How often do you pay attention to your receipts? Unless you’re watching your expenses for the sake of business taxes, there’s a good chance that you probably buy what you need and shove the receipt in the pocket of your jeans – never to be seen again. You might even throw your receipts away the second you walk out of the store if there’s a trash can nearby.
However, what most people don’t know, is that by holding onto their receipts, they could save some money. In fact, all you need to do to start earning cash back on your daily shop is download the right app onto your smartphone. A shopping rewards app like Shopkick allows you to scan your receipt information, load it up into your system, and earn cashback rewards on the money you’ve spent with certain retailers.
In today’s article, we’ll be taking a look at how you can get the most out your receipts and transform those little scraps of paper into a solution to save you more cash.
Using Your Smartphone to Make Money Off Receipts
You don’t have to be a shopaholic to spend a lot of money in stores today. It seems like the price of everything is constantly going up – whether you’re looking to spend your cash on the essentials like groceries and fuel, or you’re buying something special like a new jacket, or a gift for a friend. No matter how careful you are with your cash, you’re going to need to spend money eventually – so it makes sense to get as much out of your purchases as possible.
A smartphone shopping rewards app is a simple way to tap into the benefits of a cashback system from the comfort of your smartphone. All you need to do to use one of these systems is go and buy the items you normally would from the stores that appeal most to you. Ideally, you’ll want to double-check that the rewards app you’ve chosen has affiliations with the ships you’re buying from. Once you’ve purchased your items, you can scan your receipts, and earn points which you can redeem on gift cards and other great rewards.
The more you shop, the more your points will add up, so you can quickly claim great things like Amazon gift cards, Starbucks drinks and more. What’s more, since you’re only spending the money that you would have spent anyway, there’s really no downside.
Choosing the Best Rewards App
Since saving money on shopping is bound to be a popular concept, you can rest assured that there are plenty of different cashback applications out there to choose from – however, not all these apps are created equally. Some demand that you earn an insane amount of points before you can even hope to get something back for your purchases and others only work with a few stores.
My personal favorite app for this purpose is Shopkick – simply because it gives you an easy and effective way to gather points quickly on the things you buy every day. You can scan the barcodes on certain items with the app to get more information about those products, then scan the receipts for money back on your purchases. One particularly interesting feature of the Shopkick app is the Treasure hunt” mode, where you can wander around specific stores looking for immediate rewards.
Importantly, Shopkick also allows you to purchase items and get cashback online, so it doesn’t matter where you shop – you’re still getting money for your purchases.
How to Use your Shopkick App
Once you’ve downloaded the Shopkick app, all you need to do to start earning is scan the receipts from your purchases and sign up, so your app can track when you buy items online too. As you continue to spend cash, you’ll earn points called “Kicks” which you can eventually trade in for great rewards and vouchers.
Another great thing about Shopkick is that if you ever have a question or a concern you need to talk about, you can simply log onto Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and talk to the active community of users there. There are plenty of people to talk to if you’re unsure about how to scan your receipts, or you just want a tip on how you can get the most of your new app. Within seconds, you can be earning points so fast that it feels as though you’re being paid to buy the things you were going to purchase anyway!