Everyday Savings
Saving money on everyday expenses for your family is easier than you think! Many retailers offer both ONLINE and IN STORE discounts to military members and their families. Best of all, you can combine your military discount with an online shopping portal and save even more! All from the convenience of your home. Let me show you how.
Let’s use Nike as an example:
- Sign up for an online shopping portal like Rakuten. (For today’s example Rakuten’s cashback offer will be 15%).
- Verify your military status through SheerID by clicking here
- Nike will send you an email code for 10% off.
- Through the Rakuten site, click Nike. Shop.
- Add the promo code you received in your email to your cart when you’re done shopping. Check out.
- Your 10% discount should have been applied to your total.
- You’re all done!
- Your Rakuten cash back will post to you account within a few weeks.
- You will have saved 10% from your military discount and 15% from Rakuten! (So your son’s $50 shoes will now have cost you $38.25 out of pocket)
There are many retailers that offer both in store and online discounts for military families. You can often use these discounts on top of any shopping portals
Shopping Portals
Shopping portals are a great way to save some extra money while shopping online. If I can order something online instead of having to physically go buy it, I definitely will! If I need it ASAP, I always try to do the buy online and pick up in store option if available. Even stores like target have at least a 1% cash back option. Every little bit counts!
The first place I check before shopping online is cashback monitor. It checks the different online shopping portals for the best cashback option for a specific retailer. You always want the choose the best option for you. If you don’t value United Airline Miles as much as Chase Ultimate Rewards, then definitely choose the Chase shopping portal over the United Airlines one.
Rakuten
Rakuten is my favorite shopping portal. They offer cash back from stores that I often shop at for my family, including, Disney, Nike, Gap, Target, Carter’s, Old Navy, Walmart, Zappos, and so many more! The cash back can range from 1% to 20%! Rakuten will periodically offer increased cashback offers (I’ve seen 40%, even up to 80%), and when I see those, I typically jump on them and make all my purchases! If my kids are starting to outgrow their clothes are in need of warmer clothes, I’ll add the stuff I intend to buy to my cart, and purchase when I see an increased Rakuten offer. I don’t always get this lucky, but when I do, it sure does feel nice to know that I saved a little extra. 🙂
Amex Membership Reward Points instead of Cash back: If you prefer, Rakuten gives you the option of receiving American Express Membership Rewards points instead of a check as your cash back reward. Every $10 in Rakuten cashback is 1,000 Amex points. Personally, I highly value Membership Reward points, having my Rakuten account set up this way is a no brainer. Once, when I purchased LifeLock by Norton, Rakuten had an 80% cash back offer, and I received 30,700 points for my $383 transaction! That’s potentially over $600 in travel according to TPG’s MR valuation of 2 cents per point!
If you don’t have Rakuten and would like to sign up, I would appreciate you using my referral link, here. You get $30, and I get $30 🙂 .
Chase Shopping Portal
In order to use the Chase Shopping Portal, you will need to have a Chase credit card that earns Ultimate Rewards. If you have multiple cards, you will want to select the card with the highest bonus earning potential. For example, the Chase Freedom card may earn you 2 bonus points per dollar spent at Macys, whereas the Chase Sapphire Reserve may only earn you 1 bonus point per dollar spent at the same store. Once you’re logged into the Chase shopping portal, click the retailer you’d like, and you should be redirected to their site. Use the specific window that opened to complete your shopping trip and pay with your bonus earning card and you should earn bonus points for your shopping trip!
Chase and American Express Offers
Chase and American Express have “offers” that are linked to each one of your specific credit cards. The offer must be added to the card before the offer can be redeemed. Follow me on social media for up to date information on current Chase and American Express offers!
Chase Offers
Chase offers are often linked to specific cards and must be added to your account before they can be redeemed. You can redeem chase offers by simply clicking the little “+” in the upper right corner on the app or website. Check your chase offers often because new ones are added frequently! There’s often offers for Starbucks, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Dominos, etc. Chase has great offers for every day expenses!
American Express Offers
American Express offers are targeted and also are linked to specific cards and must be added to your account before they can be redeemed. You can redeem American Express offers by simply clicking the little “+” on the right hand side. The offer must be used before the expiration date. American Express has been known to have some pretty awesome offers. They recently had an offer where if you made a $300 purchase with Delta Airlines, you would receive $125 back! Not everyone received the offer, but it seemed that most people who had the American Express Platinum did. That’s almost a 50% savings for a $300 flight!
Popular Retailers that offer
Military Discounts
Apple
Apple offers military members and their families 10% off their products online through their Veterans and Military Purchase Program. You will need to be verified through SheerID. Link to the veteran and military program is here. This is only available online.
Apple products are also sold at the NEX, MCX, and AAFES.
Lululemon
Lululemon offers active duty military members and their spouses a 15% discount in store and online. You can register and verify military status through SheerID here.
My husband and I are big fans of Lululemon so we definitely like to take advantage of this discount!
Nike
Nike offers military members and their spouses a 10% discount both in store and online. In order to receive your online discount code, you will have to verify your ID using SheerID. Nike only give you one promo code every 7 days. Each promo code expires after 2 weeks.
Nike often has increased cashback offers on Rakuten (10%-20%), so this is a store where I like to stack my savings! I can usually buy my kids’ shoes from here for about $30 or less (on sale, with a military discount, and rakuten). When you have 3 kids, the savings definitely adds up!
Asics
Asics offers military members and their spouses a 40% discount online. In order to receive your online discount code, you will have to verify your ID using SheerID
You can shop and verify military status here
Reebok
Reebok offers military members and their spouses a 40% discount both in store and online. In order to receive your online discount code, you will have to verify your ID using ID.me.
You can shop and verify military status here
Under Armour
Under Armour offers military members and their spouses a 20% discount both in store and online. I typically have seen Rakuten offers for about 2%-8% back for Under Armour.
Gap
Gap offers military members and their spouses a 10% discount in store. If you prefer to make your purchase online, you can later bring your items into the store and ask for a price adjustment and ask them to apply your military discount. The store employees have always been more than happy to do that for me.
Old Navy
Old Navy offers military members and their spouses a 10% discount in store. Being part of the Gap family, Old Navy has always been happy to apply a military discount for any online purchases I made when I brought them into the store.