Back-to-school buying just got cheaper with this tax-free weekend guide where states cut sales tax on certain items just in time. While 16 states are participating in the tax-free days you also have Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon that never charge sales tax. Be aware that most of the tax holidays begin at 12:01 a.m. and end at midnight. Is your state lacking this tax-free day? Then it may be time to take a road trip. Here’s some free gas for all of the driving from store to store.
Maximize Rewards! Another tip for back-to-school shopping is to make sure you have a proper credit card to maximize your savings. From initial bonuses worth $600+ to 2% cashback on all purchases, there are plenty of great credit card deals available to parents this back-to-school season. You can even get 5% back on restaurant purchases while dining and shopping with these cards.
On top of a cashback credit card why not sign up for Drop and iBotta. Two amazing apps that are paying huge and you can double dip all of these programs. iBotta, for instance, will allow you to send in your receipt into the app if you shopped at Target to claim money back. With Drop, you simply add your credit cards and it knows where you shopped and will give you cash back from places such as Starbucks, Old Navy, Nike, Aerie, and other retailers. You then redeem the cashback for gift cards. If you use this link for Drop you’ll get $5 towards your first gift card.
What is a sales tax holiday?
A sales tax holiday is a period of time during which many states remove sales tax on certain types of items. Often, the tax-free benefits are limited to a single weekend, but sometimes there are much longer terms.
Sales tax holidays typically restrict eligible purchases by criteria such as product and price. For example, you might be able to purchase computer models that cost up to $1,000 tax-free, but not ones that cost more.
When is the sales tax holiday or tax-free weekend in my state?
Sales tax holidays vary by location — and not every state has one. In some cases, the state sales tax may be zero during the holiday, but stores might still have to collect a city or local sales tax. Keep in mind that some states already don’t collect a state sales tax. Local governments (the city or county, for example) can still levy tax in those states, though.
Here’s a look at the states with sales tax holidays in 2023 and the items that will be tax-free, according to the Federation of Tax Administrator.
Energy Star products / No maximum Air conditioners / $6,000 Other / $2,000
Aug. 11-13
Clothing, backpacks, school supplies / $100
West Virginia
Aug. 4-7
Clothing / $125 School supplies / $20 Sports equipment / $150 Computer or tablet / $500
Source: Federation of Tax Administrators
How to save big with a sales tax holiday
Here are some tips for leveraging sales tax holidays to save money:
For back-to-school savings, reserve major purchases like laptops for the tax-free periods in late July or August. For weather-preparedness savings, try to time purchases with tax holidays sprinkled throughout the year.
Keep an eye on the price tags. Typically, only items priced below the limit qualify for the tax-free treatment. When back-to-school shopping for new outfits, for example, if the limit is $100 on clothing then, as long as each piece of clothing in your cart is priced below $100, you should save on sales tax for those items. But if the limit on shoes is also $100 and you’re buying a pair priced at $125, you might have to pay sales tax on them.
Check with the state for exceptions. Before you start shopping, head to your state’s taxation and revenue website and find out if there are unusual exceptions. Previously in New Mexico, for example, clothing was part of its tax-free weekend, but sports uniforms and bathing suits didn’t count, which meant they were still taxable.
Shop around. Eliminating sales tax shouldn’t be your only means of saving money. Check out local kids consignment shops for clothes and shoes not covered by the tax-free holiday. You might also try using websites like Google Shopping or apps such as Flipp to search for products by name and compare their prices at multiple merchants. Doing research ahead of time for bigger purchases, like Energy Star appliances or hurricane-preparedness items, is also key.
Remember to Stick to a Budget! It’s hard to avoid overspending if you don’t have both a shopping list and a budget. Before heading to these retail or outlet stores, make a list of what you need and do a quick search to see how much each item costs. This will help you make an overall back-to-school budget and decide how to allocate the funds. It’s too bad Amazon is not able to get in on the B2S offers but you can get Boxed tax free year long.
Amazon announced the launch of a drug subscription program called RxPass, a Prime membership add-on which costs $5 per month. RxPass is part of Amazon pharmacy and offers free unlimited medications from a select list. Medications that treat more than 80 common conditions, such as high blood pressure, anxiety, sleep disorders, acid reflux and even erectile dysfunction, are included in the RxPass subscription. Almost half of all U.S. residents take one of the medications available in this program.
You’ll get unlimited medications delivered free to your door; you just have to pay the $5 monthly fee and then unlimited medications are available to you at no cost. You first need to be a Prime member which comes with a cost of $139/year or $14.99/month. Go here for a 30-Day Free Trial for a Family Membership or a Free 6-Month Student membership.
Lots of popular medications are on this list, there are even some supplements there like Vitamin B12 and Biotin. Apparently those can get prescribed by a doctor.
RxPass can be a real moneysaver for many people, especially for someone who already pays for Prime as this will only cost them $5 extra per month. This can be a deal for someone who takes even one medication from the list, and can be major savings for someone who takes multiple of these medications.
I switched to using Amazon Pharmacy a while back and have been happy with them. I’ll save some money with an RxPass subscription plan for my one monthly subscription which I found on the list. I’ve found it worthwhile to pay their prices without using insurance since, ironically, it’s about half the cost without insurance versus with insurance. The Amazon system lets me choose whether to go through insurance or buy it directly without involving insurance.
Note: RxPass does restrict eligibility based on insurance and the state where medications will be shipped. People with government-funded insurance such as Medicare or Medicaid are not eligible sign up for RxPass right now. Additionally, RxPass is not currently available to send medications to California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington. Amazon Pharmacy is still available in all of those states.
RxPass is a money-loser for Amazon, but will bring over new customers to Amazon Pharmacy.
