Although the primary focus of HomeUnemployed.com is financial assistance provided by the CARES Act, I was asked to provide general money-saving articles as well. Here is an article explaining how cashback programs can save you money every time you shop online.

Cashback Overview

Imagine if every time you shop, you get paid back a percentage of your purchase, anywhere from 1% to 15% of your purchase! That means every time you spend $200 at a store, you will get paid between $2 and $30. And this is in addition to any points or cashback that you may earn from your credit card. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it’s not. It’s what informed shoppers use to save money every time they shop.

For example, TopCashBack currently offers (may change at any time) 11% cashback for purchases at Macy’s, so a $300 order gets you $33 back.  They’re offering 12% cashback at HP, so a $300 order gets you $36.  Rakuten, another cashback site, is giving 15% at Macy’s, so your $300 purchase would get you $45, but offers 1% at HP, so that would be $3 back.

The cashback is in addition to discount codes and credit card points. 

Say you buy an item for $500 with a 20% off coupon, and you click through a cashback site which gives 15% cashback, you will pay $400 to the store, then receive $60 from the cashback program, plus the bonus from your credit card (eg 2% with Citi Double Cashback). So the $500 purchase will end up costing $332.

Even if you only earn 2% cashback when shopping, it doesn’t take much time to do this – and the money quickly adds up!

Why Stores Offer Free Money

Online stores are always looking to advertise. They are happy to pay other websites to direct traffic to their store.

Say you see a product on a deal site with a link to the store to purchase the item. When you click the link from the deal site, the store sees that you clicked from the deal site, and may pay the deal site a commission for bringing them a customer (you!).

Cashback sites effectively give you a portion of the advertising fee they receive for sending you to the store. 

When you shop online, you can decide if you want to support a site by clicking through their site, or if you want to get the cash yourself (by going through a cashback site). In other words, you decide if you want to be paid an advertising fee to recommend yourself.

Which Cashback Program Should I Use?

Some pay a higher rate than others. To keep things simple, choose one cashback program. If you primarily shop at one store online, then check which cashback program gives the most cash back for that store.  If you do lots of online shopping or want to maximize your cashback, you might want to sign up for more than one cashback account.

We earn a referral for every person that signs up through our links, so in addition to saving money while you shop, you support homeunemployed.com at the same time. Win-win 🙂

• TopCashBack – $10 signup bonus until December 29

  • On average, TopCashBack has the highest cashback rates. They supposedly give you the full amount of cashback they receive from the stores.
  • Currently, there is no signup bonus. They sometimes offer a $20 signup bonus, so if you are not in a rush, you may want to wait for a signup bonus offer.
  • There is currently a $10 signup bonus, until December 29, 2020.

• Rakuten

  • $20 signup bonus. Rakuten (used to be called Ebates) has some great promotions and sometimes pays more than TopCashBack.
  • They currently have a very high $40 signup bonus, so if you are considering signing up, do it while the promotion is on. 

Here are some more (often less cashback):

• BeFrugal – $10 signup bonus after earning $10 in cashback.
• MrRebates – $5 signup bonus
• Swagbucks – $5 signup bonus

There are also programs run by airlines that earn you miles instead of cashback, for example, United, American Airlines, and JetBlue. Other options include Chase Ultimate Rewards.

How to Get Started

Simple. Sign up with a Cashback program (30 seconds).

Then before you shop

1. Go to the cashback website (TopCashBack.com or Rakuten.com)
2. Search for your store (for example “Macy’s”)
3. Click the link to go to Macys.com
4. Shop as you normally do
5. Watch your cashback accumulate in your account 🙂

Two optional ways to streamline the process, making it even easier and quicker to earn cashback:

1. After searching for a store on your cashback site, bookmark the page, so you can quickly click it each time you shop at that store.
2. Download a browser extension (Chrome: Rakuten & TopCashBack, Firefox: Rakuten & TopCashBack). When using a browser extension you are meant to see a notification that you can click each time you visit the store. Though if you have an adblocker or pop-up blocker installed, that might stop you from seeing the extension.

CashBackMonitor

If you decide to sign up for more than one cashback site, here’s a nifty website, cashbackmonitor.com. Use it to check how much any given store gives for any cashback program. You can also use cashbackmonitor to check the historical cashback rates for a store.

Keep in mind that just because a cashback site is listed on cashbackmonitor, does not mean that is reliable.

Amazon – Not Allowing Cashback

Although it would have been amazing to earn cashback for all your Amazon purchases as well, unfortunately, Amazon (our referral link) doesn’t generally allow cashback sites to reimburse individuals. Topcashback currently gives cashback just for Amazon devices (8%) and Amazon Prime. So if you’re buying something from Amazon, you can choose who you want to support! If you like the content at HomeUnemployed.com, here’s our Amazon link! 

Further Tips

1. Look at the cashback as an extra bonus. Why? Sometimes there may be an issue and you won’t get cashback.
2. If using an ad blocker, disable it on your cashback site, or it might block the tracking.
3. The cashback programs change their rates pretty often, either because the store changed the amount it pays, or because the cashback site had a promotion. So don’t rely on the rate staying the same – especially if you see a very high rate.
4. Most stores give the advertising fee even if the person clicked from the cashback site after adding items to cart, but not all. Some stores, only give for items that were added to the cart after clicking in from the cashback site.
5. Many blogs, including deal sites, have links that earn them advertising fees. If you click from a few sites before making a purchase, the store will usually pay the last website that the customer clicked from. If you want to earn cashback yourself, make sure the cashback site is the last site you click from before placing the order. To be extra sure, first click the link from your cashback site before shopping. Then, if you click from a different site before checking out, click from your cashback site once again before submitting your order.
6. There are often exclusions to cashback earnings.  For example, Apple products are often excluded from cashback earnings. The cashback site will spell out clearly which items are excluded.
7. Most of the time you can use a discount code and still get cashback. But sometimes coupon codes invalidate the cashback. If the coupon appears on the cashback website, you’re more likely to get both. So if the cashback site is offering 20% cashback and you have a 10% off coupon, using your own code might net you less in the end.