Chasing the Fionist Dream

If you’re on social media, or the internet – or really life at all, you are likely bombarded with ads all the time. Buy this! Buy that! And if you buy it in the next 24 hours, we’ll throw in this extra thing that you didn’t know you needed! Sales, deals, and promotions are meant to get you to act – and spend money. But sometimes, in some cases, you can use them to your benefit, if you understand how the system works.

In this post, we dive into six common types of promotions. Each of these works in different ways. Read on to learn all about these types of deals and how to make them work for you.

1. Cashback (or credit card points). We each have (different) credit cards that give us 1% cashback (paid in BuyMe or any of many other digital gift cards).
   
   Benefit: We love it because we end up getting free stuff here and there that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
   
   Risk: It turns spending into a game. It doesn’t matter how much free money you get if you have to spend even more to get it.
   
   
2. Sign-up bonuses. Open an account at a specific bank, join a new gym, or get a new credit card, and get a reward – often in the form of cash, gift cards, credits, or an interest-free loan.
   
   Benefit: It’s a nice perk if you were planning on joining anyway (even without the gift).
   
   Risk: Nothing in life is truly free. They give you the free stuff because they know they will likely get more money out of you in bank fees, forgotten gym memberships, or credit card fees than the gift is worth.
   
   
3. Digital wallet. Some apps, such as banks or consumer clubs, let you transfer money into a digital wallet, where you can buy store credit at a discount. (For example, buying 500 shekels of credit for 450 shekels at 10% discount.)
   
   Benefit: You get to buy things you were going to buy anyway – at a discount! We have one of these through Fiona’s labor union that gives us a discount on groceries. It’s great.
   
   Risk: You might load up the wallet and then forget about it. And then the money is gone. To avoid this, we only put money into the digital wallet during checkout. This way, we know exactly how much to load without leaving a balance. Another risk is the temptation of using it to buy things you weren’t otherwise planning on buying. We recently discovered that our bank offers a digital wallet that gives you 10% off travel (certain brands of hotels, flights, and cruises). When we opened the app, it gave us the option of loading at least 3,000 shekels or taking a loan 😲 to fill the wallet. If we were planning on booking any of these things anyway (and had the money set aside for it), we very well might use the digital wallet for the discount. But if you couldn’t afford the vacation before, a 10% discount won’t make you suddenly be able to afford it.
   
   
4. Discount clubs. We are huge fans of these consumer clubs and use them to help us almost never pay full price. They let you buy discounted vouchers that can be used at attractions, restaurants, retail stores, and more.
   
   Benefit: This is a great tool to save money on things you were planning to buy anyway. On our recent trip to the Galil and Golan, we used these discount vouchers to lower the prices of three different activities, saving us over 200 shekels in total.
   
   Risk: You might be tempted to buy things you don’t need just because you got a “good deal” on them. Also, you may buy vouchers, forget you have them, and never redeem them.
   
   
5. Regular everyday sales. We’re sure you’ve seen them all. Limited-time offers, 1+1 deals, discounts, etc.
   
   Benefit: If you were going to buy the thing anyway, great! You saved money!
   
   Risk: If you didn’t need or want the thing before you saw the sale, you didn’t save money, no matter how tempting the deal was. However cheap it was, not buying it all would have been cheaper.
   
   
6. Payments (Tashlumim). This is essentially an interest-free loan that allows you to pay off whatever it is in multiple payments.
   
   Benefit: The only real time we are okay with using these is if it’s something you will continue to use throughout the duration of all of the payments – such as tuition.
   
   Risk: Otherwise, tashlumim are terrible. They trick you into buying something that you can’t afford. They are a hangover that keeps you paying for things that are long gone. They take up your monthly budget and they eat up your monthly credit limit. Much much better to save up and pay in full if you can.
   

Now that we’ve listed the promotional tactics that could sometimes work in your favor, we want to call out two marketing tactics that are always bad. As in – if you see these, run the other way!

1. Minimum payments (or anything other than paying off your credit card in full every month). Unfortunately, American-style credit cards have made their way to Israel. While the default is still that credit cards are paid off automatically in full each month, companies are now advertising something known as אשראי מתגלגל (rolling credit) or תשלום קבוע (fixed payments).
   
   Why it’s always bad: This means that instead of paying in full for everything you purchased that month, you take a high-interest loan instead, which will be even harder to repay in the future. You roll over more each month, and before you know it, you are up to your eyeballs in high-interest credit card debt.
   
   
2. Loans that you weren’t planning on taking. Your bank or credit card company calls you and offers you an incredibly low-interest or even interest-free loan.
   
   Why it’s always bad: It doesn’t matter how great the terms of the loan are if you don’t have a carefully thought-out plan for it. Now you have to find room for loan repayments in your monthly budget. And if you miss a payment, you’ll face late fees and/or higher interest.

To sum things up, it is important to always be intentional with your money and understand what you are getting yourself into. (Ahem, always read the fine print.) Have a plan and stick to it. If you were going to buy something anyway and can now save a few (sometimes hundred) shekels with these deals, go for it! More power to you! Just don’t let them tempt you into buying something you can’t afford or didn’t want before you saw the ad.

As always, trust your gut, and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Have you ever gotten a good deal through one of these promotions? Have you ever gotten duped into buying something you weren’t planning to?

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