Do you want free gear? A lens or a flash perhaps? Here are my favorite ways of getting gear painlessly.
1. Change we can believe in.
I put all my spare change in a jar. After a while it adds up. Ask your bank if they will convert coins into cash. If not, try Coinstar. Coinstar normally charges a 9% fee but if you choose to receive your money as a gift certificate with certain partners, there's no fee. Fortunately, one of those partners is Amazon, which usually has pretty good prices. Recently I brought a jar of coins to my local Coinstar and got a gift certificate for $88. That's easily enough for a Yongnuo YN-560!
2. Let your bank work for you.
Some banks have reward programs. I use Citibank, which offers ThankYou points that can be redeemed for stuff. Signing up for ThankYou points doesn't cost me anything and I would use Citibank's services anyway, so this is like getting something for nothing.
Citibank's ThankYou rewards are pretty diverse and even includes a Nikon SB-900 (81,100 points). However, I find I get a better deal by trading my points for gift certificates with their partners. A couple of those partners have camera gear: J&R and Best Buy. I find that J&R (jr.com) usually has decent prices that are often comparable to Amazon's.
A few tips:
- Check if you get more rewards for your points if you choose higher denominations. For example, for J&R, a $50 certificate is 6,000 points while a $100 certificate is 10,000 points (17% discount).
- With some partners, you're limited to only one certificate per transaction. It pays to read the terms and conditions.
- Some rewards are available only to Citi credit cardholders with ThankYou points. You may want to sign up for such a card to get more for your Thankyou points (last I checked, there was no annual fee).
- With Citi's program, you can earn points by using your debit card. That's one reason to use a debit card instead of a credit card.
3. Charge!
Many credit cards offer rewards. It seems to me that the best ones end up with only around 1% cashback, whether it's in the form of cash, rewards, or whatever. I found a few exceptions to the 1% rule, though:
- Discover: if you exchange your points for gift certificates with certain partners, you effectively get more than 1%. Here are some of those partners (with camera gear): Brookstone: 50% bonus. Crutchfield 25% bonus. Barnes & Noble: 11% bonus. Dell: 11% bonus. Overstock.com: 11% bonus.
- Target: this won't get you free gear per se, but this is a great way to save. If you have a Target credit card, you get 5% discount both at their retail stores and online.
In addition, for every $1,000 you spend you get a 10% discount card for retail stores *and* a 10% code online. Best of all, the 10% discount is combined with the 5% Target card discount, effectively resulting in a 15% discount! The net effect is that as long as you use the 10% discount card for a purchase that's more than $100, you effectively get more than 1% cashback. For example, if you use it to buy a $1000 camera, then you'll get a $100 discount (on top of the 5% discount). The extra $100 discount you got for spending $1,000 to get the points is like a 10% cashback - far higher than the usual 1% cashback. Update: Target has canceled its rewards program.
Target's prices aren't always the lowest especially when compared to online prices (though one time I found a Transformers toy at Target for less than $10 while Walmart was selling the same toy for $12). However, there are some items that are almost the same price anywhere -- online or retail. Apple and some Nikon products for example. On those items, a 15% discount is huge!
Just a reminder: credit card interest rates tend to be pretty high. That's why I always pay my card in full and never carry a balance. ;)
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