Refresh your Memory: Plink, Shopkick, Visa Savings Edge, Checkout51, and Chime Card (Plus Enter my Contest for 2 $10 Amazon eGift Cards)

If you are interested in winning one of the two $10 Amazon eGift Cards, just leave a comment below with your guess between 20,000 – 50,000.  Good luck.

Since there are so many rewards programs out there, it might be good to refresh your memory on them and point out some of the benefits of each program.  I will link to all relevant posts since I talked about all of these programs at least once my blog.

1 – Plink – Sort of like your best friend in high school.  You were really close for a long time, but then your friend changed and now you barely talk or think of the other person.  What I mean is, Plink used to partner with Staples and Office Depot and you used to earn oodles of Plink Points by buying gift cards in-store and online.  Unfortunately, Plink no longer partners with Staples or Office Depot.  Instead, they have the following partners:

Not surprisingly, since there are less Plink Points being awarded, there are a lot more gift cards available.  If you have at least 500 Plink Points, you can redeem for a $5 egift card.  Learn more about Plink here.

2 – Shopkick – this is probably my current favorite rewards program.  If you are not familiar with Shopkick, check out this page.  You can technically earn Shopkick Kicks 4 different ways: walking into select merchants with the Shopkick app open on your smartphone, scanning bar codes of select items inside select merchants, using a linked Visa or MasterCard Credit Card at select merchants, and referring friends to Shopkick (earn 2,000 Shopkick Kicks for every 3 referrals).  I have *a lot* of referrals from Shopkick.

Shopkick runs many promos where they award many Shopkick Kicks for walking into select merchants.  Sometimes you can get 200 Shopkick Kicks just for walking into Macys.  In the example below, you can earn 30 Shopkick Kicks just for walking into Walmart (I’m sure you do this often).  In addition, you can earn up to 900 Shopkick Kicks just by scanning bar codes for certain items in store.  It’s like a scavenger hunter and you can get the whole family involved!

Currently, you can earn Shopkick Kicks on crackers, chips, Heineken beer, diapers, baby formula, Silk Milk, and much more.  The offers change slightly every week and differ slightly from store to store, but there is some overlap between merchants.

Some merchants, such as Office Depot, offer bonus Shopkick Kicks for using a linked credit card to make in-store or online purchases.  If you were buying a $200 Visa gift card at Office Depot, you would earn 375 bonus Kicks + 207 regular kicks = 582 Kicks for free.

3 – Visa Savings Edge – You may prefer Staples over Office Depot.  Not a problem.  As long as you register your Chase Ink Bold/Plus Visa Credit Card with Visa Savings Edge, you will receive 1% cash back right on your credit card.  To learn more, click here.

A few days after making a purchase at Staples or Staples.com, you will receive the cash back automatically onto your credit card.  It couldn’t be any easier.

4 – Checkout51 – this is a smaller program that is harder to scale up.  You much actually buy groceries, but there is usually something that catches my eye every week.  This is a straight cash back program where you can cash out your earnings after reaching $20.  They will send you a check in the mail.  Learn more here.

5 – Chime Card – this is one of my new favorite programs and I can see tremendous opportunities to make money or save money with this program.  I wrote about this program earlier this week, but in case you missed it, you can check it out here.  Like I said in the previous article, this is like having the AMEX Offers for You program on a prepaid reloadable Visa debit card.  Every time you make a qualifying purchase on this card, you receive the cash back instantly.  No waiting days or weeks for AMEX to post the cash back to your card.  The cash is ready to be spent at the next merchant.

Contest Time – I will announce the winner Friday night (7pm PST), so you must guess before then.  To enter the contest, I want you to guess how many All-Time Shopkick Kicks I have accumulated over the months (hint: it is not 815).  To make it slightly easier for you, I have somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 Kicks.  I will send a $10 Amazon eGift Card to the 2 closest guesses.  Good luck everyone!

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Good night everyone!