Monday Morning Miles Talk is a regular series that has some smaller, more quirky ideas to kick off the work week. These are essentially random ideas that I wanted to share with you. Here are the previous entries.
- How To Maximize Your Flexible Spending Account
- Increase Spend For American Express Sign Up Bonuses
- Mining For Lost Rewards
- How I did Selling Those Kohl’s Personal Appliances
- Reselling Apple Airpods at the End of Their Life Cycle
- Unexpected Ways I Have Earned Points
- Can You go to Disney for Free?
- Why I Love Those Best Buy Gift Card Deals
- My love hate relationship with the Google Express offer
- Kroger Gift Card Sale Results
- My 100th Post
- How to get $30 Worth of Free Merchandise at Best Buy
How to get Discounted Chick-fil-A in 2018
The end of the year is not only the holiday season, it is also an opportunity to save yourself some money at Chick-fil-A for the following 12 months. I know there are a lot of Chick-fil-A lovers out there so I thought this would be a worthwhile subject to tackle. I can not take credit for this though. PDX Deals Guy is the one who alerted me to the opportunity.
2018 Chick-fil-A Calendar Sales
With the new year fast approaching companies are breaking out their 2018 calendars. With google calendar and technology I rarely have a need for a calendar but the Chick-fil-A calendars are unique.
When you purchase one of these $8 calendars it comes with a coupon card. You need to activate the card via your Chick-fil-A account. You can do this online or through their app. Once you have done this you can get your free item each month (via the app or scanning the activated card).
Each Chick-fil-A account is allowed one calendar. A Chick-fil-A account only needs an email address. You can imagine the possibilities there. I got a calendar for myself and my wife so we should be able to double dip whenever we visit the restaurant.
Savings Results
The up front cost is $8 which is very minimal. You should recoup that up front cost in the first 2-3 months of the year which means the other 9 months you get free Chick-fil-A.
PDX Deals Guy said that in the past the mystery offer is pretty decent. Lets go on the cautious side and value those months at $2.50 a piece. There are 7 mystery offer months which would put those month’s value at $17.50.
The five months in which the free item is already known you will get a savings of $14.54 (prices may be different depending by area):
- January – 8 piece nuggets – $3.85
- March – Any size soft drink – $1.85
- May – Any size drink plus any size waffle fry – $3.70
- July – Any size soft drink – $1.85
- December – Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich – $3.29
That brings the total estimated savings to $32.04 for an out of pocket cost of $8.
Here is a link to the calendar from 2017 with all of the mystery offers revealed. I added up each month’s free item from the 2017 calendar and the total came to $35.29. That does not include any potential tax savings.
Make sure to pay with a card that earns a restaurant bonus like the Chase Sapphire Preferred card when buying the calendar. That will increase your savings even more since it should code as a restaurant purchase.
For more info on the card click here.
Conclusion
This is a good deal if you eat at Chick-fil-A at least once per month. Purchasing the 2018 calendar would bring you a savings of 75% on some of your Chick-fil-A purchases for the next year.
I would suggest only getting this if you think you could max out the offers or at least hit the majority of the months. The ability to scale it also makes the deal a little more interesting. Use you imagination folks :).
I know this is small potatoes but it is a good deal for all of the Chick-fil-A lovers out there. They also make for unique holiday gifts/stocking stuffers etc.
Do you think this deal is worth doing? Let me know in the comments. Have a great week!
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[…] 10. First on the list we take a look at how to get discounted Chick-fil-A in 2018! […]
[…] How to get discounted Chick-fil-A […]
Where do you buy the calendar, in store?
Yes just ask for one at the checkout calendar.
[…] MMMT: Free(ish) Chick-fil-A for 2018! […]
I have been faithfully buying Cow calendars for my family (one for each member) for about 7 years now. We love, love, love them!! The calendar is awesome when you can use it in conjunction with sooooo many other Chick-Fil-A freebies that our local stores do, and freebies that have been put on our Chick-Fil-A app accounts. Even my college student in another state uses her calendar items. I recommend that you get them earlier in November when the stores start selling them, or you risk missing out.
Awesome Kristine! We got our first Chick-fil-A last year so not many people know about these yet around here. They still had a nice stack of them. I will have to remember to get them earlier next year :).
[…] Free(ish) Chick-fil-A for 2018! by Miles to Memories – The end of the year is not only the holiday season, it is also an opportunity to save yourself some money at Chick-fil-A for the following 12 months. […]
Bonus tidbits for those who make it to the comments: a) beyond just the monthly offers, they tend to add additional freebie offers occasionally to the app (don’t know if that’s because of the calendar or if anyone with the app gets them); b) the app also has a built in Chick-fil-a (CFA) rewards program where you will earn “treats” after spending a certain amount of real money (sorry the calendar freebies don’t count!); c) the app saves/holds up to 3 email addresses in the log-in screen, so you only need to type in the password for those 3 when you switch between accounts (beyond 3, if you have lots of family members, you have to manually type in the account/email AND password); d) I have never had trouble claiming multiple calendar freebies in a single order (if you’re there with multiple family members); and e) if you have an iPhone, be prepared to be annoyed each time you try to scan the calendar/freebie barcode from the app at the register – as your phone will be in close proximity to the Apple Pay device and will automatically bring up the Apple Wallet app on your phone (causing the CFA app and the barcode to go into the background).
Anyone else have any good CFA advice/hack/tips, regarding the calendar, app or otherwise?
Comment section bonus material! Awesome – thanks for the info!!!
e) agreed! I always try and push the Apple Pay device away if it isn’t bolted to the counter