Chasing the Fionist Dream

It’s almost that time of year again, boys and girls! Twice a year, many Israeli employers traditionally bestow their employees with gifts for the holidays. In the next few weeks, you may find yourself the proud new owner of a couple bottles of wine, a honey jar, cookware or maybe even a snazzy plastic or digital gift card. Hurray! So after you’ve drunk the wine and hidden away the rest of your goodies, what do you do with that gift card? The possibilities are endless. If you’re like many people, you might just tuck it into your wallet or lose it in your email and forget about it. After all, how much more FOX clothes and housewares can you possibly need?

In this post we will explore the different types of gift cards out there, tell you which ones we like best, and show you how to get the most out of your fake money. If you are one of the people in the above “lost gift cards” category, go find them! They’re probably still good and you can use them to save you money.

There are a few categories of gift cards. There are cards issued by supermarkets that are good for a particular grocery chain plus a bunch of assorted stores in the mall. These can be particularly useful for bringing down your holiday food bill. There are also other cards such as the Max Card and Dream Card, which are both mostly limited to assorted stores in the mall. But we all need new shoes, clothes, appliances, bed linens, etc occasionally. Hold onto the cards until that time and find a good price at a store on your card’s list. As long as you use the card to buy something that you would have purchased anyway, it saves you money, which you can then invest.

Our new favorite (and most underrated in our opinion) gift card is the BuyMe (specifically the Buyme All) – Israel’s largest digital gift card platform. Instead of a card, you receive a 16-digit code, which you read off to the cashier at the store. You can open a BuyMe account on the site or the app and load up all of your gifts, so they don’t get lost. BuyMe covers all sorts of things, from restaurants to electronics to clothes to vacations. You can save up BuyMes over time to buy big ticket items like the dishwasher we bought in May of this year. Not only did we essentially get a “free” dishwasher, but thanks to its efficiency, our water bill has been lower ever since and our hands have never been more beautiful. Our other favorite use of BuyMe is at Superpharm. We track their sales and wait for their “second item for a shekel” deal, which happens every few months. This promotion is usually limited to their store brand products, but we find them all excellent. We swoop in and load up on half priced shampoo, face wash, toothpaste, sunblock and deodorant and pay for as much of it as we can with BuyMe.

Now the question arises: Where do we get all of this BuyMe?

Between the two of us, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive occasional BuyMes for holidays, birthdays and the rare prize at work. We also do short surveys in our free time and earn BuyMe and cash (paid to Paypal) that way. In the past year, both of us completing these few minute surveys earned us over 1,700 shekels combined. Most surveys tell you in advance how long they’ll take and how much they pay out. Some are part of academic studies, others are market research for companies. Our favorites are public opinion surveys. You know those statistics in the media that say “X percent of Israelis do Y”? It’s always fun being part of those.

Our favorite survey sites are:

1. Migam Panel (Hebrew) – Invitations to surveys are sent to your email. Pays in BuyMe.
2. Prolific (English) – Available surveys appear when you are logged into the site. Pays to Paypal in GBP.
3. Swagbucks (English) – Surveys and cashback. Similar to Prolific. Pays USD to Paypal or Amazon gift cards.
4. iPanel (Hebrew) – Invitations to surveys are sent to your email. Pays in BuyMe.
5. Sekernet (Hebrew) – Invitations to surveys are sent to your email. Pays in BuyMe.

We find that there are periods we get lots of surveys and also occasional dry spells. It depends on factors such as upcoming elections, the academic year, and other things. Don’t give up 🙂

Enjoy!

What do you get for shai lachag? What do you plan to buy with it?

Disclaimer: All of the survey links above, aside from Prolific, contain our referral links. Clicking on them will support our Fionist journey and won’t cost you anything. Thank you! 🙂