The Six Layers of Savings

Whenever we make an online purchase we aim for six layers of savings:

1️⃣ Sale price

2️⃣ Coupon

3️⃣ Cashback service on CardCash

4️⃣ CardCash

5️⃣ Credit card on CardCash

6️⃣ Cashback at retailer

Let’s go through an example of how we can stack six layers of savings to buy a pair of shoes.

Layer 1: Sale price

The first step on the list is the only step that can be hard to quantify how much you’re actually saving. On one hand, companies will inflate the price of a product in order to offer a sale down the road. On the other hand, non-sale prices do exist. At the end of this article we’ll assess how effective the six layers of savings are, and to be safe in our assessment we will start with a pair of shoes that are $100 after the sale.

Let’s buy the Adidas Argentina shoes with a surname that’s too long to transcribe. The regular price is $200, but, once the sale hits, they’re only $100. Shipping is also $7, so we’re at $107 (a $100 savings from the original price).

Layer 2: Coupon

Once our shoes are on sale it’s time to find a coupon. One of the best sites for finding coupons is RetailMeNot, which notifies us that we can join the Adidas rewards program, adiClub, to get 15% off our order and free shipping. This brings our price down to $85: a $22 savings.

Layer 3: Cashback service on CardCash

There’s a lot going on in this step! For those of you who aren’t familiar with CardCash, we’ll discuss this in more detail below, but for now we’ll quickly summarize that CardCash is a company where you can buy gift cards at reduced rates.

Stashing CardCash away for later, let’s go on to the cashback part of this step. Cashback services are companies that partner with retailers to send consumers their way. Any time the cashback service routes a paying customer to the retailer, the cashback service earns a commission for their part.

How does the cashback company motivate consumers to head to a retailer? Bingo! They give the consumers cashback.

While there are a few good cashback services to be aware of, Rakuten is the only one that currently supports CardCash. So go to Rakuten.com or install their app, search for CardCash, and click the button to be redirected to CardCash.

We want to buy $85 in gift cards, and Rakuten currently gives 1% cashback for purchases made at CardCash. It’s only 85 cents, but anything to slow the flow out of your money pond is helpful.

Layer 4: CardCash

CardCash is a phenomenal service that allows you to buy gift cards at reduced rates. The theory behind CardCash’s business model is that when people are given gift cards that they don’t want, they can sell those gift cards to CardCash for a reduced rate – and CardCash then passes some of those savings on to you.

At the time of writing CardCash had two gift cards totaling $75. We can get them for 7.4% off ($69.47), for a savings of $5.53.

Layer 5: Credit card on CardCash

We’ll buy the gift cards with a credit card to make cashback for the credit card. At the time of writing, the best option was to use my PayPal credit card that gave 6% cashback for purchases made through PayPal. This translates to a savings of $4.17.

Layer 6: Cashback at retailer

For our final layer of savings we’ll head back to a cashback service before purchasing the shoes.

Rakuten was providing 15% cashback at adidas.com, for $12.75 savings. Click the button to be taken to Adidas.com, add your gift cards, and cover the $10 balance with your PayPal credit card for an additional $0.60. And then wait for your new babies to show up. For way less than you were originally expecting.

Conclusion

Start price: $107 (after a $100 sale)

New price: $61.00 (adjusting for the fact that we didn’t earn $0.85 in step 3 since we only bought $75 in gift cards in step 4)

Total saved: $45.80 (43%) 💰

There were a few steps involved, but each step slowed the flow out of our money pond. If we assume that the process took 20 minutes then it is equivalent to earning $137 per hour.

(It’s worth noting that the figures in this illustration were pre-tax for simplicity. Since payments are made post-tax, actual cashback savings would’ve yielded a higher percentage than 43%.)

(BONUS: Did you know you can even get a 7th and 8th layer of savings by uploading receipts on Swagbucks and Ibotta? But, since receipts are mainly helpful for grocery savings [they only give 2-3 cents for a regular online shopping trip], it isn’t something we sweat about!)

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