Grocery Store Gift Cards
A few weeks ago I mentioned a local grocery store that lets you save money on your gas budget by buying your groceries there.
This store has just upped the ante a little bit. The gas program is still going on, but they have also added a gift card program. Here’s how it works:
If you buy a $250 gift card they will add $20 to the balance, giving you a $270 gift card for $250.
If you buy a $300 gift card, they will add $30.
We asked how this integrates with the gas program, and they said that no gas points are given when the gift card is purchased, but points are given like normal when the money on the card is actually spent.
Our grocery budget is about $600 a month for a family of five, including non-grocery things bought at the grocery store (toiletries, etc.). My wife also gets her prescriptions there, since they are the same price as everywhere else, but we get the points.
So, this is all upside to us. Our plan is to buy two $300 gift cards every month, and use them for that month’s groceries. Since we spend that much every month anyway, this has basically no cost to us, but gets us an extra $60 to use for groceries.
One question that arises is what to do when the promotion ends. It is one thing to prepay your monthly grocery bill to get the rebate, since you would spend that much that month anyway. But what about when the program is about to expire — how many months worth of groceries do you prepay? It is not worth paying credit card interest just to save on groceries, but we also want to maximize the rebate we get. We haven’t decided what we will do yet, and there may also be limits on how much you can do at one time, but I think it would be worth prepaying at least a few months to get the 10% rebate.
What about you? Anyone else have a grocery store with this type of program? Are you planning to take advantage of it?
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I appreciate this kind of store doing it as of now as we are all currently experiencing global recession. Though, we can that is just a small thing, but still it has a great help to all of the shoppers who uses gas for their cars to have a discount.