My Big Fat Ebates Check Arrived & Money Saving Holiday Tips!

My Big Fat Ebates check from my summer purchases arrived today.  It’s not anything extreme but almost $10 more then I had in my bank account yesterday!  Last year I got over $30 back from my holiday purchases from JoAnn’s alone with my check totally $134.18 for Oct. 1st- Dec. 31 purchases.  I don’t use it a ton during the rest of the year but really it helps this time of year.
Let’s face it, no matter how crafty you are or how much extra time you have most of us still buy at least some retail items for holiday gifts or definitely some supplies!  Just as I like to consider myself a savvy crafter I would consider myself quite a savvy shopper as well and thought I would share some of my biggest money savers!

This year the Black Friday ads are rather disappointing (unless you are looking for a TV or computer and want to stand in line to fight for the good deals), I have been finding the same deals, but often times much better, online. For example most of the stuff from Kohls is almost just as cheap on their website already & they have a offer many discount codes and through out the holiday season now making many items cheaper then the BF pricing, PLUS you can earn $10 Kohl’s Cash for ever $50 you spend AND you get cash back with Ebates as well!  In the last few days I have earned $33+ in cash back buying stuff I planned on getting anyways with out worrying about fighting the store crowds.

For the cash back I used Ebates which now as 1200+ stores & offers 1-25% cash back on your purchases!

It is totally free & a must have if you shop online! the last few years since learning about Ebates I have received $434.35 cash back and have a bunch more currently pending.  Honestly I’m bad about using it during the rest of the year or I am sure I would have a bunch more. The best part is you don’t have to wait forever for your rewards, you only have to have $5 worth of cash back rewards to redeem and they send out the check once every 3 months & you can get it put directly into your paypal account or have a check mailed to you which normally arrives with in just a few days!

How does it work you ask? Well its a rewards system for shopping online! If you shop online you should check out ebates, its FREE to use, no strings attached!!! It is a program that is free to sign up for. When ever you want to shop online go to their site & click on the stores link… then shop as usual. After submitting your order it takes 2-3 days, but ebates will give you CASH back into your account. Then every 3 months they send out Big Fat Checks, & you can even get them put directly into your paypal account or a check in the mail.

They have over 1200+ online stores now that offer cash back… any where from 1%-25%. Most popular sites like Old Navy, Wal-mart, Childrens Place & Target offer 2-6%. But there are TONS more including sites like Expedia, NewEgg.com, Shutterfly, Apple iTunes, drugstore.com, Overstock, Home Depot & much, much more!  For all those craft lovers they also have 5% cash back on fabric.com as well as tons of arts & crafts sites!

If you are going to be shopping online anyways you might as well be getting free money right? There are NO strings attached to this. The best part… you get $5 just for signing up no matter how much you spend (but you do have to earn $5 worth of cash back to get the additional $5 sign-up bonus cashed out). Heck it’s at least worth checking out right? To Check Out Ebates Click Here.

Another similar cash back site that I have just started using is ShopAtHome.com.

It is set up almost identically to Ebates except sometimes it has a higher % cash back for certain sites.  I always check both before ordering because both sites can changing the % up or down for a single site daily.  The only down side to ShopAtHome.com is that you have to reach $20 worth of cash back in order to get your check not the much lower $5 offered by Ebates. To Check Out ShopAtHome.com Click Here.

AND during the holiday’s a lot of sites have promotions with much higher % of cash back!!!!  Recently Old Navy had 8% cash back so I received $5.30 cash back for a $66.29 order, which since most of the stuff I bought was already 75% off made it quite the steal.

Another way to save on top of the cash back is to look for coupon codes from one of my favorite online coupon code sites RetailMeNot.  Combining those discount codes with a lot of the current sales & free shipping offers it really starts to add up!

Also one of my favorite BF sites offers a GREAT shopping list tool plus they keep track of the online sales too!!!!  BFAds

Another thing I have started doing after reading about it on some of the parenting forums I am on is Swagbucks.  You earn points just for use their search tool but they also have offers you can complete, survey’s you can get rewards for & more.  Some of these forums have daily threads just about how to get free points.  Then what do you do with these points??? Why get giftcards to some of your favorite sites like Amazon.com, Starbucks, iTunes, Target & more ranging from $5-$50!  Even CASH through PayPal!!!  I signed up right before Chrsimas last year and didn’t really start using it until after the baby was born in Feb.  but I cashed out 19 $5 amazon.com cards worth of rewards in the first 6 months which was $95 worth of free money! But a lot of the mom’s I know have earned $100-$150 in gift cards already in just the last few months (they are serious about it & follow the daily threads many of them require NO CC, I just set up a new email to use for it) but not bad if you want a little extra money for the holidays!