Maximize Store Specific Benefits
Many grocery, and some retail, stores now have their own gas station chain. With these affiliations comes some sort of benefit to you as a consumer, which typically equates to savings. Typically, each store purchase goes towards the potential gas-savings discount. At certain times, even, our Kroger chain will double or triple the gas “points” for purchases.
Using Kroger as an example shows you how these companies try to entice you to shop more with them as opposed to the competitor. And, when the benefits are really nice, it does work (for me).
There are also a few other store benefits that equate to savings. While this is done several times a year, a perfect example is this Gift Card Promotion from June:
Buy $100 in Participating Gift Cards and receive a $10 Instant Savings at the register. Limit (5) $10 Rewards per household. You can Mix + Match cards and values.
Or, this Quadruple Fuel Points Promotion during Labor Day. And, of course the many Catalina Promotions that are active and help to save even more! These are store all specific benefits that can help you NOT ONLY save in the store with the purchases that you receive the discounts BUT your actual purchase will help you save on other things you need too. Like buying gift cards as gifts and saving even more on Gas.
These discounts, felt in other tangible ways at the pump, are not always measured on your Grocery Savings Spreadsheet, perhaps. But, they will be measured in your budget when there's more wiggle room. Whatever store you shop, your store likely has similar store benefits as well.
Check out the Beginner’s Guide to Saving: Focus on One Store to get
tips and advice for understanding your store’s policies and benefits.
For me personally, well, I always take advantage of all of the store benefits, but specifically with the gift cards. I will purchase gift cards as gifts during those specific promotions. Sometimes the savings isn't always instant. The promotion has been a Catalina, or ECB at CVS even. I'd take those rewards and turn around and buy what we need. So, in this case, I'm saving on what we need. And, saving even more on what we need. Guess that means I get to spend a lot more on what we want, right?? Not exactly… :)
What types of store benefits does your store offer that helps your budget?
Around last Christmas Kroger ran a gift card promo buy $100 in specific store gift cards and get $10 off instantly plus double fuel points on gift card purchases. One of the stores included was somewhere I was going to be shopping for a large ticket item anyway. I paid $90 each for 2 $100 gift cards, then used them with a coupon at the other store to purchase my hubby’s Christmas present. I saved $20 with the gift card purchase, 20% on the item with the store coupon plus I saved on gas too!
Becky…that’s the true benefits of all of it, huh??!!
If a gift card sale (like the ones Kroger does) includes stores I shop at or ones that I know would go over well as birthday gifts, I take advantage of the promo. I purchase $50 Speedway Fuel & Food cards to earn Speedway Reward points, I roll those points into more Speedway gift cards.
We do the same thing. We have been doing a pretty big kitchen renovation and we are doing it all ourselves. We seem to be running to Home Depot every other day. We always estimate what we will spend at Home Depot and stop at Kroger before we go. We buy gift cards at kroger so we can get the gas points. (Plus, we are doing one of the kroger gift card charity promo’s for my daughter’s soccer club, so the club earns money for every dollar we spend on our Kroger card.) We have gotten several gas fill-ups where we have saved $1 per gallon. And, when you have bigger tanks, we have saved as much as $20 on a gas fill-up. It didn’t really take that much more time and was worth the gas savings! We did the same thing last Christmas…we bought a camera at Best Buy and used Best Buy gift cards that we bought at Kroger. We also took advantage of the $10 off promo they were running.