How to Use Shopping Portals : A Tutorial

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Free Travel Basics Painting

Tutorial: How to Use Shopping Portals, Step-by-Step

As I wrote about in this post, I always use shopping portals to earn extra miles, points, or cash back when shopping online.  And I try to always shop online if possible, even when I do the in-store pickup (as you will see below).  I had some questions from readers about using the Shopping Portals, so I am going to give you the following step-by-step tutorial showing how to use shopping portals.  This is a demonstration of a purchase that I am making for my niece’s birthday (don’t worry, she will not read this & it will not spoil her dollhouse furniture surprise).

The Easy (Level 1 Travel Hacker) Way:

  1. Go to Portal Finder (ex. CashBackMonitor) – I start by using a portal finding website to decide which shopping portal I am going to use. I know it sounds like a lot of hoops to jump through, but it does become second nature after a while. I used to use EvReward all the time, but after reading this post by one of my favorite Miles & Points bloggers (The Frequent Miler, definitely check him out) I started comparing the accuracy of EvReward versus another portal finder – Cashbackmonitor.  Although I prefer the look of the EvReward website, I can force my eyes to deal with Cashbackmonitor for the sake of all things accurate.  Plus it only takes a few seconds before you are on your way to spending your hard-earned money at your chosen store.
    CashBackMonitor results for Kmart and Bank Rewards points

    CashBackMonitor results for Kmart and Bank Rewards points

     

    EvReward search for Kmart - was not accurate for UR Mall today

    EvReward search for Kmart – was not accurate for UR Mall today

     

  2. I clicked on Chase Ultimate Rewards – As you can see, Cashbackmonitor gives me choices for Cash Back, Airlines, Hotels, and Bank/Credit Card Points.  Your decision about which you want to earn will be based on your own needs at the time.  Sometimes I am scrambling to add extra miles to top off a particular balance & sometimes I just want to pad my pockets with extra cash.  This time, I chose the Chase Ultimate Rewards (3x per $1 at the moment) just because I felt like it

    Will Chase UR make me as happy as these people?

    Will Chase UR make me as happy as these people?

  3. The Shopping Portal (my example here is Chase UR Mall) will take me to Kmart (my chosen store for this purchase). It will look exactly the same as if I just typed in Kmart’s website, except magically behind the scenes in the web underworld, they will know that you clicked through the Chase UR mall to get your 3 extra points per dollar (don’t worry mom, they are not stealing your identity…probably).  This isn’t a huge purchase (sorry to my niece), so I will earn about 75 bonus points ($25 x 3 points = 75 points).  Plus the 1 point per dollar I would get for putting the purchase on my Chase Sapphire Preferred card.  Total = 100 Chase UR points. If I went directly to the store to buy the dollhouse furniture, I would earn 1 point per dollar for using my credit card, so I get an extra 75 points by doing it this way.

 

 

The Crazier, but still easy, (Level 2 Travel Hacker) Way:

This is what the crazy people (including me) do: In order to earn even MORE points/miles, you can sometimes go through the portal to buy a gift card (sometimes an e-gift card that will be emailed to you) for the same amount of money as your purchase. For the sake of simplicity, I went through the Chase Ultimate Rewards shopping portal:

  1. Went to Staples (2x points per $1) to purchase a $25 e-gift card that was sent to me by email (total = 50 points)
  2. Used my Chase Ink Bold card to pay for gift card because I get 5x points at office supply stores like Staples (total = 125 points)
  3. Went (via portal) to Kmart to make purchase using my gift card (chose in-store pickup, so no shipping cost) for 3x per dollar (total = 75 points). As an extra precaution (usually for a big purchase when I really want those points) I will make the gift card value to be less than the total so that I can pay off the remaining balance with my credit card just, just in case.
  4. The total in this example (which I actually did) is 250 Chase UR points (which I will probably transfer to Hyatt for an upcoming redemption I am planning).

 

 

Some notes & tips about using Shopping Portals:

  • Sometimes the payouts are much higher, and it becomes especially exciting with a large purchase (we got lots of points for our refrigerator from Sears & television from Best Buy).
  • I will usually go to the store website first if I need to browse around before filling my cart.  Once my cart is full, I close the window.  When I go back through the shopping portal, my cart (always, in my experience) has the items in it still.  Then I can just click right on the cart to complete the transaction.  It may be paranoid, but I don’t like to take the chances with all of the random clicking around I do when I am browsing through online stores.
  • It can take several weeks for points/miles to post, so don’t panic.  Just make a note to check your AwardWallet balances several a few times an hour a week to see if your points have posted.  There are times when people have to get in contact with the shopping portal because the points aren’t posting, but that has not happened to me (or I missed it if it did).
  • Sometimes you can use coupon codes (I usually do) and sometimes you can’t, you have to read the fine print
  • If you return the items, you will lose your points.
  • If you are going to order the e-gift certificate before your purchase, make sure you aren’t in a hurry because it can take time before the gift certificate is emailed to you.

