Using Savewise: A fun new money-saving tool

There’s a fun new tool out there that can save you some money and help you stack offers across your various credit cards and shopping portals more effectively. It’s called Savewise.

Savewise shows you the best available cash back or points offer from almost any online shopping portal and credit card out there. The company will also allow you to see stackable offers. That’s just scratching the surface.

For example, if you are looking for an item from Macy’s, Savewise shows you which portal to start your shopping trip from and flags any offers for that retailer from credit cards issued by banks like American Express or Chase.

It’s a great first stop on any shopping journey, and the company has also made some very customer-friendly updates in the past few weeks.

All core Savewise features, including its shopping portal comparison, merchant search and the browser extension, are free to use. But it may be worth investing in a “Pro” membership for added features that can maximize savings.

Note that there is also an Apple iOS version of Savewise if you don’t want to use the browser as I do.

The company also just released a new “Savewise Wallet” feature that will allow you to optimize shopping portals and card-linked offers to maximize every card benefit and spending bonus category all in one place.

Also, right now, get a special offer on a professional membership through this special TPG offer by using the code “TPG” at checkout. You’ll get 20% the normal cost on either the annual or lifetime plans.

Getting started with Savewise

As you can see in the screenshot above, the interface is fairly self-explanatory. To get started, go to getsavewise.com.

Once you create an account, search for a store you want to shop at and then a full list pulls up that shows you the available offers.

Easy peasy.

Here’s a search I did for Bloomingdale’s.

In this regard, Savewise is not that different from another TPG favorite, the shopping portal aggregator Cashback Monitor.

Related: Use a shopping portal aggregator to maximize your online purchases

But as Savewise itself says, it goes beyond just being an aggregator and ” … adds several features that go beyond basic portal comparison, making it a more complete solution for people who want to maximize their online shopping rewards.”

How is Savewise different?

According to the company, here is what makes Savewise different:

• Offer history tracking for each shopping portal, so you can see how rates have changed over time and decide if now is the right time to buy.
• Offer alerts that notify you by email when a store’s cash back rate meets your criteria.
• Card-linked offers from Amex, Chase, Citi and SimplyMiles are displayed alongside portal rates so that you can stack multiple rewards on one purchase.
• Auto-activation of card-linked offers across all your cards (with Pro).
• Discount gift cards are shown alongside portal and card-linked offers for a third layer of savings.
• Grocery coupon clipping that automatically clips digital coupons at supported grocery stores.
• Browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox and Safari that surface savings while you shop.
• A native iOS app for comparing offers on the go.
• Support for additional portals, including Capital One Offers, Kudos and Rove.

How I use Savewise

Let me run through a few examples of how Savewise works, starting with the Macy’s example from above. Let’s pretend I want to buy some new bedding from Macy’s, but I want to be sure I’m maximizing the points or cash back I could earn on the purchase.

In the browser version, I would type Macy’s into the search bar. That search then takes me to a page with a massive list of potential portals to use to start the shopping process (so many portals, I couldn’t screenshot them all!).

In this case, the best rewards were from two sites I hadn’t heard of, so I focused on two I use all the time. As you can see in the screenshot below, TopCashback is offering 8% cash back on Macy’s purchases, and another of my favorite portals, American Airlines eShopping, is offering 3 miles per dollar spent on all Macy’s purchases.

But am I getting a good deal by using either of these portals? I click the “History” button to view historical trends for these portals.

Savewise shows me 18 months of history for these browsers. And recently, American Airlines was offering 7 miles per dollar spent, so maybe I can wait to buy that bedding?

Maybe I do wait, since TopCashback was offering up to 12% cash back at Macy’s this year.

But Savewise also shows you potential savings from credit cards you may already have.

That offers some pretty good stacking opportunities. If I have the American Express offer on one of my Amex cards, I could save up to $15 in statement credit by using that card to make a purchase.

Here’s another example. I’ve used the rental car company Turo before, and Savewise shows me that there are some bonus portal offers.

If I book a Turo rental through the Rakuten portal, I can earn 2% cash back. As you can see above, Savewise flags cash-back offers from American Express as well. (And it shows me I also have a Turo credit offer on one of my other credit cards!).

In any case, when I looked at my American Express account, sure enough, there was an Amex Offer.

If I spend $150 or more on a Turo rental and use my American Express card to pay, I’ll get a $30 statement credit.

Also, note that Savewise can sync my offers via a browser extension on my desktop. More on that below.

Savewise browser extension

I have the Savewise browser extension on my laptop and find it does a good job flagging offers whenever I shop online or log in to my credit card accounts. This allows you to skip going to the Savewise website entirely.

The browser extension automatically detects when you are on a supported store’s website and shows you the best available offers.

According to Savewise, here is what the extension can do:

• View shopping portal offers for the store you are currently browsing, with rates compared across all 29 supported portals.
• View card-linked offers from your synced banks that apply to the current store.
• Sync card-linked offers from Amex, Chase, Citi and SimplyMiles.
• Auto-activate card-linked offers across all your cards (Pro).
• Auto-activate SimplyMiles and Rakuten In-Store offers (Pro).
• Clip grocery coupons automatically at supported grocery store websites.

Groceries

One of the features I haven’t played around with too much yet is the grocery tools.

It allows you to automatically clip coupons at your favorite grocery store websites.

As you can see, when I visit Safeway.com, Savewise can automatically clip all the coupons for the store.

I’ll play with this feature more and update this article with my thoughts in the future.

How much is Savewise Pro?

The “basic” version of Savewise is free.

While you don’t need to buy a premium membership to use Savewise, some of the best features come with a pro membership, which costs $72 a year or a one-time payment of $149 for a lifetime membership.

Right now, you can get 20% off Savewise by entering the code “TPG” at checkout when buying a plan.

Bottom line

Savewise is a next-generation shopping aggregator that does that and much more. It’s been a useful tool to help maximize my rewards and cash back, and it gives me confidence I’m not missing out on any ways to save and stack or leaving points, miles or money on the table.

What I especially like is that Savewise brings together several tools I would normally have to check separately. Instead of looking at multiple shopping portals, digging through my credit card accounts for targeted offers, and trying to remember whether a particular cash back rate is a good value, it does all of that in one place.

The free version is powerful enough that I’d recommend trying Savewise before your next big online purchase. For more serious points-and-miles maximizers, the Pro features — especially automatic activation of card-linked offers — could make the paid version a no-brainer.

Either way, Savewise has earned a spot in my online shopping routine.