How to Prep Your Budget: How To Make Money When Shopping This Holiday Season

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How it is already the last day of the challenge?

I swear this week just flew by! By this point you’ve already got your board set up, your items tagged, and you’re just waiting to hit buy on each product. But I know what you’re thinking.

“I’ve figured out how to save, but I thought you said we were going to earn some money this year too?”

Obviously I saved the best lesson for last. Today we’re going to talk about my two favorite tools for making money when I shop online (yes, I just said that) and in stores! Yes, in stores, because I know that some of you do also shop in stores.

As much as we would all love to just bake everyone cookies and just pass those out for holiday gifts (I think I just figured out what I’m getting most people for gifts this year), for a lot of people, that just won’t fly. Which means, we’re going to have to spend money. Ugh.

So on Tuesday, we talked about how creating your list will help you plan out how much you’re going to spend on each person and what you’re going to get. Yesterday, we discussed how to find those items and wait for them to go on sale so we could really cut corners on our budget. Today, we’re going to talk about how to make some money back on those purchases. This way we can come out of the other end of the holiday seasons in the black. Or at least not in the red.

Let’s get to it.

How to Make Money Shopping

Get Paid to Shop

First up, Ebates

If you’ve read my blog, you’re probably familiar with Ebates by now. They’re the cashback tool that allows you to make a small percentage back every time you shop online. I always make sure that I go through Ebates whenever I’m shopping. They also share daily coupon codes, just in case you don’t have them already.

Like most things, they have a google chrome plug in, which makes it incredibly easy to get your cashback without having to go off of the page that you’re shopping on and then back to Ebates. The money you make really adds up though. The first check I cashed from them was $60 and I’ve made over $1,000 from Ebates since.

Next, Giving Assistant

I could make this post super long, but Giving Assistant runs pretty similarly to Ebates. The cool thing about Giving Assistant is that in addition to giving you cash back, you can also choose to donation a percentage of your cash back to a charity of your choice!

If you want to learn more about Giving Assistant, you can check out this post and get started with setting it up.

Paribus

Paribus is less of an immediate cashback option and more of a passive price adjustment option. Paribus scans your email and looks for any changes in prices since you’ve purchased the item. If they noticed that the price has dropped, then they’ll email the retailer on your behalf and ask for a price adjustment. Ta-da, cashback! This is super important during the holidays with all of the fluctuations in prices. You shouldn’t have to search for your cashback. Let someone else do it for you.

How to Get Paid to Shop in Stores

Don’t worry, I said I wouldn’t forget about in store shopping, I didn’t!

Drop

Drop is an iPhone app that actually works with online AND in store shopping! Ta-da, magic. Just link up the app to the credit cards you use the most often and you’ll receive points for shopping at certain retailers. When you collect a certain amount of points, you can redeem them for gift cards (and these are good gift card options too).

I also love using this app, because you can use this on top of other cashback apps like Ebates or Giving Assistant. With all of the other options, you can typically only pick one.

Ibotta

So like Drop, IBotta is a phone app that has an in store and online option. You can either shop through links to other sites (similar to Ebates) or you can redeem receipts. I use the redeeming receipts options from the grocery store or visits to CVS. It’s like free money.

My other favorite thing about this app is that getting cash back for Uber rides FREQUENTLY pops up as an option. Right now in the app you can get $0.75 back for every ride you take. It might not seem like a lot, but it can quickly add up for the bonuses and pay off quickly. It’s going to be a pretty useful tool when you have to take all of those Uber rides to and from holiday parties. Wouldn’t it be nice to make some money off of going to holiday parties? Don’t they seem like a lot more fun when I phrase it that way?

Want to keep saving?

Now, I have a lot more tools that I use to make and save money when I shop. This was only the tip of the iceberg. I’ve complied all of them, PLUS all of the important dates you need this holiday season in an easy one pager that you can access by signing up for my newsletter!

Just head over here and sign up to start saving all holiday season!