds are exhausted (The only time you might be worried is when you want to make a return of the purchase and thus will need to keep the prepaid gift card safe with you).

4. Shopping at Costco at a Cashback of ~4.8% or ~3.8%: Since you could buy a prepaid VISA/MasterCard/AMEX at the bonus category store or the grocery store, you could use that to buy Costco Gift card online through Costco website. Here is the direct link to the page. The best part is you could make a purchase using VISA or MasterCard where as in store you can only use AMEX branded card.

Hopefully you learnt something which you can use for your daily purchase. Did I miss anything? Anything else you would like to add?

Disclaimer: None of the links above earn me any referral.

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