I Just Saved $128 After Sale Price on my Computer

When you do need to buy something, remember to aim for six layers of savings:

1️⃣ Sale price

2️⃣ Coupon

3️⃣ Cashback site on CardCash

4️⃣ CardCash

5️⃣ Credit card on CardCash

6️⃣ Cashback at retailer

Here’s what happened

It came time for me to buy a computer that could handle the professional trading software that I use. The performance per price of computers follows a generally linear curve, but I found an HP computer that was a high outlier in performance, but not in price – a natural choice. 

1️⃣ The original price was $1,484 after tax but I got it on sale for $1060 after tax.

+$426💰

2️⃣I used a $50 coupon to drop the price to $1007 after tax ($1000 on sale →  $950 + 6% sales tax). 

+$53💰

3️⃣CardCash didn’t have HP gift cards so I wasn’t able to utilize that service. But, after comparing the various cashback services, I used a PayPal reward to get $25 cashback at the retailer. (This is layer 6 above. After I’d already made the purchase, Rakuten began offering 7% cashback for HP, which would’ve been $70 in cashback! Sometimes it’s best not to check what might have been. Sigh.)

+$25💰

4️⃣Being unable to utilize CardCash, my fourth and final layer of savings was using a credit card at the retailer. The Discover 5% cashback category was PayPal. So I checked out with PayPal, funded with my Discover card.

+$50.35💰

Results:

🟰Overall I saved $554 💰

🟰From the raw purchase price (after-sale price) I saved $128 💰

Assessment

Since CardCash didn’t have HP gift cards, I was only able to achieve four out of six layers of savings.

The $128 (after-sale price) savings covered the price of a new monitor (which I bought with my PayPal credit card to make 2%, or $2.19, cashback).

Conclusion

It’s best to not spend money. But when you do need to buy that computer, aim for your six layers of savings.

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