I was initially thinking 5% PayPal seemed like a useless category for CFF. But as the quarter has gone on I’ve realized how many places accept PayPal and how many hacks there are to route spend through it.
Here are my favorites so far:
- Boosting Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales. I use these sales every year to replace worn out things and restock around the house – clothes, kitchen gear, even consumables like toothpaste, deodorant, etc. I do clothes shopping in bulk and always buy enough clothes to last 5-10 years. I was due to buy new stuff this year and bought 20 shirts, 20 pairs of socks, 20 pairs of boxers, new bath towels, all on PayPal. Got extra discounted prices on everything by stacking the holiday sales with the +5% from PayPal.
- Gas stations: Shell and Chevron both have mobile apps that let you pay on your phone. Paypal works on either one. Chevron gives $1 off per gallon on the first 3 fill-ups, so I got a few full tanks with $1 off/gal plus paypal discount.
- Bulk / online grocery. I buy meat in bulk at whole foods, but instead went directly to the company I buy from since they have a shop pay site. Bought a bunch of meat in bulk from them on black friday discount + paypal discount.
- Charitable Contributions – I also used PayPal to make charitable contributions. Since they charge a fee to the receiving organization, I increased the donation amount so they would still get the full amount I wanted to give.
- Amazon / CVS Hack. Heard one person here say they buy Amazon gift cards at CVS and pay using the PayPal QR code for I believe 8% off (The 3% pharmacy reward stacks with the 5% on PayPal). Pretty smart, I may stock up on some Amazon gift cards and reload my account, though this one is a little less valuable to me since I already get 6% off on most of my Amazon purchases via the Prime credit card.
- Car Maintenance. I do my own car maintenance once a year in the fall/winter and the site I buy from also accepted paypal, so I got 5% back on the fluids and parts for my yearly maintenance.
- Car Insurance. Another member here mentioned using the 5% off to pay for their car insurance. I called progressive to see if they would switch my billing cycle, but they couldn’t do it without cancelling the policy, and cancelling/restarting would have lost me my “continuous insurance coverage” discount. Bummer 😛
I also got my CFF with a 22k credit line and 15 months 0% APR, so I am not paying for any of these things until 2025. I will save the balance due in HYSA/MM/CD accounts to earn interest until then, so in net many of my discounts will actually end up closer to 10.3% off once I factor in the interest.
With a couple weeks left to take advantage, I figured I’d ask… What else y’all got? What were your biggest wins / best hacks?