Magnet Collection: Bring Memories Home

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My son's travel magnet collection

My son’s travel magnet collection

 

Our Travel Magnet Collections

We love having things around our house that help bring back memories from our travels.  One type of collection that is easy to start and keep up with is destination magnets.  Almost everywhere we have gone, we have found lots of magnets to choose from.   These collections belong to the kids, and we let each of them choose a magnet for each of the places we visit.   You can start your memory collections at any time.  If your kids are too young to choose for themselves, just pick them out yourself & stash them away until they are older.  If you have traveled to lots of places and haven’t started a collection yet, that’s OK too.  It’s never too late to start!

I like to write their initial (so we don’t get them mixed up) and the year on the back of each magnet.  As time goes by, it’s so easy to forget what year we went to each of these places!

 

My daughter's travel magnet collection

My daughter’s travel magnet collection

 

Magnet Collection Display

Our Magnet Boards

The red and black circle magnet boards are wall mounted on my son’s bedroom wall.  The red ones were purchase at Land of Nod  and the black ones were purchased at IKEA years ago (no longer available).  Don’t forget to go through Ebates like I did to earn cash back from the online purchase.  You can also check the other kinds of shopping portals to see which has the best payout at the time of your purchase.

Round Wall-Mounted Magnet Boards

Round Wall-Mounted Magnet Boards

 

My daughter’s magnet boards were purchased at IKEA.  They are the SPONTAN magnetic boards in the white color.  Luckily they fit perfectly on the sides of her shelves that surround her desk area (desk top and legs also from IKEA).

Magnet6

IKEA SPONTAN White Magnet Board

IKEA SPONTAN White Magnet Board

 

One thing to note:  There can be some concern with young kids and swallowing magnets, so if your kids are at that age, you might want to stash their magnet collections away until they are old enough to have them displayed without trying to eat them.

Shopping Portals : Free Travel Basics

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Free Travel Basics Painting

Do you ever buy things? How about shopping online? If you answered yes to either or both of those questions, and you are not using shopping portals, then you are leaving miles & points and/or cold hard cash on the table.  After you have signed up for your frequent traveler programs like I told you to do here, then this is your next step in earning miles & points for doing things that you would normally do anyway.

What are Shopping Portals?

Pretend you are shopping for a

very special Monster High doll that your daughter just has to have for Christmas.  You know about stores like Toys R Us and Target because, well, who doesn’t?  So you go to one of those websites and start shopping.  You buy the creepy doll for $24.99.  Done. If you added in just one simple step, you would get rewarded for making that same exact purchase.  This works with almost everything you can buy online!

Shopping Portals are websites that are kind of like online shopping malls.  They have lists of most online stores & you just have to click on the link to the store to get your reward.  The rewards can be, for example,  5 miles per $1 spent or 5% cash back.  You can search by categories in most of these Shopping Portals as well.  So if I am looking for a doll, I can look for “Toy Stores” and will be given a list of several to choose from.  The payout to you will vary from store to store and from portal to portal (a tip to help you with that is below).  The payouts also change frequently.  Sometimes there are amazing deals, like 30 miles per $1, which can add up to a lot depending on how much you are spending.

The Shopping Portals that we like to use give bonus airline points, reward travel points, or hotel points.  I also often use those that give cash rewards.  In fact, I just got an email yesterday saying my “Big Fat Check” for $18.56 from Ebates is on its way to me!  Hey, free money, I’ll take it!  So you go to whichever portal you will be using, find your store, click, and it takes you right to the store’s website.  You must be signed in to your portal (so you will sign up, just like you did for the frequent traveler programs – you just need an email address, mailing address, name) to get your reward.

Here are some of the portals that I use on a regular basis. They have all worked for me & I have successfully gotten my points/miles/cash from them:

Shopping Portals For Travel Miles & Points:

American Airlines:  Aadvantageeshopping

Amtrak : Amtrak Shopping Mall

Southwest: Rapid Rewards Shopping

United: Mileage Plus Shopping

USAirways: Diviend Miles Storefront

Shopping Portals For Cold Hard Cash:

Mr. Rebates: My Link

Big Crumbs: My Link

Ebates: My Link

TopCashBack: My Link

The cash back sites send your money to you in various ways.  Some pay out quarterly by sending you a check in the mail for your amount for that certain period of time & others will send money to your PayPal account.  I have successfully used all of these, some for several years, and have been getting paid (or rewarded with points) for almost every single purchase I make online.

TIP: If you don’t mind adding one more click to your online shopping spree, you should check EvReward first to see which Shopping Portal has the highest payout for each store.  For example, if I wanted to shop at Target I would go to EvReward and type in “Target” in the search box.  It will tell me (at the time of this writing…these things change) that Target is offering 3% cash back from Big Crumbs, 2.5% cash back from Ebates, 3% cash back from Mr. Rebates, 2 miles per $1 from American Airlines, 4 miles per $1 from Amtrak, etc, etc.  Then I can make my choice about which Shopping Portal to use by clicking on it.

 

Happy Shopping!