It’s no secret that I love planning and planning-related activities. Generally speaking, these activities aren’t things that make me any money, but usually they make it easier to get through my day (or week) without having a mental breakdown. For the past month, however, our family has been using Ibotta, and I’ve got to say that the extra step has been more than worth it.
If you’re unfamiliar with Ibotta, it’s an app where you can upload your grocery, convenience, or liquor store receipts and receive cash back offers for the products you buy. It only takes a few minutes a week, and the bonuses really do add up. It’s like good old mail-in rebates, but without the stamp or the waiting. Just scan your receipts with your smart phone and you’re good to go.
So, with that being said, here are the top 8 reasons you shouldn’t sign up for Ibotta. (Please note that the contained Ibotta links are referral links, meaning that I get a small incentive if you sign up using my links. You get an incentive, too — extra cash just for being referred by an active member.)
1. You hate free money.
I get it — some people just have way too much money. If that sounds like you, you should probably skip Ibotta, since all they do is give you money for things you were already going to buy anyway. Even if you forget to add the offers you want before you upload your receipt, Ibotta’s algorithms compare the items on your receipt to items they currently have on offer, and recommends the ones that you’re eligible for. Just in case they miss something, they even let you search once you’ve already put in the receipt.
If free money absolutely isn’t your bag, it’s simple enough to think of Ibotta as an investment. For just a few extra minutes each week, you can actually see a return for your consumable goods. That money can then be used to purchase a virtual gift card (to give someone else that free money you hate) or even just banked up to see how much free money you’ve avoided. Why not?
2. You don’t have a smartphone.
People without smartphones are rare, but they do exist. Just a few days ago, as a matter of fact, I tried to help my aunt sign up for Ibotta, but she only has a flip phone and a tablet. Sadly, the tablet wasn’t compatible with the Ibotta app, so we ended up not finishing the signup process. It was a bummer for both of us, since we definitely don’t fit in the “I hate free money” category.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a workaround for this particular problem (but if you know one, please fill me in!). For everyone else, though, keep reading to see if Ibotta makes sense for your lifestyle.
3. You’re opposed to the idea of helping others… even if you get something out of it.
I tend to do my best to help others when I can, especially if it’s free or if I get something in exchange. I can understand that not everyone feels the same way, though. Some people really, really don’t like to see others succeed, even if helping someone else succeed also benefits them personally. I don’t get it, but I can understand.
If helping yourself earn extra money isn’t enough incentive to help your friends (e.g. me personally) earn a little referral credit, you could always get someone else to set it up for you. Does it really count as helping out if you outsource? I think not. And you can even pay this third-party person with gift cards that you earn from your own shopping trips.
4. You actually prefer the store brands — it’s not even about saving money.
Hey, I definitely get this one. Most of the time, I buy store brands out of convenience or necessity; it’s cheaper to buy an off-brand and if the ingredients are basically the same, who cares? But there are a few items I deliberately get the store brand just because the ingredients aren’t the same. (For example, why are Great Value marshmallows the only ones widely available that don’t contain artificial colors? Marshmallows are white. They shouldn’t have blue dyes in them.)
For most people, however, a well-earned cash back offer could be all that stands between the store brand and the name brand that everyone will recognize immediately. Ibotta gives you those cash back offers so you can feel good about going after the national brands. And, they even have “any brand” offers from time to time, so if you really want the bagged cereals and loose produce, you can still get them and get paid for it.
5. Planning a shopping trip ahead of time is so dang hard.
With two kids, planning anything can be a challenge. I definitely spent many a shopping trip just haphazardly finding a bunch of ingredients that I thought I could do something with. Often, I’d have to run out for a second trip just to get the rest of the ingredients that I couldn’t remember during my one-hour reprieve from the kids.
Now that I make up menu plans over a week ahead of time, checking Ibotta offers before I make my grocery trip just makes sense. It takes maybe an extra ten minutes, and saves me a ton of time (and money!) when I actually get to the grocery store. The money I stack up in the app puts me a little bit closer to creating the holidays I actually want to create for my kids… And it takes almost nothing to do.
6. Someone else buys your groceries, so you don’t need to worry about it.
For much of my adult life, I wasn’t the one doing the grocery shopping. I lived with family or roommates who received government assistance, so it was easier to let them get the groceries on their food stamp card, and I’d just eat whatever was leftover after they made their meals. It was mutually beneficial, because they’d have my few dollars of cash in their pockets, and I’d have food for next to nothing.
With Ibotta, however, it doesn’t matter who buys the groceries — you can still get cash back for the receipts. We’ve even tested out whether you can share receipts between multiple accounts, and as of this post, you can. We’ve shared the same receipts across three accounts at a time, each of us getting the money (although it seems that not all offers can be claimed on all accounts). If you’ve got enough people to share receipts with, much of your shopping trip could be completely free.
7. Food tastes better when it’s expensive.
It’s a well-known trick at expensive restaurants: Bulk up the price to an unreasonable amount, sometimes as much as $5 per bite, and people will flock to your restaurant so that they can show off their elite tastes and their grand paychecks. There’s an assumption that, if the food is expensive, it must be higher quality.
But, quite frankly, that’s not true. A free candy bar that you got trick-or-treating tastes every bit as good as the one you dropped $1.50 on. Ibotta rolls with this offer and motivates you to try new brands you otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, just because of the price. I’ve actually gotten quite a few gourmet products which — once the cash back is factored in — come out to cheaper than their “average” counterparts. And you know what? Gourmet ingredients taste amazing, and when they’re cheaper, you can buy more of them.
8. You don’t want “The Man” knowing what you’ve bought.
I’m not going to pretend that I fully understand this one, but there are some people out there who really, really don’t want someone else knowing the intimate details of what they buy. With a little extra effort, even these people can be satisfied. After all, there’s nothing stopping you from running two separate transactions — one for Ibotta offers, and a second for the things you buy that aren’t on offer. Receipts these days already have identity-theft-protection features, such as omitting most of the card numbers for the cards you’ve pulled, and using store-specific codes for some items so that they can’t be easily identified.
Here’s the thing, though… There’s no motivation for Ibotta to use your purchase history against you. Even if you don’t take the time to make separate Ibotta and non-Ibotta transactions, you can rest assured that your information is only being used to get the best offers for your lifestyle and your family. Don’t upload any receipts that contain personally identifying information, if you’re concerned. If you pay with cash, they don’t even receive the name of the purchaser. It couldn’t be simpler.
Still on the fence?
Ibotta has been a lifesaver for our family. We’ve been able to earn an extra $60 this month just from buying the things that we were going to buy anyway, and we’ve even been enticed to try some new things just because I had an offer to get the ingredients for cheaper. We bought pizza rolls for the first time in months because the cash back offer knocked the price down enough to fit it into our budget. We bought wine for us and for family members because the cash back offer had an incentive for claiming multiple times within a set time period.
I’ll probably never (willingly) go back to life without Ibotta, and hopefully I never have to. Check it out for yourself and I’m pretty sure you’ll be hooked, too.
Semi-Planned Chaos 