Save 13% on Groceries and 15% on Gas at Kroger

–This deal only applies if you shop at Kroger, have Kroger Fueling stations and have the right cards for the scenario about to be described–

I’m a deal junkie and love finding the very best value.  Some of you may have heard that Kroger is offering a bonus if you buy their store gift cards.  For every $300 in gift cards that you buy, you get an extra $30 loaded onto them.  Basically an instant 10% savings.  If you have a rewards credit card that gives you money back for groceries you can save even more.  One card I have, that I use for gas and groceries is the Chase Freedom Rewards Visa.  It will give me 3% back on the top 3 categories of spending I use per month.  So if I use it to purchase these gift cards, I get to save an additional 3%, totaling the 13% I can save on groceries per month.

I just discovered this past weekend, that  I can use the gift cards I purchase, at Kroger Fuel Stations to fill up my car.  In addition, if you’ve bought $100 worth of groceries in the past period (I’m not sure how often this gets reset) with your Kroger plus card  you save 10¢ per gallon.  With the price of gas at $4 per gallon, this is an added 2.5% savings.  If you haven’t spent $100 in groceries you still get 3¢ off and I think there is a scalling effect to where the more groceries you buy the more you save per gallon.  But in the end it is equivalant to about 15% off when you combine all these which is pretty nice.  Giant Eagle seems to have a better Fuel Perks program, because I think it’s for ever $50 you spend you get 10¢ off, and the discount lasts for 3 months…. but it is also only for 1 fill up (up to 30 gallons) so there are trade-offs.

The next thing to figure out is if I can use the Kroger gift card to purchase other store gift cards, and get double fuel points (a limited time promotion currently running).  I was originally not going to buy the limit of 4 $300 Kroger gift cards, but since discovering that I can use them for gas, I very well may buy all 4 that I’m entitled too before this promotion is over at the end of July.