Coupon apps I use.

I may be one of the few people that loves to grocery shop.  I know that you can now order and have them delivered or pull up and have them put them in your car for you.  I don't think I can ever do that because I love shopping so much.  My other love is to save money.  You may think that these two things don't go together, but they do.  

A couple of years ago, you had to get the coupons from the Sunday paper, cut them out and carry them everywhere you went just in case you needed to run into the grocery store.  It seemed the one time that I would take them out of my purse, I would stop at the store and not have them. Sometimes I would leave them in my car while I was shopping and forget about them and then they would expire.  I do have to say that I have saved a lot of money over the years using coupons.

Well, it's 2018 and we have a new way to save money while buying groceries and other items. One of the ways to save is with apps on your phone.  One of my favorites is called Ibotta.  You can download it on you phone, pick your stores, then pick the items that you want to save money on.  Here is what it looks like.

I will show you how I save and I will pick Walmart for the example. I picked Sparkling Ice beverage.  If you want to buy it, you touch the plus sign and it puts a green check mark on it and it will be saved on your My Offers. Some offers have numbers by them.  If it has x4, that means you have to buy 4 to get the rebate.  There are also others that have little squares with $ on them, that means that you can buy more than one at a time and get the rebate on all of them. That is a new feature which saves time and helps you get more money.

In order to get $1.00 back, you have to buy 4.  I love Sparkling Ice, so if I can buy it and get money back its a win, win!  This only works if you buy something that you or your family will use.

Sometimes you will get a rebate for something new and that is when I love to try new things and get money back.  Sometimes they get us hooked on something new and I keep buying it even without a rebate.

One trick we have learned is check the app before you go to the store. Depending on how much we need we'll go ahead and add the ibotta stuff to our grocery list to save time in the store. Sometimes trips are longer because you're constantly looking at your phone.  

After I bought the Sparkling Ice, I got home and submitted my receipt.  You have to make sure that all of the items that you bought show up on you rebate page before you submit it.

A Walmart receipt usually will scan the QR code which makes it easy.  Double check all rebates, then submit.  All other receipts you will scan the whole receipt.  

Ibotta will work with the cartwheel app at the same time if you're shopping at Target.

This is what I have made from this account to date.

This is real cash!  Once you have at least $20.00, then you can transfer. You can see I have $4.67 saved in the blue, the pink is pending savings. Once the blue has $20.00 I will transfer to PayPal.   We have used some of this money for vacations. It can be kinda tricky at first you just have to play around with it. 

There are other apps that I use, Receipt Hog, Checkout 51 and Fetch Rewards.  Receipt Hog is an app that you upload all of your receipts to and it will give you coins, which can be converted to cash to a Paypal account. I have saved a total of $60.00 cash.  Checkout 51 is an app that you have to go in and pick your rebates and then submit your receipt and they will send you a check when you reach $20.00 in rebates. I have saved $101.50 cash. Fetch Rewards is an app that you go in and pick brands that you normally buy and after you buy them, you scan your receipt and it will give you points that can be redeemed for several rewards. I have just started using this app, so I don't have anything to tell you that I have received yet.

Here is my code you can put in if you decide to try Ibotta, dsyxouv.  Fetch Rewards has a referral code, mine is V9TYP. With this one, you get points that you redeem for gift cards like Sephora, AMC Theaters, Chili's, and a bunch of other restaurants.  For Ibotta, you need to be on a team to reach levels and get extra bonuses to get more money back. For this you need a Facebook that is hooked up to your Ibotta app. Sam set up a separate one just to add people who use Ibotta. She added Ibotta to the name of her page so she knows which is which. Once you get a good number of people on your team you don't have to check it. I use my personal account.  

Once you start saving money with these apps it can become addicting! 

Love-Craft-Pickles

La Donna