The five-minute shopping trick helping one woman save £100 a year on her weekly groceries

Beth Snow, aged 30, gets up to 5% cash back every time she does her weekly shop by paying for her groceries with cash back gift cards.

As her cash back stacks up, she uses it to get money off buying more gift cards, and each year she racks up £100 in savings - equivalent to about two weeks of shopping for her.

The chartered accountant from Manchester said that the more you spend on groceries, the more you can save, meaning that a family of four could get up to £400 a year off their shopping, she estimates.

Beth said: “It’s a really, really easy process to do, and if you add up the number of times you do food shopping, you can make a serious amount of cash back every year. And it isn’t just on groceries; you can get cash back on pretty much anything these days. All you need to do is take five minutes of your time to find out the best deals.”

When Beth does her weekly shop at Tesco, instead of using her debit or credit card to pay, she instead buys and uses a gift card.

To buy a gift card, she simply logs in to one of her favourite cashback sites, such as Ever Up, Cheddar, Sprite or TopCashback, and sees which supermarket currently has the best deals.

“Usually for supermarkets, you get between 2% and 5% cashback, so if I buy a £100 gift card, I’ll get £2 to £5 back”, she said.

When Beth uses the voucher to pay at the till, she gets a small amount of cash back, which goes into her balance on the cash back app.

Then, once she has collected a certain amount of cash back (for example, £10), she is able to use it to purchase another gift card. This means, if she got 5% cash back on two £100 shops, she would have made enough cash back to get £10 off her next gift card.

“It’s essentially like free money”, she said.

Beth said that most supermarkets, including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, usually have cash back offers. “Aldi is sometimes on there and sometimes not; it depends on what the cash back apps are promoting”, she said.

She added that towards the end of the month, around payday, cash back apps often boost their rates to try to encourage more people to buy gift cards.

“For example, if Tesco has 2% cash back, near pay day, they might boost that to 5%”, she said. “I have all the different apps downloaded, so I can check which ones have the best rate. There’s no point in staying loyal when you can get better cash back elsewhere.”

Using this method, Beth saves about £100 per year on buying groceries for just herself. “Using cash back can give you about two weeks' free shopping each year”, she said. “If you are a family of five or a family of six, you are really going to build some savings.”

As well as using cash back apps, Beth recommends never going to the supermarket when you’re hungry. “I always get swayed by all the sweet treats”, she said.

She also recommends planning out exactly what you’re going to get from the supermarket (to avoid impulse spending) and advises meal prepping and meal repeating to keep the cost per portion down. “Make sure you are signed up to all of the loyalty schemes such as Tesco Clubcard and Sansbury’s Nectar as well”, she said. “And if you’re a Waitrose shopper, switching to somewhere like Aldi will save you a huge amount.”