The Wais shopper’s toolkit (2025)
Prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all the December holidays this year by taking advantage of these tools/deals! I’ll be continuously updating this page throughout the season if I see anything noteworthy.
Capital One shopping (App + Browser extension)
As a recent convert to Capital One Shopping (link), I strongly recommend using their app or browser extension to do your shopping. Capital One Shopping is a free online tool that helps users save money by automatically finding and applying coupon codes, comparing prices, and earning rewards on purchases.
There are a few caveats:
You must activate the offer in the app or your browser before making the purchase.
Cash back comes in the form of reward dollars which you can redeem at a wide variety of merchants.
Reward dollars might take up to 90 days to be posted to your account.
PayPal cashback (until 12/31)
One of the best deals I’ve seen this year is PayPal’s 20% cash back on pay later purchases. 20% cash back is valid from now until December 8th, then it decreases to 5% cash back until December 31st. This cash back is pretty straightforward. It can be redeemed directly as cash to transfer to your bank account, used toward a purchase with PayPal checkout or can be donated to charity.
I know I’ve mentioned that I do not like financing purchases, but this offer is too good to pass up!
There are also a few caveats to note here:
The offer isn’t applied automatically, you must SAVE the offer first by viewing your list of offers in the home page and clicking the ‘Save’ button
0% APR is not guaranteed, you might end up paying a little interest (the 20% will outweigh this)
It might result in a soft credit pull which will NOT affect your credit score.
Real world example (C1 Shopping + PayPal)
I recently combined the above offers together to get a deal on a 6-month supply of cat litter.
I paid a total of $116.96 for 240 lbs of litter.
The litter was already at a discount of 39% at Chewy ($18.39 per 42-lb pack instead of $30.39 per pack)
I used PayPal’s 20% cash back to get $23.39 worth of points
I used a 16% cash back offer at Chewy through Capital One Shopping to get $17.65 in reward dollars
This effectively brings down the cost to $75.92 ($12.65 per 42-lb pack). I don’t know if they’ll be another bargain quite as good as this one this holiday season but I’ll continue to be on the lookout!
