Make Money from your Grocery Receipts with Your Smartphone

You know all about couponing, sales, and bargain shopping. But did you know that even your most trivial purchases can make you more money, even after you've saved all you can? That's right—those receipts that they give you at the store can be used not just once more to save you money, but multiple times.

Manufacturers are hungry to know what you are buying, and they are willing to pay for data: who is buying what product at what store; are they using manufacturers' coupons, store coupons, etc.; are they shopping sales; are there seasonal variations; and many more questions about which products are selling and how.

If you have a smartphone or tablet, nothing could be easier. Free apps (small pieces of software that run on your phone or tablet) will allow manufacturers to see your shopping data without revealing your personal information, and you can rack up points to redeem for gift cards or even cash!

Receipt Hog (link is to the Apple App Store) - You simply take a photo of your receipt, get points, and redeem those points for cash. It works not only at grocery stores, but also at gas stations, convenience stores, etc. In general, as of this writing, you receive 5 points for a receipt $10 or less; 10 points for a receipt between $10 and $50, and 15 points for larger receipts. It takes a lot of points to redeem for something worthwhile, but hey, it's free money.

Checkout 51 (link is to the Apple App Store) - Load the app. In the app, check off the items you bought that have offers. Again, you take a photo of your receipt (you can use the same receipts for all these apps, in effect getting paid multiple times for your purchases) and redeem.

Savingstar - Another app where in the app you select what you have bought, then take a photo of your receipt.

iBotta - The same process; find offers, buy them, tell the app which ones you bought, and take a photo of your receipt.

The amount of time required to check off the items and photograph your receipt (unfortunately, you have to photograph it separately in each app) is less than five minutes per app.

I recently spent a dollar on tomatoes at the store. By combining offers, I got 50% off my purchase of tomatoes from one app, plus twenty cents off from another app, plus twenty cents off from a third app, plus 5 points in Receipt Hog. So that $1.00 of tomatoes cost me ten cents, minus the two-thirds of a cent credit in Receipt Hog. Since you can use the same receipt for all four apps, you can see that the savings will add up!

Redemption amounts are low; usually $20.00 or less. Receipt Hog has very low redemption, but you will be better off waiting until you have 4500 points, at which point you will be able to redeem those points for a $30 Amazon gift card or $30 transferred to your PayPal account.

Credit for items is usually within 24 hours; in practice, it takes only a few minutes for redemptions to show up in my accounts.

And how fast can you redeem? I earned my first iBotta payout for $10 in about two weeks.

For SavingStar, iBotta, and Checkout 51, both name-brand items such as cereal and cleaning products, as well as any kind of produce and some items of any brand (such as milk, bread, yoghurt, eggs, or peanut butter) will count. The offers change periodically (usually weekly or monthly), but there will almost always be some purchases that can be redeemed for any brand (including natural and organic items) in most of the apps. Currently I can get $2.00 off of a gallon of milk of any brand, as well as whatever my receipt will be worth in Receipt Hog.

For Receipt Hog, purchases made at clothing stores, thrift stores, dollar stores, club stores, grocery stores, and convenience stores (not gasoline only) count. It's honestly quite easy to get $100 per year or more credit at Amazon or cash!

• If you buy using a credit card, you can black out the numbers with a marker or ink pen. It won't matter because the receipts will still work.
• The savings in the apps are in addition to whatever coupons or discounts you may have used. The only app where the total dollars on the receipt matters is Receipt Hog.
• For Receipt Hog, you can submit 20 grocery receipts and 20 non-grocery receipts per week. If you have more than that, always submit the most expensive receipts first. Since receipts don't have to be submitted right away, if you do a lot of shopping in one week, save your extra receipts for the next week.