My three-step hack to stack EOFY sales discounts (2024)

Brace for incessant ads – and annoying jingles – about EOFY sales. With exactly four weeks until the end of financial year, the marketing push is about to become all-pervasive.

With times tight, there might be necessary household items you’ve been holding off buying … until now. So here is my three-step hack to stack EOFY discounts, three and even four times.

Step one: prep to pay less. Before you think about buying anything, you need to investigate whether you can pre-purchase a gift card at less than its face value. For instance, if you can secure 15 per cent off, every $100 spent will only cost you $85.

By the way, this is a top technique to get all your groceries at cut-price. For instance, Everyday Rewards members can currently purchase Woolworths Group (and partner) gift cards at 3 per cent off.

But forget your 3 per cents; I’m mobilised by the likes of 10 per cent-plus. Myriad associations, institutions and organisations now offer deep discounts across many different gift cards, designed to lock in your loyalty.

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Your relevant automobile club. Your health fund. Telstra Plus. The Entertainment App, for which you pay a subscription to a local charity and get thousands of coupons in return. See what gift-card discounts they’re all doing.

But also look into the multiple cashback sites and services that now give all sorts of gift card, percentage back specials. Such shopping intermediaries quite simply distribute rebates into your account – after a wait to make sure you don’t get a refund – from the retailer.

Naturally, retailers sign up to try and persuade you to spend more – so don’t! But upsized cashbacks of 15 per cent are not uncommon from market players such as ShopBack, Cashrewards and Kickback, or even your credit or debit card may offer a cashback scheme.

Of course, you could also simply use a cashback app or site to purchase the item itself and pay less – that’s the cashback bread and butter. But read on for how to start stacking the discount by paying with gift cards bought through these services instead.

Step two: buy right. The above acts like a quasi-sale before you even look at EOFY sales prices, but you want to also find the cheapest price for the product. In fact, you want to do this first.

Nudging your browser’s algorithms with a quick search will reveal the deals. And remember you can switch to a non-targeting browser or to dark mode afterwards.

Which brings me back to your bought-for-less gift card. Know that using vouchers on cashback services usually voids your cashback. Merchants don’t want you to be able to stack your discounts, which would mean they pay double.

But here’s how you can still double up your advantage: once you have your discounted gift card, transact through Qantas Shopping or Virgin’s Velocity eStore.

Airlines, too, have done thousands of deals with merchants and offer bonus frequent flyer points of up to eight per dollar spent. (They are also big on advertising their EOFY discounts.)

Overall, it’s a simple matter of weighing a potential cashback on the transaction itself versus the best available gift card discount (which will possibly be through a cashback app) plus the bonus frequent flyer points you could also collect.

While we’re on the topic of points, supermarket rewards schemes commonly offer huge ones on gift card purchases. For example, with Flybuys, you could recently collect 2000 bonus Flybuys points on $100 and $250 Mastercard gift cards – five $100 purchases would therefore have earned you 10,000 points. There’ll be another such deal soon.

Don’t forget, Flybuys also convert rewards to Virgin Velocity points at two Flybuys points to one Velocity point; Everyday Rewards points can immediately become Qantas points, at the same conversion rate.

But there are also possible reward points to load on top of this.

Step three: overlay bonus bonus points. You’ve already supercharged your dollar savings by selecting the most discounted item and paying for it with gift cards for which you didn’t fully pay, cleverly deployed to fly next for less … or by paying for the item through a cashback service.

Making the actual purchase using a rewards card – either of the gift cards or the item – potentially represents a further saving to you. These points, too, can be mobilised to keep still more money in your pocket.

I now follow the outlined “discount decision tree” every time I buy something. Because even with shopping, you can create a virtuous savings circle.

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is the author of How to Get Mortgage-Free Like Me, available at www.nicolessmartmoney.com. Follow Nicole on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circ*mstances before making any financial decisions.

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