MyPoints Points/Dollar Calculations

[Eilonwy]

Okay, sometimes I can be a bit of a computer weanie, so this past spring I created an Excel spreadsheet that has most of the MyPoints redemption offers in it and does a points needed per dollar received calculation in it. Most of the offers require 140 points per dollar. Meaning if you request the $25 web cert for 3500 points, you are redeeming 140 points for every dollar of the web cert. Make sense? The best deals are the B&N and B.Dalton $25 gift cards--you only need 110 points/dollar. The worst ones are were you get $5 certs. for 800 points.

Well, now I've started doing the calculations in reverse to see if the offers to earn points are worth it. I based my calculations on the 140 points/dollar redemptions. So....

If you spend $5 or less you better be getting at least 700 points to make it worth your while. So the Tupperware deals are pretty good if you're buying the giftbags or swizzle sticks. But having to spend $15 or $25 dollars to get 500 or 800 points really isn't worth it unless you were planning to make the purchase anyway. Still with me? I've been tempted by some of these offers in my email, but since I didn't need anything at the sites I resisted the urge after thinking about what I'm really getting!

So anyway, here are the "break-even" points:

$5 = 700 points
$10 = 1400 points
$15 = 2100 points
$20 = 2800 points
$25 = 3500 points

Of course none of this really matters if you were going to make the purchase anyway, but just thought I'd pass the info along. If we were allowed to do attachments, I'd put my spreadsheet here if anyone wanted it. I guess if anyone really wants it, you can send me a PM. It doesn't have ALL of the offers in it, but just the ones I thought I might be interested in. I went through all this the first time I was trying to figure out what to redeem my points for. I ended up getting 2-$25 giftcards from B&N based on my "analysis." But now I'm going for the Rainforest Card just since we'll be going in January. I broke down and made another Tupperware order today, so I should be redeeming my points tomorrow!!! So I should "net" around $15 once you take off the cost of the giftsbags and swizzle sticks.

Sorry this got so long! Thanks for sticking with me!

Hope this helped someone.

 

[Alison Wonderland]

Very interesting! Thanks for the info.

 

[Tina]

Are you an accountant or financial analyst? LOL. Thanks for sharing this info. I found it very interesting.

 

[kendall]

thanks for figuring that out - I've done it in my head a few times, but never systematically. Very interesting. thanks!

 

[Eilonwy]

I am currently a stay-at-home-mom! LOL! But I am the daughter of 2 bookkeepers and have a business management degree, so....

What can I say, I just like spreadsheets. And not having to re-figure everything all the time.

 

[jdads2]

Thanks for breaking it down.

You should be at our house when we compare sights and points vs. dollars! That's always alot of fun!

We never buy anything for the points you recieve. We only purchase for these reasons:
1. cheaper than we can get it here...including taxes and shipping
2. it's not available here
3. Same price as here but we are ordering something else on the same order that falls under the first two reasons

We look at the points as a nice bonus.

 

[Eilonwy]

I started checking http://www.sdrawer.com ever since I saw it mentioned here.

But my "general" rule of thumb is order through eBates, if the vendor isn't listed there, order through MyPoints, if they're not listed there, order through UPromise. I don't really do any other rewards programs (although I suppose I have signed up for Blink and PCHPoints in the past few weeks). But I figure I'd rather have the "cold hard cash" from eBates first even if I have to wait 3 months to get it vs. the points that slowly add up from MyPoints.

Besides, most of the time I'm ordering online it's from LLBean, and eBates gives you $2 for any order. Since I have an LLBean Visa, I always get free shipping--so I can actually order each item separately and get $2 off each item (although I'm usually only ordering one things at a time these days anyway).

I also only order online if I can get a better price or can't find the item around here. The exception has been the Tupperware orders, because they were just too good to pass up!

This past Sunday I ordered a Palm m125 (onsale for $129) and a few other things from OfficeMax. Now, I could have gone to the store, but if I ordered more than $50, I got free shipping, and using a special link I found at http://www.smartqpons.com for first time customers, I got $30 off a purchase over $150. Did I mention that there was also a $40 mail-in rebate on the Palm? And I got an inexpensive phone for FREE (after $10 rebate). Granted I had to wait until Wednesday for them to arrive (I could have been at the store on Tuesday when we went to get our XMas pics taken), but I really hate going out shopping. Plus there was the extra $30 off online. Since it was a link and not an offer code, I didn't try to figure out if I could have used a reward program for the order.