(Financial) Wellness Wednesday - Again!

 I am an Amazon Associate and when you purchase something through links in this post I will receive a small bonus. I will also receive a bonus if you sign up for an Amex card. This does not change your price at all, it just helps support what I'm doing on the Salty Zebra Blog.

 Ok, so I started multiples posts for today, but none of them thrilled me. Nothing got me excited. Nothing made me want to write more and more and more. I prayed about it and then went about my business, messing around on my computer, learning more about points and miles, and then, BAM!!!! I got a super duper awesome opportunity and I want to share it with you too! 

 I've been learning this week about Amazon's Shop With Points program. It allows you to use your credit card points as cash on Amazon to purchase items sold and shipped directly by Amazon (not third party vendors). Now, normally I would never do this, except with my Prime Visa Amazon points because that's exactly what they're for. If you remember, in my previous post about points I mentioned that cards with flexible points currency that can be transferred to partners airlines and hotels can have their points be worth much more than 1 cent per point (CPP). If you use your points to shop on Amazon, they are worth only 1 CPP, or even less. So why would this interest me? Because of promotions!

 You see, with this current promotion you can save as much as 50% off your Amazon purchase of up to $160 when you pay with Amex Membership Reward Points. The promotion varies per person, so 50% is not guaranteed, you have to follow the link to see what your offer is. But the best part is, you don't have to pay for your entire purchase with points, you only need to use one. Yep, that's right, one measly Amex Membership Reward point applied to your order and you can get as much as $80 reduced from your total. Now THAT's a great use of points! In order for this promotion to work for you, you have to have your eligible Amex card linked to your Amazon Prime Account (Don't have a Prime account yet? Check out this post!)

  I was extra happy when I realized that I had this offer on our Amex too. This is a targeted offer and it expires soon, so I'm not suggesting that you might run out and spend money on your Amex with the hopes of it being there, but I always suggest that you check your offers on a card before making an online purchase! I split the Amex promotion above (the 50% off one) into three different purchases (after carefully reading the terms and conditions to make sure it was ok) that totaled $25 or more so that I would then receive an additional 1,500 Membership Rewards, more than making up for the 3 I had to spend to get the offer.

 All told, I spent $82.60 for over $160 worth of things that I was going to buy anyways, and I have 1,583 Membership Rewards coming to me as well (1,500 bonus + 83 for the purchase). It's really important to me that I only buy things this way that I would have bought anyways. Our budget is fairly fixed at this point and if I went out and spent $80 on something outside of the budget, even if I got $160 worth of stuff for it, I would still be going over budget. No bueno! So, I mostly bought coffee that we would have bought anyways, and a few other small grocery items to bring the totals to the right number. Added bonus, we were a little shocked by how much the coffee prices had gone up, so getting 50% off made my husband more comfortable with getting his coffee - which fuels his days!

Here's the Thing: This was a really fun redemption and I wanted to share it with someone. Maybe it will get you excited about using Amazon's Shop With Points program. Maybe it will be that last bit of inspiration you needed to sign up for Prime. Maybe you'll get really inspired and go grab an Amex card. At the very least, I hope you got a little smile out of it, and it encourages you to keep your eye out for fun promotions too!