Smart Money Purchasing: Bing

The holiday season is over for awhile. Christmas leads into New Years, which leads quickly to MLK Day, Valentines Day, and the girlfriend’s birthday…. needless to say, an expensive stretch of 3 months for me. That said, all signs point to me being completely broke right now, ditching any savings goals I had for the New Year, and just trying to stay afloat. I’m on track with my savings, and I spent less this year than years before, while still giving my family more gifts. How? Bing.com.

Bing’s cashback program saved me roughly $300 over the past few months…and I can’t help but feel like I need to share exactly how I did it. To start, head over to www.bing.com/cashback and create a new account. If you have a windows Live ID you may use that…but I suggest just creating a new account so you know you are signed up…link that account with your email address, and it will send you a confirmation message to let you know you are “in”. Afterwards, whenever you plan on making a large purchase, or any purchase for that matter, do a search on Bing.com before you buy anywhere else. At the top of the search results for bing, you will see several “ad suggestions”, some with a gold coin next to them that says “bing cashback”. Those links indicate that the associated site is a partner of bing.com, and offers customers a specific cashback percentage by coming through the bing.com link. When you click the link, Bing will bring up a window asking you to sign in to your Bing account (confirming it’s actually you) and then pass you along to the site that is selling whatever you are trying to buy. Complete your purchase, and within a matter of a few days (sometimes within a few hours depending on the retailer) you will receive a message that you have received cashback from Bing.

Now the percentage that you receive from a retailer can vary greatly day to day, and retailer to retailer. For instance, remember Black Friday? When people sleep outside of stores, nearly kill one another, and buy “hot” items at “hot” prices? This year, I decided to forgo sleeping in a tent outside of a Wal-Mart with hopes of buying an HDTV, but just ending up with a copy of High School Musical 3. This year, I slept in, and got on bing.com later in the afternoon. I did all of my Christmas shopping in one day, from the comfort of my computer chair. Dell had 20% cashback through Bing. 20%!!! That’s on top of any other promotions that Dell was offering. For instance, I bought an Xbox 360 Elite from Dell who was also running a $50 off promotion. The original price was $299.99 minus the $50 promotion from dell takes the price to $269.99 after tax. Bing cashback was 20%, so that saved me an additional $54…and the item had free shipping. So for $215.99 after tax/shipping/etc I purchased an Xbox 360 elite that was selling on black Friday sales for $260 at the cheapest (and that was after an in-store gift card at Target). In addition to just doing a search on Bing for cashback items, if you go to www.bing.com/cashback, you can search through cashback retailers specifically, and compare prices for the cheapest price on any given item. Another example use is for drugstore purchases. Two websites that often have a high bing cashback percentage is drugstore.com and visiondirect.com. Its purchases that you need to make anyway, might as well save some money. Recently I purchased a years worth of contact lenses through Vision direct. With bing cashback at 25%, $90 contributed from my insurance, and a mail in rebate for the contact lenses, I am actually being PAID to wear Acuvue contacts right now. I came out something like $25 ahead when purchasing my contacts because I was able to use bing.com in combination with a mail in rebate.

But how do I get my cash? Now as far as actually getting the cashback, when you log in to your cashback account via bing.com/cashback, you will be able to see the current status of all of your cashback transactions. The way this works, its Microsoft holds the money for 60 days (just to make sure you don’t cancel your order, try to do returns, etc.). After 60 days, the money is added to your cashback account, and then can be deposited into a PayPal account, checking/savings account, or can be sent out as a check. Bing will automatically send your reminders when your cashback has “accrued” and you can then decide what you want to do with the money.

I strongly suggest at least checking out the Bing cashback system. Sometimes, yes, you may find cheaper prices elsewhere, but for a majority of my recent purchases, I was able to use bing.com to find the best price AND get cashback for my gift/personal purchases.

(Note: This blog nor myself personally or financially, is tied to Microsoft, Bing, or any subsidiary. This information is provided from the basis of my own experience, and I have no financial interest or incentive to promote this product)