Beth says she saves about two weeks’ worth of shopping a year
A shopper has shared a method she says gets her a fortnight’s worth of free groceries every year. And she says it’s so easy that anyone can copy it. Beth Snow, 30, says she earns up to 5% cashback on her weekly food shop by purchasing her groceries using cashback gift cards.
As her cashback accumulates, she says she reinvests it towards buying additional gift cards, and over the course of a year says she amasses £100 in savings – roughly equivalent to a fortnight’s shopping for her household. The chartered accountant from Manchester explained that the greater your grocery expenditure, the more substantial your savings could be – and suggested that a family of four could potentially save up to £400 annually on their shopping.
Beth said: “It’s a really, really easy process to do, and if you add up the number of times you do food shopping, you can make a serious amount of cash back every year. And it isn’t just on groceries: you can get cash back on pretty much anything these days.
“All you need to do is take five minutes of your time to find out the best deals.” When Beth completes her weekly shop at Tesco, rather than paying with her debit or credit card, she opts to purchase and use a gift card instead.
To acquire a gift card, she logs into one of her preferred cashback platforms, such as Ever Up, Cheddar, Sprite or Cashback, and checks which supermarket is currently offering the most attractive deals. “Usually for supermarkets, you get between 2% and 5% cashback, so if I buy a £100 gift card, I’ll get £2 to £5 back”, she said. When Beth redeems the voucher at the checkout, she receives a modest amount of cash back, which is credited to her balance on the cash back app.
Subsequently, once she has accumulated a specific amount of cash back (for instance, £10), she can use it to buy another gift card. This means, if she received 5% cash back on two £100 shops, she would have generated sufficient cash back to obtain £10 off her next gift card.
“It’s essentially like free money”, she said. Beth explained that most supermarkets, including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, typically feature cash back offers. “Aldi is sometimes on there and sometimes not – it depends on what the cash back apps are promoting”, she said. She noted that towards the month’s end, around payday, cash back apps frequently increase their rates to attract more people to purchase gift cards.
“For example, if Tesco has 2% cash back, near pay day, they might boost that to 5%”, she said. “I have all the different apps downloaded, so I can check which ones have the best rate.
“There’s no point in staying loyal when you can get better cash back elsewhere.” Through this approach, Beth saves approximately £100 annually on groceries for herself alone.
“Using cash back can give you about two weeks’ free shopping each year”, she said. “If you are a family of five or a family of six, you are really going to build some savings.”
Beyond using cash back apps, Beth advises never visiting the supermarket while hungry. “I always get swayed by all the sweet treats”, she said. She also suggests drawing up a precise shopping list before heading to the supermarket to curb impulse buying, while recommending meal prepping and repeating meals to reduce the cost per portion.
“Make sure you are signed up to all of the loyalty schemes such as Clubcard and Nectar as well”, she said. “And if you’re a Waitrose shopper, switching to somewhere like Aldi will save you a huge amount.”
How do cashback sites work?
Cashback sites use affiliate links that allow a retailer to track where traffic is coming from. They then pay cashback sites for the lead.
According to Martin Lewis’ MSE website, “if you want to buy something online or sign up to a finance product, rather than going direct, click to the company via a cashback site and you get paid for it.” The site says you can save on things like groceries and mobile and broadband contrascts – and readers of that website have told stories of making hundreds of pounds doing it.
Signing up should be free, it says, although sometimes there is an annual subscription cost. Then it says you just need to log in and search for the online retailer you are looking for. If it is there, click the site’s link to visit that company. For more on MSE’s guidance, visit the website.
