Rakuten is a great way to save money on travel and other expenses but there’s now a one week sale that makes this even better. Through May 15th you can now get $40 for signing up with Rakuten and if you refer anyone to Rakuten and they qualify (i.e. spend $40 in 90 days), you’ll get $40. So if you are new to Rakuten and you refer just one person that qualifies, you’ll get $80! This is one of those few things that sounds too good to be true but it is actually true. A few people asked me for how to handle this so I thought I’d write out a step by step process. I’m also going to show you how to get more than $40 worth of value from this.
Step 1. Sign up for Rakuten via a referral link
This is important. If you just sign up without a referral link, you’ll get $10 instead of $40. My link is at www.rakuten.com/r/JEFTRA4 so I’d appreciate the support if you use my link. You don’t need a credit card or anything else like that. There’s no catch and nothing hidden. Despite that, most people I know will not bother signing up. I find it strange that people don’t want free money but I guess some people are too busy and distracted. I’m always about free money but that’s just me.
You’re gonna want to make sure that when you get to Rakuten, you see this:
Step 2. Refer your friends and family to Rakuten
What’s nice is that you don’t have to wait to start referring people to Rakuten. You can do it right away. Be sure to explain to them that they have to sign up ASAP as the promotion runs out on May 15th. However, they don’t have to spend any money for 90 days although it is smarter to do that now (I’ll explain more). I prefer to use the desktop version so I’ll demonstrate with that. Once you are in your account, look for Refer & Earn $40. It’s towards the top right of your screen. It looks like this:
That will take you to a new screen that looks like this:
So from there, you can email people, copy and paste your link or share to Facebook and Twitter. Either way, make sure everyone in your house signs up, make sure your significant other signs up and see if you can get your friends to sign up.
Step 3. Earning your $40
As I said before, you need to spend $40 to get $40 but you have 90 days to do so. But you should do that now to take advantage of this promotion since there are a ton of stores that are 15% back which also ends on May 15th. I’ll show you three different options for how to spend this money.
-Option A – You don’t want to buy anything now or you want to give a gift
This is the worst value but if you want to just get this done quick and you don’t care about saving more money, you can use giftcards.com to get a gift card that you can use later or give as a gift. Could be a good Mother’s Day gift. You’ll also get 1% back. Just search for giftcards.com. You should see this:
-Option B – Take advantage of the 15% sale
This one is easy. There are a ton of stores that are 15% back. If you buy something for $50, you’re final cost will be about $2.50 once you get all your money back. That’s a good deal.
-Option C – Stack this with a credit card offer
Credit cards have various offers that you have to activate. Once you do, if you buy something from that company with that credit card, you’ll get a refund for the percentage shown which is often 5% or 10%. Everyone’s credit card offers are different and they also vary by card. I have an Old Navy 10% back on my Chase Freedom card. It looks like this:
So if you bought something for $40 from Old Navy, you’d get $40 from Rakuten for the sign up bonus, $6 back from Rakuten for the 15% sale and $4 back from Chase. So you’ll actually get paid $10 for buying something! I would prefer buying $60 worth of items so that you can get back $52.
-Option D – Book a hotel room or rental car
Priceline and Expedia have 6% back on hotels and Priceline has 6% back on rental cars. If you have a trip coming up, you can take advantage of these elevated cash back rates. If you are doing this with a spouse/partner, you can book one night and then your partner can book the other night. You’ll then get $40 back for signing up, $40 back for signing up your partner and your partner will get $40 back. You’ll each also get 6% back on the nights you booked. So a $200 hotel booking will probably cost around $70. If you book on Expedia (and sign up for an account), you’ll also get points worth about $2 that you can use the next time you book something. If you use a credit card that gets 3x on travel, you’ll get 600 points! Just be sure to call the hotel and get the two reservations combined so you can stay in the same room.
No matter what you decide to do, be sure to take advantage of this awesome offer even if you already have an account. Just be sure to buy something you don’t think that you’ll return since that will obviously cause all of your cash back to be taken back defeating the whole point of this. Thus, buying clothes might be a little risky.