If You Work the System, You Can Save a Good Amount of Money

Here's a great illustration of how with a little planning, ingenuity, and work you can save a good amount of money. It was left as a comment on my post titled How Many Gift Cards Will You Use This Holiday Season?:

We occasionally give gift cards, and often receive them as gifts (quite happily), but mostly we buy them for ourselves.

One of the largest grocery store chains here in NE Ohio is Giant Eagle. They sell gift cards for all sorts of restaurants, appliance stores, bookstores, etc. They also have a "fuel perks" program where, if you use their customer loyalty card, for every $50 you spend in the store they give you $0.20 off per gallon of gas at their gas stations in the parking lot.

The perks accumulate, so buy $200 worth of groceries and you get $0.80 cents off per gallon...UP TO 30 GALLONS! The best part? Buying gift cards count as normal store purchases.

So here's what my wife and I did. We needed to put new windows in the house. So we:

1. Went to Giant Eagle and bought $2,000, yes, 2-thousand dollars, worth of gift cards to Home Depot.

2. We used our Citi Bank Cash Rewards Credit Card to buy the gift cards (discount = 5% off of grocery store purchases). That saved us $100 right off the bat.

3. $2000 spent at Giant Eagle gave us a total of $8.00 off per gallon of gas. Amounts can be rolled over so any amount you have over the price of a gallon of gas is retained for up to 60 days.

4. I then took one of the gift cards to home depot and bought three 5-gallon gas cans.

5. I took the remaining gift cards and bought my new windows, which I installed myself, and which btw have now drastically reduced my heating bills.

6. Then for the next month whenever I needed gas I would take the gas cans to the Giant Eagle gas station and fill my car (15-gallons) and fill the cans with another 15 gallons - FOR FREE. I would take my gas cans home and fill my wife's van in the garage, btw.

With gas at $3 a gallon, that means I filled up my 30-gallons twice for FREE and then paid just $1 per gallon for the next 30-gallons. A total gas savings of $240.

All in all, this method of using my rebate credit card, plus gift cards and fuel-perks, saved me $340 on the cost of putting in windows. That equates to a 17% discount.

Thank you Giant Eagle! Thank you Home Depot! Thank you gift cards!

Wow! What a story! It just shows that if you put your mind to it, you can save a good amount of money by "working the system."

For other money making ideas, check out these posts:

• How You Can Earn Over 2.6% Cash Back by Using a Combination of the American Express Blue Cash and Chase Freedom Cash Visa Credit Cards

• I Told You There Was Big Money in Being a College Advisor!

• Use the Skills from Your Job to Make an Extra Income

Comments

[vicki]

You could have also gotten one of those 10% off Home Depot coupons by either registering a change of address with the post office or buying one on ebay for about $30.

[Eden]

Wow! Filling up gas cans is probably the definition of extreme, but I like the creativity and persistence. :)

[Kevin]

I tried purchasing gift cards using my Chase Freedom card at two places yesterday and both places said they don't all gift card purchases on credit cards...only cash. Walgreens, the first store, did not offer a reason why. Schnucks, a local grocery store, said it was becuase they were seeing a lot of stolen credit cards being used to purchase gift cards.

Understandable, I guess, but I offered to show ID to prove it was my card, and still wasn't allowed to purchase them on credit. Instead, I used my debit card for the first time in a few months and got cash back. I lost out on the 3% rebate, but I needed the gift card then and had to do it.

If I would have had more time, I might have complained to the manager. After all, why should I be punished if I offer to prove it is my card? My wife thought I was being completely anal about the rebate, but it's the principle of the thing. What do you guys think?

(By the way, we rarely shop at this grocery store anyway, but if my experience yesterday was any indication, I may not be buying gift cards on credit anywhere.)

[ec]

You can get the 10% coupon by getting a change of address form at the post office.

And why not go to Home Depot and try to bargin 10% off then do all the geek math...

[Robert]

Just an aside, but gas fumes and enclosed spaces don't always go well together. I knew a guy who liked to gas up his lawn mower in the garage. One hot day his garage caught fire, burning up both his Mustang in the garage and the Corvette parked next to it. Just a thought. :)

[cookie]

does homedepot giftcard charge if we don't use for a long period.

[Mark]

Great thoughts.

I just bought a ton of gift cards at Meijer (Grocery Superstore) with my Blue Cash card. So I maximized my cash back and was able to avoid an extra trip to pick up gift cards at different stores.

[Kacie]

That's awesome! Around here (Pittsburgh) Giant Eagle sometimes runs a special on their fuelperks giftcards. Usually, for every $50 you spend, you'll get .10 off per gallon. But during their special, for every $50 you get .20 off per gallon. The next time they offer that, I might look into buying some giftcards.

[Blaine Moore]

When is Giant Eagle gonna build a store up my way?

Heheh.