Let’s talk Gift Cards
This is a trick/tip that I will sometimes forget myself.
Most grocery stores, at least the ones in my area, usually offer some type of benefit if you buy gift cards from them.
In my area, we have Kroger and Giant Eagle. Each store gives you points for buying gift cards and those points can be redeemed either as an amount off gas or groceries. This does not work buying a gift card to the grocery store, but buying an Amazon or DoorDash type gift card.
If you know you are going to be shopping at Amazon, or ordering from DoorDash or any other place these grocery stores sell gift cards to, buy the gift card before you go shopping. If you are going to spend the money anyways, then earn the points to use towards gas and/or groceries.
If you are a member of Sam’s Club (other club memberships may do this also, but since I am not a member I do not know their benefits) you can buy some gift cards at a discount. As an example you can buy a $50.00 DoorDash gift card for $48.98. That is a savings of $1.02, which may not be huge, but those small savings start adding up.
I’m going to use a real life examples to show how you end up saving with buying a gift card ahead of time. The two examples I am going to use, I will also use later to show more discounts/savings/cash back tips.
First example is a time I was shopping for a new stove. After we did all the research we went to the store to look at the one we were interested in. We looked it over, “kicked the tires” and everything you do when buying a new stove. While we knew we wanted it, we didn’t purchase it then. Knowing what the cost was, I went to Giant Eagle and bought gift cards for store we were going to purchase the stove at. Giant Eagle allows you build up enough points to get free gas, up to 30 gallons. Purchasing the gift cards gave me enough points for free gas. While my vehicle doesn’t hold 30 gallons, I have gas cans just for this occasion. While I don’t remember the exact cost of gas at the time, we will say $3.00 per gallon. That gave me $90 in free gas. I filled up my tank and the gas cans. I didn’t need to pay for gas for the next 2 weeks, save $90 in gas and the only thing I did was buy the gift cards to buy the stove I was already going to purchase.
My second example is basically the same thing. I had been eyeing this trip that Groupon was selling. I used my Qapital account to save up for it. Once I had enough to purchase the trip, I didn’t purchase it right away. I went to Giant Eagle again and bought gift cards for Groupon. Once again, this gave me enough points for free gas. Using the $3.00 a gallon cost I previously used, I once again had a savings of $90.00 for something I had planned on purchasing anyways.
Every store is different is different on their points and fuel points so make sure you find out what your favorite store redemption policy is.
