Extreme Stacking is about combining deals so that you can save the most money and earn the greatest rewards. Deal stacking often involves many of the following components:
- Shopping Portals
- Gift Card Double Dips
- Credit Card Bonuses & Rebates
- Store Rewards
- Coupons & Discounts
Figuring out how best to stack deals is rarely intuitive. Below you’ll find a few general tips. For details about specific merchants, click through to one of the merchants shown on the right .
Laboratory
The Frequent Miler Laboratory (found here) is a page dedicated to experimenting with stacking deals. Every component of a stacked deal is tested individually: Can you earn rewards from portal X when buying gift cards from merchant Y? Can you apply a discount code when buying a gift card? Can you earn portal rewards when using a gift card? Can you apply multiple discount codes to one order?
The majority of the results found in the Laboratory come from readers. Please keep track of your portal purchases, gift card uses, etc. and let us know what works and what doesn’t. Contribute your findings simply by commenting at the bottom of the Laboratory page.
Portal Tips
Online shopping portals offer a great way to earn extra points, miles, or cash back when shopping for things you were planning to buy anyway. For details, please see: Earn oodles of airline miles from shopping portals. Tips:
- Use CashBackMonitor to find the best portal offers
- Use one browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) for portal shopping. Use a different browser for comparison shopping and deal seeking.
- Disable toolbars and ad blockers from your portal shopping browser.
- When making a second purchase always click through from the portal a second time.
Gift Card Tips
Gift cards are an important part of Extreme Stacking because you can often increase rewards or reduce your costs by “double dipping”. First, save money or increase rewards when buying gift cards. Next, stack portal rewards, coupon codes, etc. when using gift cards.
Read: Instant Gift Card Deals, and Merchant gift cards, best options for stacking deals
Cautions:
- Some merchants limit the number of gift cards that can be used per order.
- When buying items with gift cards, you will not get the automatic purchase protections that are offered by many credit cards automatically.
Extreme Stacking Guides
Merchandise
Specialty / Gifts
- 1-800-Flowers (and associated stores such as 1800Baskets, Fruit Bouquets, Cheryl’s, Fannie May, Popcorn Factory, etc.)
- PetSmart
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Don’t forget about the Mileage Plus X app. You can easily stack points by purchasing e gift cards and earning points and miles at the same time. You can then, for instance, re-charge your Starbucks account with that gift card, rack up points on it and enjoy a free cup of coffee every now and then. Different type of stacking, with indirect savings, but savings nonetheless.
Yep, thanks for pointing that out. We do have the MileageX app listed in the linked post about best ways to buy gift cards, but it’s worth calling out more.
Ok. I’ll make sure to read that as well. I really enjoy your site btw… very good articles and I learned a lot. Thanks for that and keep ’em coming.
Thanks!
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