Maximize your Black Friday shopping

This is it – the week of Black Friday shopping. It’s no secret that Americans (and many people around the world) scour the internet for deals and make those long-awaited purchases this time of year. Knowing that, we figured we’d share some ideas of how to make the most of any shopping you’re doing this week.

Credit Card Offers

Check your credit card offers and activate any that you might use. We’ve gotten plenty of cash back without even remembering we activated that specific offer. Some currently active offers we have on our Chase credit cards include Allbirds, Ulta Beauty, Under Armour, Cole Haan, AG Jeans, Walmart, Stanley, Kendra Scott, and more! Our AmEx has active offers with Loft, Bloomingdale’s, Best Buy, Patagonia, North Face, Ray-Ban, H&M, and more.

Cash back on your cards equals more money in your pocket and more money for travel!

Shopping Portals

Prior to doing any shopping this week, install at least one shopping portal on your browser. If you have an American Express card, Rakuten is a good portal because you can receive AmEx Membership Rewards points for your purchases (deposited to your account quarterly). If you sign up now using our link, you can receive $40 when you make your first purchase.

Many airlines, including United, American, Southwest, and Delta all have shopping portals as well that give you miles for your purchases.

We have both the United plugin and the Rakuten plugin installed, so we receive both pop-ups when we’re shopping online. That way, we can choose which one we prefer. Typically, we go for United miles unless the difference in cash back is significantly in favor of Rakuten. It’s good to have at least two options as not every site gives cash back or miles on every portal. For example, Chewy is on the United shopping portal, but it’s not on Rakuten.

United MileagePlus X App

If there is something you 100% know you’re going to purchase, check the United MileagePlus X app for a gift card. You can then stack the gift card with the United online shopping portal for extra miles. If you’ve never used the app before, we did an in-depth post on it here.

Only do this if you know what you’re going to purchase – you can’t return the gift cards.

Loyalty Programs

Sign up now for your favorite retailers loyalty programs. Some companies are sending out early access to deals or special discount codes just for being a member of the loyalty program, which is free!

Category Strategy

Know your cards and the categories you receive elevated points on. Then, use the cards that get the most points on each purchase. The minimum amount of points we receive is 1.5x on our Freedom Unlimited. If you have a Chase Freedom or Freedom Flex and the retailer you’re shopping at takes PayPal, use that to earn 5x points all Q4.

If you aren’t shopping at stores that are an elevated category (say Amazon), look at buying a gift card at an elevated store. The AmEx Gold gives 4x at grocery stores, so buy an Amazon gift card at your local grocery store and load to your account for Black Friday.

Receipt Apps

With lots of purchases come a lot of receipts. Why not cash in on those?

We submit receipts to Fetch and ReceiptPal throughout the year, and those receipts get turned into points, which we can redeem for gift cards. Get 1,000 points now when you use our link to sign up for Fetch.

So far this year, we’ve received $80 worth of gift cards to places like Amazon and Starbucks just from submitting our receipts.

You also can link these apps to your email account, and then they will auto-pull any electronic receipts into your account for credit.

Shopping Apps

Consider installing apps like Dosh or Drop. What’s nice about these options is that you set it and forget it, and you’ll then receive a notification when you’ve shopped at an active offer. Get $5 when you sign up for Drop using our link.

Drop gives cash back at places like Amazon, Nike, Chewy, Sephora, Banana Republic, Home Depot, Sephora, Old Navy, Target, and Carter’s.

Dosh is active at Glossier, Under Armour, Lily Pulitzer, and L.L. Bean, among other retailers.

The rewards on these apps can either be redeemed for a direct deposit (Dosh) or gift cards (Drop).

To recap:

As always, be smart with your spending and don’t spend money just to earn points, miles, or cash back. The majority of these tips can be used at any point during year. Happy shopping!