Posted by My girlfriend recently discovered Ibotta and Fetch. She has several friends who have been using these apps to get cash back on their purchases and decided to try them for herself. This won’t be an in-depth review of cash back apps. You can find lots of good reviews online. I was kind of skeptical because of the information they collect on your shopping habits. But she gets tons of junk email every day, so I knew it wouldn’t make a difference for her. The biggest differences between these two apps are Fetch is better for ease of use as it earns points automatically by scanning receipts, while Ibotta offers potentially higher cashback but requires more effort by having users pre-select offers. Ibotta also doesn’t let you cash-out until you have accumulated at least $20.
After about a week of using the apps, she was able to get some cash back. I like the fact that she is showing more interested in planning and shopping for our groceries. Before using the apps, I was the one who would go online and create our shopping list. The apps have made it more like a game by offering incentives on many of the items we would buy anyway. But my biggest fear is that the apps will make her buy things that we wouldn’t normally buy just to complete a cash-back offer. On the other hand, by completing some of the offers, you get to try new things for free or at a big discount. We have a grocery store within walking distance, so that makes it a lot easier to buy an item that has a time limit on the cash back offer.
I don’t know if she will continue to use both apps. Each has their pros and cons. It’s something you have to work at every day, if you want to maximize how much cash you get back. It remains to be seen how this will impact our grocery budget. We are already spending 50% more than we did a few years ago. If we can get a little cash back and not have to spend more than we normally do, that would be great. But if we end up spending more just to get the products that have cash back offers, it may be a waste of time. Meanwhile because of the government shutdown, I feel bad for everyone who will stop getting SNAP benefits on Nov. 1st. It won’t be long before we start seeing lines at local food banks and more anger toward our GOP policy makers in Washington.