There are plenty of ways to express love to those who matter, but buying presents is the way most Americans elect to celebrate the holidays. Those who do the bulk of holiday shopping online have the chance to put some of that money back in their wallets thanks to a little trick known as stacking cash back rewards.
What is stacking cash back?
In the simplest terms, stacking cash back rewards is the practice of clicking through an online rebate portal or cash back site to shop and then pay for the purchase with a credit card that earns rewards.
How It Works
Cash back sites function in a similar way cash back rewards do on a credit card. The sites get paid for advertisements. When someone clicks off the cash back site to a store and makes a purchase, the site earns a referral fee. Part of that referral fee is then shared with shopper. This is similar to how a credit card company gets paid an interchange fee by the merchant when someone uses a credit card, and then part of that fee may get passed to the shopper in the form of cash back rewards. These sites also offer coupons and discount codes.
How Cash Back Websites Pay
All cash back portals have different rules about payment, but many pay via a traditional check in the mail or PayPal each quarter. Similar to credit cards, most sites have a minimum threshold a shopper must hit before being able to cash out. The minimums tend to range from $10 to $25.
Stacking cash back sometimes sounds a bit complicated, but the process only takes one or two extra clicks of the mouse. Follow these steps below to easily earn money back.
Step 1: Sign up for cash back sites.
There are a multitude of cash back or rebate websites, including Ebates, Mr. Rebates and BeFrugal. There are no limits to how many sites a shopper can use, which is important in step two.
Step 2: Decide on a purchase, and compare the cash back bonus options.
The fact that cash back sites aren’t capped should incentivize shoppers to look around and find which site provides the highest cash back on a particular purchase.
For example, let’s say a shopper named Laura decided to buy a pair of Sperry shoes online. Before opening a browser to the Sperry website, she first compared the cash back rates of Ebates, Mr. Rebates and BeFrugal. Ebates and Mr. Rebates both offer 5 percent cash back, but BeFrugal offers 7 percent. Laura logs into her BeFrugal account and then clicks on Sperry. She’s redirected to Sperry’s online store where she makes a $120 purchase. Laura earned $8.40 — or rather reduced her purchase by $8.40 — by just clicking through BeFrugal.
Step 3: Pay for the purchase with a credit card that that will earn additional cash back.
Here is where the “stacking” part comes in.
Laura clicked through BeFrugal to get to Sperry and made her purchase. She earned $8.40 from BeFrugal, but she also paid with a credit card that earned her 2 percent cash back on her purchase, another $2.40 off her new shoes.
Is this a get-rich-quick scheme? Of course not. But Laura reduced her $120 purchase she was going to make anyway to $109.20 by simply clicking through a cash back portal and then paying with a credit card that earned rewards. That’s an additional $10.80 she can put away in savings.
Step 4: Double check credit card rewards.
Savvy shoppers double check credit card cash back offers before making a payment. This is especially important during holiday shopping when credit cards may run specials with certain stores, or the cards have rotating cash back categories.
How This Helps for Holiday Shopping
The holidays are a time when most people will make a lot purchases in a short period of time. Gift-giving can be a real budget buster, but using cash back sites and stacking with credit card rewards can put a little bit of the money spent back in a shoppers’ pockets. The real trick is to not overspend just because you’re getting cash back. This is the psychology behind credit card rewards and what every shop owner advertising on cash back portals hopes you’ll do. So stick to your gift-giving list!
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4 Steps to Cash In on Stacking Cash Back originally appeared on usnews.com
