I’m sorry I haven’t been writing recently, buying a house took quite some time, but setting it up is taking just as long. Part of setting the house up involved buying furniture, which can be quite expensive, but sure helps meet credit card minimum spends.
TV
After years of professing I would never own a TV, I ended up buying one last week. I wanted a projector, like the one I bought with my Bitcoin 5 years ago. I sold it on eBay when we moved to Taiwan as we were constantly moving and didn’t need to take it around. However, now when looking at projectors they are all fairly expensive compared to TVs. I considered buying a used one, but that can turn out costly if you need to replace the bulb. So when I found a new 55″ Samsung 4K for $500 including a $100 Walmart gift card I jumped on it. Here is the breakdown of how much I paid.
TV + $100 GC + tax = $530
Discover Deals Portal = -$25
For this I didn’t do anything too fancy, just one click through a portal and paid by credit card. Discover had 5% back and with the gift card my effective price was $405, which is crazy low.
And now for the more complicated deal…
Dining Table
Our parents got rid of some furniture, so we were able to complete our living room with a room with a rug, two recliners, a coffee table and a sofa. I’m pretty happy with the layout and the coffee table is a nice modern white piece. Well that was inspiration to spend a ton on a modern dining table. Furniture can sure be expensive and I liked this one for a cool $4,400, so that wasn’t happening. We were constantly on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace looking for something fitting but this weekend we found something that fit. The price was $1900, but Wayfair was selling it for $1350.
The story could end there, but that is where it starts. Wayfair did have the lowest price, but I didn’t buy it from Wayfair, I bought it at Gilt which had it for $1460.
Table + tax = $1,563
15% off coupon = -$219
Portal to buy gift cards = -$20
Gift card savings = -$96
Portal to buy on Gilt = -$20
So the total came to $1215 which is still expensive, but much better than clicking checkout on $1563. And fortunately that is getting spent on something that will provide a sign-up bonus. Here is the step-by-step. First, I looked for a coupon. My wife has an Ebates plug in that found one, but normally I Google it. Next, I checked if I could buy gift cards at a discount. Raise had them at 9.6% off. Then I found that TopCashBack (affiliate) offered 2% back on Raise purchases. After I got the two $500 gift cards I checked which portal had the best cashback on Gilt – again it was TopCashBack which offered 8%. Sometimes this percentage will apply to the whole order in which case I would have received around $100, but for this purchase it only counted the part paid by credit card.
Conclusion
I still recommend going with Craigslist, but we were in a pinch and ended up getting a pricier table. Hopefully I have shown you some tips for getting an even better deal that the deal prices you see. TopCashBack has been pretty amazing and I’ve collected over $1,200 from them. Gift cards can be great if you are already going to buy something. I’d recommend setting up an account on Raise and/or other gift card websites because you could be flagged for a security check and you don’t need anything slowing you down from getting a deal. Good luck on your dealings.