Shopping Portal Forgotten Money
Shopping portals are among the greatest tools to help juice up your miles and points balances. If you pay close attention you can often earn pretty good rebates on your purchases and some even pay you in valuable miles or even Membership Rewards points. I assume most people who read this site are using them and have their favorites.
A few years ago I wrote about my shopping portal strategy and how I choose which shopping portal to use for any given purchase. The main reason I go with a select few is trust. Once I establish that everything tracks properly and that I get paid properly then I am much more willing to use that portal again. Keeping my purchases limited to a handful of portals also has the benefit of making it easier to track everything.
Forgotten Money in Extrabux Portal
Once in awhile I’ll try to make a purchase and the payout is way higher at a “new to me” portal or rarely that new to me portal is the only one paying a rebate. This is increasingly rare, however it does happen. Such a thing happened last year when I was making a business purchase and Extrabux (they have a $20 sign-up bonus right now) was the best portal. They’ve been around forever but I never used them but I gave it a shot…..and then forgot about it.
Today I received the following email from Extrabux:
I had completely forgotten that I had used Extrabux let alone that I had $34.40 there. It turns out I had made a purchase of some software I needed for work and they had the best payout. Plus they also threw in a $5 bonus for signing up. Win win!
How to Choose the Best Portal
As a quick recap from my earlier post, my strategy for which portal I use goes something like this:
- Check the rates across most/all portals at Cashback Monitor – I have been using CM for many many years and find it to be accurate and useful. I have also met the owner and he seems committed to keeping it that way.
- See if there are any promos that will juice the bonus – Sometimes airline portals run specials or there are other promos that come up from time to time
- Choose the portal that has the best rate/familiarity – 99% of the time I use the same portals.
- Keep in mind payout options/timeframes – Some portals payout when the money has vested while others do quarterly payouts. Some only allow payouts to gift card or PayPal while others will ACH the money into your account. Make sure to check out the various options to find the one that works best for you. This is important considering PayPal now sends 1099s for any cumulative payments received of more than $600.
Which Portals I Use The Most & Current Bonuses
Sometimes portals offer sign-up bonuses so it can be good to give them a try as long as you remember to cash out your money. As I’ve said before I do limit the portals I use, but compared to most I probably still use a lot!
Here are the portals I use regularly and any potential bonuses you can receive for signing up:
- Rakuten – $30 sign-up bonus
- RebatesMe – $31 sign-up bonus
- Top Cashback – No bonus right now but they do sometimes have them
- Active Junky – $5 sign-up bonus
- Swagbucks – $5 sign-up bonus
I will also use any of the airline portals and occasionally use the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal if it has a nice payout. In the past I’ve also had decent experiences with BeFrugal and Mr. Rebates but I don’t find them to have better rates anymore so haven’t used them in awhile. And if you are interested in Extrabux, they have a $20 sign-up bonus now as well.
Shopping Portal Forgotten Money – Bottom Line
I guess this post is to say that Extrabux seems to be a standup company for at least notifying me of my balance and trying to get me to keep my account active. Perhaps this is another sign that I need to get back on top of my organization!
What are your preferred shopping portals?
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I’ve noticed that over the years, I seem to use rakuten and topcashback the most. I used to use befrugal a lot, but it seems that tcb seems to have the highest rates for most stores I buy from. Because of the HBO max 76% cashback error for the annual plan that tcb honored, I am happy to use them. It did take many months, but they finally paid out of their own pocket. They could have easily just cancelled it but they honored it and made that a smoking deal especially with the amex offer.
I sometimes use the airline portals but not very often.