What Is Stacking And Why Should You Be Doing It?

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When I’m talking about stacking, I’m not talking about stacking cups, although that is an impressive, yet useless skill.

I’m also not speaking of the catchy Anna Kendrick song Cups from Pitch Perfect, where she never actually stacks anything.

When I’m talking about stacking, I’m referring to the combining of multiple deals to maximize the returns on purchases.

I regard myself as a entry level player to this area who occasionally gets lucky with a decent reward. I’m almost always helped by a post or two that points me in the right direction. My goal today is to show you how these work and that it’s not difficult to make them work for you.

I’m particularly interested in this topic right now because I had two instances where I was able to take advantage of stacking opportunities this past week. They weren’t difficult to do. In fact, they were really easy.

Amazon Prime Day & AMEX Membership Rewards

If you shop on Amazon.com, have Amazon Prime or live on the planet Earth, I assume you know that every year Amazon.com has their Prime Day promotion. This made up day, started in 2015, gives special discounts to the over 100 MILLION Amazon Prime subscribers.

While I first scoffed at Prime Day as a way to make people spend money, I since have found that many things I’ve put off buying can be found for a deep discount on Prime Day. What made this Prime Day special was a overlapping discount available for American Express cardholders.

By clicking on a easily obtainable link, eligible Amazon Prime members could save 20% off items on Amazon.com when paying with Membership Rewards points. Now, you can always pay for your Amazon purchases with Membership Rewards but it’s never a good deal. However, you can choose how many AMEX points you want to use for your purchase. If you paid with only one Membership Rewards point, you would still get the 20% discount. Inquiring minds, like those at Frequent Miler, discovered that if you added Amazon gift cards to your order to max out the $500 limit, you could save $100 off any purchase. I took advantage of that brainstorm and purchased $100 in Outback Steakhouse gift cards and $400 in Amazon gift cards for only $400 total.

When Prime Day started, many websites posted about a great deal on Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Headphones. Normal price on these headphones is $249.

During Prime Day, they were available at a great price of $125.00

While that would be a great price, that’s only the start for the stackers. Nick from Frequent Miler posted about how you could stack the Prime Day offer with the AMEX offer. Making the deal even better was the 20% AMEX discount was computed off the original $249 price, not the $125 Prime day price. That means you’re saving $50 off $125, or paying $75.

Here’s my Amazon receipt. I purchased my Amazon gift card with the previous 20% offer where I received an $100 Outback gift card for free. My total out of pocket cost for a pair of $299 Bose headphones was $73.69.

While I bet many people will be reselling these headphones, I have a use for them over my ears. So I lucked out on an offer. It won’t happen again, right?

It wasn’t luck, it was knowledge. More accurately it was keeping up on the the current offers. Within a day, I saw another deal I could take advantage of.

AMEX Platinum Saks & United MileagePlus Portal

It wasn’t long ago that I wrote about the American Express Platinum card’s $100 rebate for purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue. As fortune would have it, I received an email today telling me of a special offer – Saks.com is offering 10 miles per dollar spent when making purchases from the United MileagePlus portal.

I just wrote about the value of using a shopping portal. Cashback Monitor even was able to keep up with the flash bonus. In fact, Saks was one of the hot links on the Cashback Monitor website, so I know I wasn’t the only one looking for this offer.

I used the link on the United shopping site to link to the Saks website. I picked out some of the items I found during my search, like a swimsuit and built a cart just over $50

I was able to get free two-day shipping with my Shoprunner membership but you can get free shipping by using coupon code FREESHIP, as shown in the image above.

My total purchase was $54.42. I should get 10x United miles, or 544 miles, for the purchase. I’ll get a $50 credit from AMEX for my purchase from Saks so I’ll be out of pocket $4.42 for a swimsuit and some other “unmentionables” . 🙂

I’m not going to sit here and brag about how smart I am. What I will do is tell you to follow posts on Frequent Miler and Doctor of Credit. Not all of the deals they write about will be good for you, but when you see one that is you need to jump on that right away.

If you do, I hope you enjoy your headphones, swimsuit or whatever you manage to buy for almost nothing. If you want, you could let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page.

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