You can find the full list of around 60 medications on the homepage. Go here to see the best credit cards to use at Drugstoes and Pharmacies or to use at Amazon here.
Make sure to compare to other programs such as Cost Plus Drugs that Mark Cuban launched as one reader observed. We tried Amazon pharmacy and have no complaints. The prices are usually better than places like CVS and somewhat comparable to Costco. That said, I did switch my medications to Mark Cuban’s innovation, even with the $5 shipping it ended up being cheaper than Amazon with my two generics clocking in at ~$6 and ~$8 for 90 day supplies: This can be found at Cost Plus Drugs.
A con to this program is that It looks like each adult would have to have their own Prime Membership in order to take advantage of this. Prescriptions for multiple people can’t be combined on one Pharmacy profile except for children under 18.
AMAZON PRIME DAY is a two-day sales event where Prime subscribers can find hundreds of exclusive deals on products available through the online retailer, though there are lots of other discounts for nonmembers. This year, Prime Day is set for July 12 and 13, but you can already get plenty of slick deals on some of our favorite stuff.
Amazon has a special reload offer beginning on Prime Day (July 12-13) for Prime members. This deal is live, it’ll begin on Prime Day:
Beginning on July 12am PDT, Prime members get $12.50 in promotional credit with a $50 Amazon Gift Card purchase or Amazon Reload when you use promo code EGCPRIME22.
The $12.50 promotional credit will then be valid for the weeks after Prime Day, presumably.
This is always the most popular deal of Prime Day. Seems like this deal might be valid for household Prime members as well, but we’ll have to wait and see as they excluded household Prime for the other two deals.
Last year they offer two $40/$10 Amazon gift card deals, one as a lead-up and one on Prime Day itself. For now it seems like they’re only doing the Prime Day offer this time, though it’s slightly better at $50/$12.50. The $12.50 credit will likely be valid for a few weeks after Prime Day.
Here are some other Prime Day Deals being offered by Amazon right now:
If you do not already have Amazon Prime you can get it free for a 30 day trial (then cancel before it renews).
Free Grubhub+ for a year if you’re an Amazon Prime member. Read our review of Grubhub.
Get four months of Amazon Music Unlimited for free (Save $35.96)
Google Pay was recently refreshed and is coming out with some amazing offers. Right now they are offering a sweet deal at Target as they’re giving $21 back when spending $50 or more.
Spend $50+ at Target & get $21 cashback when paying with Google Pay.
Key Terms
Expires December 31, 2020.
Activation required.
Offer valid at Target both in-store & online.
Limit 1 reward.
Not valid on transactions made using the Target RedCard.
Easiest $21 of the Holiday Season
$21 back on $50 of spend is a 42% discount which is an excellent offer at Target. Even if you don’t need anything from Target right now, this is working when buying gift cards from Target, so it’s effectively a 42% discount on any gift card sold there.
You might need to update the Google Pay app in order to see this offer. It wasn’t showing up on my phone when opening Google Pay, so I updated it in the Play Store. I still didn’t see the offer when opening the app backup after updating it, but then realized it had downloaded an additional app to my phone. There are now apps for Google Pay and GPay on my phone – it’s GPay where this offer is showing up.
Note that this is a card-linked offer, so you don’t have to actually use the GPay app itself to make the payment – you just have to ensure your payment card is enrolled in the Target offer in the app. That’s great as it means you can pay with a card that earns more at Target, although Discover isn’t supported. I therefore enrolled an Amex Marriott card which is currently earning 8x at Target. I bought a $50 gift card and almost instantly received notification from Google Pay that I’d earned $21.
If you join Google Pay using a referral link, Google Pay will also give both parties $21 if you’re joining for the first time. That means you’d be getting back $42 on $50 of spend which is an even better deal.
While today is Tuesday and everyone who is a customer of Big T is logging into their T Mobile Tuesday accounts to get free gas, kids educational tools and free food they are also offering other great discounts today.
T-Mobile is currently offering a deal where you can get a 50% discount on your existing plan. This is not published on their website nor made public but most likely for people calling in with hardships. Before this they were just giving people a few months longer to pay their bill but no discounts.
The deal is that T-Mobile is giving you 50% off your mobile bill if you commit to a 3 GB data cap. Supposedly this is for 3 months and then you will get normal bill as well as your original data limit. Its worked on 55+ plans so it seems to be stackable.
According to a reddit post T-mobile will simply be adding 50% off code on your account for capping your data usage. In other words, they’re not altering your plan. So, if you’re on a old data plan then you can still participate in this offer without worry. If you’re on a 2G plan then this bumps it up to 3G so even better for three months!
We verified it with T-Mobile by calling 411 today. This is a no-brainer if you use your Wifi at home anyway.
T-Force: We are always looking at ways to make things easier for our customers during these uncertain time and we appreciate you checking on this offer to ensure you are fully setup for success with how this discount works. We are offering customers 50% off their services for 3 months but this would require you to have your data plan switched to the 3GB capped option for the discount to apply. This won’t impact your rate plan itself or any promotions, it’s just in order to get the 50% off the services it would require us to move every line to a capped 3GB data plan. You can revert back to the unlimited at anytime but we wanted to be fully transparent with this offer so you can make the decision that works best for you and your family.
Although, If you use hotspots for other devices from one phone then I would not do this. It will not allow you to use hotspots and some of us that use 25G a month will have to pay for additional usage if it goes over the new lower cap for three months.
So how do you get 50% off? You need to contact T-Mobile on Twitter and ask them for it.
Apple finally came out with it’s innovative new card but we are just not impressed. While it does offer a few features:
•No card number, No CVV code •No Fees •3% at Apple, 2% with Apple Pay •No expiration date •No signature •Physical Titanium Card •No International Travel Fees
Apple warns new credit card users over risks of it touching wallets and pockets
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