Comparison of Cash Back Bonus Programs for Select Major Merchants

I decided to buy a Groupon deal today and I shopped around the different rebate sites I've used to see which had the best rebate for Groupon.   Turns out the winner was Discover card.   I decided to do a quick sample of major retailers to see where the best rebates were.  

I compared the following sites :

Citibanks Citi Bonus Cash Center
Discover cards Shop Discover
Chase's Ultimate Rewards Mall
Fatwallet Cash back shopping
Ebates


For Citi, Discover & Chase you need to have credit cards with those companies to use their online discount sites.   For Ebates & Fatwallet anyone can sign up on those sites.


I found a list of the largest retailers in the US and grabbed the top few stores excluding grocery.   Each of the sites has several dozen if not hundreds of merchants signed up so thats way too much work for me to sort through and list all of them.  

Here is the comparison :

	Discover	Citi	Chase	Ebates	FatWallet
Amazon	n/a	n/a	n/a	0-3%	0-3%
Apple	5%	2%	1%	1%	1%
Best Buy	5%	1%	1%	1%	1.5%
Home Depot	5%	2%	2%	2%	2%
iTunes	n/a	4%	4%	n/a	n/a
Lowe's	5%	3%	3%	2%	2.5%
Macy's	5%	3%*	3%	3%	5%
Rite Aid	n/a	n/a	n/a	4%	2%
Sears	5%	3%	3%	3%	3%
Target	5%	2%	2%	0-2.5%	0-2.5%
Walgreens	5%	4%	4%	4%	8%
Walmart	5%	2%	1%	2%	1%

Discover is the clear winner with only a few exceptions.    7.5 of the 12 merchants have the largest rebate at Discover.   FatWallet has 2, Ebates got 1.5 and Citi and Chase only share the last 1.

 Note: the rates above are what I found at the time of writing.   The rates do change and each site might run temporary bonus offers.

One thing to keep in mind is that with Citi, Chase and Discover the bonus above stacks with their normal cashback amount.  Ebates and Fatwallet would also stack with the normal cash back on whatever credit card you use.    Sometimes the way this stacks can change the better choice.   For example, right now Citi has 5% discount at Macy's.  So stacking their 3% bonus above with the promo 5% rate makes them 8% and they win right now due to the extra cash back 5% promotion.


Standard Ebates blurb:
To get the cash back you need to be signed up with Ebates.  Then simply go to Ebates to get the referral to the the store before you do your shopping.  I also get a referral bonus if you use my links to sign up with Ebates. 

--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

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Best of Blogs for Week of April 4th

Every Friday afternoon I share some of the more interesting or notable posts that I have seen in the personal finance blogs and other sources for the past week

An article carried on Yahoo talked about  How much does a wedding proposal cost at a major league ballpark?

MyMoneyBlog shares their Frugal Mattress Shopping Tips and Our Experiences

DQYDJ finishes their series with Emergency Funds are Overrated: Part Three of Three

 
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Have My Real Estate Investments Paid Off Better Than Simply Buying Stocks?

I bought my first house in 1999 with a low % downpayment.   My payments on the house including insurance and taxes have been roughly $1200 the whole time since then.   Today Zillow says the house is worth about 65% more than I paid for it.    That is roughly 3.4% annual rate of increase.  However I've had a leveraged purchase so my return is much better.    In fact I figure that my rough IRR on the investment is about 11.5%.   Thats a good return.    I figured that by counting the out of pocket cost at closing to buy the house plus figuring my mortgage cost minus equivalent rent and then considering the income tax impact as well.    My home has returned over 11% annually as a financial investment.   Thats a good return.


But what if I'd simply rented an apartment the whole time and then instead put the same amount of money into the Vanguard 500 index fund (VFINX)?   If I had instead put the same amount of money into VFINX annually I'd have a return rate of 5.1%.     The investment in my home has returned over double what I'd have gotten if I'd bought stock index fund instead.

Now lets look at our rental properties.

The first property was bought in 2001 for cash.   Its had positive cash flow since then.   All in that property has a IRR of 12.9% annually.    During that period investing in VFINX would have given a 7% return.

The second rental we bought in 2006.   For that one the IRR is 'only' 8%.    Putting the same amount of money into VFINX would have given me about 4% IRR.

Here's a summary of how the 3 properties have performed versus if I'd just bought the VFINX index fund  :

	IRR	VFINX
Home	11.5%	5.1%
1st rent	12.9%	7.0%
2nd rent	8.0%	4.2%

In total I've gotten 11.1% return from the house and rentals.   If I'd bought VFINX then the total return would have been 5.3%.

Yes my real estate investments have paid off better than simply buying stocks.

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Target Now Available on Gathr - $10 Amazon, $10 Target + $10 Living Social for $20

I've previously discussed how you can get $30+ worth of Gift cards and subcriptions at Gathr for $20

Since then  Gathr has also added Target as one of the options for $10 credits.    Now you can get $10 from Amazon, $10 from Target and another option for $20 total.

Personally I like the combination of $10 Amazon, $10 Target and $10 LivingSocial but there are a lot of ways to combine the options.

I can treat Amazon and Target basically as good as cash since theres always useful stuff to buy at those merchants.   So this deal is basically like getting $10 on LivingSocial for free.

For the first option Amazon, itunes, Ticketmaster or Starbucks:

Second choice Target, Fandango, Groupon, Dominos, Barnes & Noble, Toys R Us, Zappos :

The third option has Pandora, several magazine subscriptions and some other services.    In my opinion these options have lower value but theres likely something there you can make use of.

Fourth option LivingSocial, Restaurant.com or Amazon instant video:

I would really only recommend doing this is you are sure you can get good value out of the options in question.   Also make sure to read the 'details' tab on each offering to see how they work.  Some of the credits expire within a month.

Important Note :   Gathr is a monthly subscription service, so they will automatically bill you every month.    However you can cancel at any time so if you chose you can get the credits for just one month then cancel.

Plus if you refer a friend and they sign up then you get another $10 Amazon gift card.

My links to Gathr here are my referral link so if you sign up after following the links here then I'll get the referral bonus.

--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.