I. Freaking. Love. Gift Cards.

But I especially love when my gift card is able to save me money.

This post shows you exactly how to save money by stacking gift cards.

Let’s dig in.

Have You Heard Of Gift Card Stacking?

I mean, probably. That’s why you’re here.

But for those that haven’t, it’s when you get a discounted gift card and stack it with a cash back offer or a sales promotion going on at a store.

By doing this, your money is able to go much further.

It can be the difference in saving $5 or $30.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me actually explain this and give you a real life example of how I bought mine and Shawn’s Christmas presents for only $89.75 (originally $261.19).

1. Sign Up For Swagbucks

In an earlier blog post I answered the infamous question of “can you make legit money on Swagbucks?”

And well, the answer is yes. I made $25 in about 2 weeks.

I decided to cash out on it pretty quickly because I wanted to test out this gift card stacking idea and save some money on our Christmas presents to see how their points redemption process worked.

Well, when I cashed out I ended up getting a pretty good deal on that alone.

Even Swagbucks puts their gift cards on sale sometimes. So I ended up only spending 2100SB on a $25 Visa Gift Card (13% off roughly).

It didn’t take very long to receive my e-gift card. Some people have said it has taken the full 10 days to receive theirs on Swagbucks, but mine was verified and ready within a few hours.

It might be because it was my first time, so they wanted to push it through to keep me hooked.

Who knows?

After that, I made my way on over to Raise.com

2. Buy On Raise.com

If you don’t already have a Raise.com account, do yourself a favor and sign up immediately.

Raise is a website that sells gift cards at a discount (one of many sites of this nature, but one of the most credible in my honest opinion).

But anyway, I went to Raise.com and looked up a Dicks Sporting Goods gift card.

Every year Shawn and I get the same Christmas present for one another: new CrossFit shoes. And we almost exclusively get them at Dick’s because they usually have really good deals going on for their shoes/apparel.

So I got a $105.68 gift card that was already discounted to $101.45. ($4.23 total savings)

When you go to Raise.com:

• Search for the company you want a gift card from. (Dick’s in this example.)
• Select the price range you want. ($100 – $250 here.)
• Choose the card you want by selecting “Add to Cart.”

(Raise is really good at making you feel like you need to purchase right then and there because you have a 10 minute window where the gift card is saved in your cart; this makes sure no one buys it out from under you… which is a really big fear when you have a 20% Target gift card sitting there)

Then when I went to pay for it, I used my Swagbucks Chrome extension to get 1% cash back and apply any relevant discounts.

One of which was 10RAISEAF, which took off $10. And the 1% cash back gave me $0.91 back. ($15.14 total savings)

THEN I used my $25 Visa Gift Card that I got (for free) from Swagbucks.

So my total savings at this point is $40.15

And I paid (out of pocket) $65.45 for a $105 Dick’s Sporting Goods gift card.

That’s like 40% off. That’s not normal, people.

And we aren’t. even. done. yet.

3. Stack on Top of a Sale

It’s no secret that stores love putting things on sale around the holidays. And it’s usually really beeft discounts.

This instance is one example of that.

Dick’s was having a 40% off select shoes and apparel while all of this was going on.

So off I went with my 40% off Dick’s gift card to buy our Christmas presents.

The shoes we ended up getting (Reebok Nano 9s) were marked down from $129.99 to $64.99.

That’s a $65 savings for both of us. Do you know where that puts us?

$130 total savings from just waiting for a sale at Dick’s.

That doesn’t even include the $40.14 from my Raise x Swagbucks savings.

4. Shop Online for Savings

I bought our shoes online because (a) convenience and (b) cash back.

Remember that Swagbucks extension I was talking about earlier?

Well, it works on almost every single site you go to that’s trying to sell you something. And at this particular point in time, Swagbucks was offering 1% cash back.

So that was another $1.30 saved. Total savings are now at $171.44.

So Let’s Recap On Our Savings Stackup

Anyway, back to stacking sales on top of discounted gift cards.

Our total for the shoes ended up being $129.98 from just shopping at the right time.

But let’s see what I spent out of pocket for these bad boys.

Out of Pocket for Dick’s Gift Card	65.45
Out of Pocket for CrossFit Shoes	24.30
Out of Pocket Total	$89.75

Now let’s calculate the total savings (in case you got lost up there)

Visa Gift Card (from Swagbucks)	$25.00
Raise Gift Card	$4.23
Swagbucks Cash Back	$0.91
Swagbucks Coupon on Raise	$10.00
40% Dick’s Discount	$130.00
Swagbucks Dick’s Cash Back	$1.30
Total Savings	$171.44

At the end of the day, I spent $89.75 for $261.19 worth of shoes.

But better yet: I saved $171.

Over to You

Do you have strategies that you have used for stacking gift cards for extra savings? Let us know your best tips and tricks in the comments below!