I love free money. Don’t we all? So what’s an easy way to get money back? Cashback apps!
There are a lot of companies negotiating deals with major brands or spending a large portion of their marketing budget to drive people towards their product. Which means you have an opportunity to earn a little bit of extra money.
Now, let me caveat this post with the fact that I don’t believe cashback apps will make you rich. But if you earn a few extra hundred dollars throughout the year by doing exactly what you’re doing now, why wouldn’t you? As an added bonus, if you learn to sweat the little things ($5 here, $5 there), you set yourself up with the right skills and mindset for the larger, impactful financial decisions to become very wealthy.
I’ve been using a lot of these apps, and I average anywhere from $300-$500 back per year through the combination of these apps, so go check this out!
The Best Cashback Apps
Rakuten (formerly eBates)
Rakuten cuts deals with major department stores to give you a certain percentage of cashback after each purchase. This is by far one of my favorite apps because it’s actually as simple as it sounds. Even though it sounds too good to be true, it’s actually not.
All you need to do is sign up, add the chrome extension to your browser, and when you make any purchases online from common stores (they work with thousands of stores like Amazon, Macy’s, etc.) you’ll Activate your purchase. Once you check out, Rakuten automatically adds money back to your account. It’s as easy as that.
Four times throughout the year, that money will be sent to you as either a check or added to your PayPal account.
I’m obsessed with this because it’s SO EASY. On big shopping days, like Black Friday, Rakuten doubled almost all the cashback rewards and I now have almost $80 in cashback because it was so generous!
If you do just one cashback app, this is the best cashback app I’d recommend.
Get $10 free when you sign-up using this link.
Ibotta
Do you go grocery shopping? Like eating food? Do you want easy money back for going grocery shopping?
Duh…the answer is yes, so the next cashback app that I use all the time is Ibotta.
Download Ibotta to your phone
- https://ibotta.onelink.me/iUfE/1005cd3f
- Referral code: omllyuvv
Save your receipts when you go grocery shopping and scan them to the app. Money will automatically be added to your account and you can withdraw your money once you earn $20 in your account.
We love drinking spiked seltzers and red wine, and I’ve been extremely impressed with how much money you get back on wine. My favorite wine (Coppola Diamond Collection) is usually c~$15 per bottle, so we get it when we feel like splurging. Our cheaper option that we love is Carnivor Cabernet Sauvignon, which is around $9 per bottle. Both of these wines were on Ibotta for a while and we got $2 back on every bottle we bought. The spiked seltzers ended up being $3 back on each mixed pack that we got. This ends up adding up pretty quickly and every little bit helps.
Dosh
Dosh is an extremely easy app to get started with because once you link your credit or debit card, the app does all the hard work for you!
When you make purchases at qualifying stores, the app automatically adds cashback into your Dosh account. If you travel often and book hotels, I’ve been extremely impressed with cashback options at hotels because some hotels are giving almost 40% back on your booking! That’s nothing to scoff at.
What’s also cool is Dosh has done a great job of making it extremely easy to give you money back when you do both online and in-person shopping.
Shopkick
Shopkick does things a little differently, and I really like the way they gamified the whole experience. The app connects to your credit card and every time you use your card at one of their partner stores you earn “Kicks”. Once you hit a certain number of Kicks, you can redeem those kicks for gift cards. So far, I’ve earned several gift cards towards TJMaxx and Sephora (because this ends up being my fun money).
They also include additional ways to earn Kicks outside of buying things, which is really intelligent for them. You can gain kicks for walking into stores and for scanning barcodes on promoted items for those stores. It creates a fun treasure hunt experience and you know it’s going towards those gift cards!
Get 250 Kicks free when you sign-up with this link and use the Referral Code: KICK814949
Fetch
I recently signed up for Fetch, but I’ve only heard rave reviews (because how is free money not the most exciting thing?). Fetch takes a combined approach of the above apps where you scan in-store receipts or upload receipts to earn points. Those points are redeemed for gift cards and money back.
Earn 2,000 points for signing up here and get started on earning that money!
Acorns
So this is not really a cashback app per se, but Acorns creates an extremely easy way to get started investing even if you don’t know anything about investing.
I absolutely love this company because they’ve made it so easy to start investing with such a small amount of money, that truly every single person can get started. Now, why do I bring this up in a cashback article? Maybe you guessed it, but what I like to do with all the cashback that I’ve earned from the apps mentioned above is to move the small amount of money into Acorns so it’s automatically invested.
Acorns fairly recently started partnering with brands to allocate cashback on select purchases towards your investment account. If you were going to make that purchase anyway, why wouldn’t you take advantage of this? For example, if you are considering signing up for Blue Apron and sign up through Acorns, you will receive a free $30!
Over time, I have accumulated hundreds of dollars into my account and it’s one of the most rewarding feelings to see my money continue to grow. At my current pace, Acorns projects that I will have almost $100,000 by retirement!! All I’m doing is tucking $5/week into the app and moving my rewards money into my Acorns account. Every single person is capable of putting $5 away a week to get started on their investment journey.
Get started today by signing up at this link! Select your weekly contribution, and forget about it!
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