Saving Money on Groceries 2.0

In this day and age, apps are all the rage.

Do people even say that anymore? “All the rage?” I don’t think they do…

Introduced to me by Steph, apps can help you save money on groceries! The ones she specifically told me about are Checkout 51, Snap, and Zweet. These are apps that update every week (similarly to flyers) with a list of specific items, which, if you buy them, earn you cashback! Let me explain how it works. (André, this post is for you).

You can download these apps on your phone (for free) and each week, each app comes up with a list of items with a certain amount of cashback attributed to each of them, ranging from 25 cents to $5 or more. Many of these items are useless things that you would never buy (Smartfood or Milk-Bone Biscuits, anyone?) and the brands are usually very specific, such as Pampers or Cascade. However, many of these items are often things that you would get anyway, such as Tropicana orange juice and sometimes the descriptions are very general, such as “any vegetable.” The trick to saving money is to only get things that you were planning to get anyway or to get things that you know you will need soon or eventually and that won’t expire. You will get particularly great deals if you can combine these offers with sales and coupons.

Within the week that the offer is valid, if you buy a certain item from the list, you then use the app to take a picture of the receipt, which gets sent to the company for validation. Within 48 hours, if done properly, your receipt will be processed and money will be credited to your account.

Out of the three apps I mentioned, Checkout 51 has the most items and variety. Snap and Zweet are okay and will occasionally have one decent item, but a lot less choice. However, since this is pretty much free money, there is no reason not to use all of them and just let your money accumulate. When you get to a certain minimum amount (for Checkout 51 and possibly for the others as well, it’s $20), you can cash out.

Example:

A few weeks ago, Checkout 51 had a great deal on Tide liquid laundry detergent. If you bought two bottles of 32 loads or more (in size), you would get $5 cashback. Moreover, Metro happened to have Tide on sale that week, for $4.99. EVEN MORE MOREVER (that is not an actual phrase), P&G nearly always has coupons for Tide (and Pantene, Gain, etc.) on their website. In this case, $2 off two Tide products was the relevant coupon. Putting all of these offers together meant one could get two Tide liquid detergent bottles for the equivalent of $4.99+$4.99-$2$-5 = $2.98. Plus, as a student, I got another 10% off at Metro, making it $2.68 (with tax, it ends up being $3.03). Such a good deal!

I’m telling you, combining all possible offers will get you really good deals on groceries and household items. I definitely recommend this app! Thank you to Steph for suggesting it.

P.S. If you’re interested in getting the apps, let me know so I can give you a referral link. We both get bonus money that way!

P.P.S. Laundry detergent powder is usually a better deal than the liquid, but this deal made the liquid better for this particular case.

P.P.P.S. Dragon boaters do a lot of laundry and laundry detergent doesn’t really expire as far as I know, so there was every reason to get it, even though we weren’t particularly looking to buy it that week.