Jordon's beginners guide to cashback apps!
Next in our Money Saving Week series, is our Coupon King with his beginner guide to Cashback. From food shops to car insurance Jordon Cox will be showing us how to get the most out of our shopping and save over £1000 a year.
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1) How do cashback apps work?
There are two main competing cashback websites: TopCashback and Quidco.
When shopping online, instead of going straight to the retailer website, search for it on a cashback site. You’ll be shown how much cashback you can earn and a button to click through to the retailer's website. After you’ve clicked through - just shop as normal, and the cashback site will know if you make a purchase, and give you money back.
Cashback websites have different rates so it’s worth checking which has the highest rate. When cashback is paid to you, you can choose cash, or trade it for a voucher/gift card for your favourite brands.
How do cashback apps make their money?
When you click through to a cashback website to a retailer, they use something called affiliate links to track whether you make a purchase. Instead of earning commission themselves for referring you, the cashback websites will give some of it to you as ‘cashback’ for what you’re spending.
How much can you earn?
You can find cashback offers on most things you might purchase online. From insurance, fashion, groceries to travel. If you remember to use them, it can add up to a huge amount of money.
Can you save on your food shop?
Even if you’re an existing shopper of an online supermarket, you can earn cashback every time you shop. Morrisons shoppers get 4% cashback on every shop, when you click through a cashback website and spend £40+. On the average yearly supermarket spend of £4,124, that’s £165 cashback a year.
If you shop at Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda or Waitrose online, you can get around £1 back with each shop, which could still be £50+ each week.
SAVING YOU: Up to £165
What about car insurance - can you get cashback on that too?
Switch car insurance and use price comparison sites each year to save some cash. You can save even more by going through a cashback site too. If you click through a cashback site to places like Go Compare, Money Supermarket and Confused .com, you can earn up to £40 in cashback when you take out insurance.
SAVING YOU: Up to £40
What about broadband services?
If you’re changing broadband, you can get cashback on things like Virgin Media Broadband. Picking the fastest fibre optic broadband gets you £110 back, which will pay for a few months worth of bills.
SAVING YOU: Up to £110
What about hotel stays? Get 11% cashback through TopCashback when purchasing a hotel through Hotels.com. If you head on holiday once a year, or spend around £1,000 on a hotel abroad for your family, you can earn £110 in cashback.
SAVING YOU: Up to £110
Do fashion & beauty brands feature on cashback sites too?
Superdrug has up to 15%, Boohoo offers up to 11%, Claire’s gets you 8% cashback, Sainsbury’s Tu has 6%. There’s even small amounts for ASOS, M&S and New Look. If you remember to go through cashback each time - there’s around £250 a year to be saved.
SAVING YOU: Up to £250
What about train travel?
There’s 2.1% cashback on train tickets via TrainPal and 1% back on Trainline bookings. If you’re a commuter and travel by train every day, it might save you a little bit of cash on your trips.
SAVING YOU: Up to £50
What are ‘airtime rewards’?
Airtime Rewards is free to download and gets you passive cashback on your spending. Once you link your credit and debit cards to the app, it tracks your spending. If you spend at one of their linked retailers, you earn cashback.
There are lots of big name retailers linked, including Boots, Aldi, Argos and more. There’s no need to click through anything, cashback is delivered to you automatically. The cashback can then be used to pay off your mobile phone bill.
SAVING YOU: Up to £200
What about debit and credit cards?
Whether you have a bank card, or credit card through places like American Express, they can offer a lot of rewards and cashback. Some have a blanket cashback amount of between 1-5% of everything you spend on it, but others give higher amounts for specific retailers. These are tracked by spending through your card and you earn it automatically. Currently, American Express gives you 15% back for Disney+ purchases currently, while NatWest gets 10% back at Deliveroo.
Cashback accumulated are either paid off your card straight away, or go into a separate rewards pot for you to redeem.
SAVING YOU: Up to £100
Can you get multiple cashback deals using all of your tips?You can stack cashback deals on top of each other, if there are multiple for the same retailer. It could mean huge savings when shopping at certain retailers. You’ll need to click through TopCashback or Quidco for the online tracking, and pay using an Airtime Rewards linked debit/credit card. A few offers that you can stack for huge savings include:
Boots - 7% cashback
4% Airtime Rewards + 3% Topcashback
Yours Clothing - 33.8% cashback
10% Airtime Rewards + 13.8% Topcashback + 10% Virgin Credit Card
Naked Wines - 49% cashback
10% Airtime Rewards + 14% Topcashback + 25% Virgin Credit Card
TOTAL SAVINGS: Up To £1,025 A Year