Every Sunday, after the week's receipts go into the spreadsheet, they get a second life. I scan them into Fetch, check what Ibotta has for the next Aldi and Kroger runs, load the Kroger digital coupons, and drop the paper receipts in a brown H-E-B bag in the pantry until the month closes. It takes about 15 minutes. For years I had no idea whether those 15 minutes were worth anything, so in 2025 I tracked every dollar the apps and loyalty programs paid us.
The 2025 totals
- Ibotta: $138.40 (I've used it since 2019)
- Fetch: about 46,000 points, which came out to $46 in gift cards (since 2023)
- Kroger fuel points: about $64 off gas
- Tom Thumb for U: about $22
- Our grocery cash-back card: $360
All together, $630.40. The card has a $95 annual fee, so the honest net is about $535. That's roughly two weeks of groceries for the five of us, which is a nice way to picture it and also not a fortune.
How each one actually works for us
Ibotta pays the most of the apps, and it takes the most attention. Before a big shop I look for offers on things already on my list, add them, then link the store account or snap the receipt afterward. Most of our Ibotta money came from boring staples (milk, bread, eggs, bananas), plus a couple of bigger weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't buy things just because they have an offer. I tried that in 2019 and ended up with a bottle of salad dressing nobody liked and 75 cents.
Fetch is the easy one. Scan any receipt from any store and get points. There are offers if you want them, but I mostly ignore those. It paid the least, $46, but it also asks the least, about 30 seconds a receipt. The points piled up quietly and turned into gift cards that went toward the boys' Christmas presents.
Kroger fuel points come from shopping at Kroger, pickup orders included. The $64 is what we saved at the pump, mostly in Matt's truck, since the F-150 has the bigger tank and gets more out of a per-gallon discount. Honestly, the Kroger digital coupons matter more to us than the fuel points, but I can't total those as cleanly, so they're not on this list.
Tom Thumb for U only gets used when I'm there for the weekly ad deals, which isn't often. Twenty-two dollars is about right for how little I shop there.
The card earns 6% at US supermarkets on up to $6,000 a year. Walmart and Costco don't count as supermarkets for it, so the cash back came from Aldi, Kroger, H-E-B and Tom Thumb. We hit the $6,000 cap in October. Whether a card like that makes sense depends entirely on a family's own spending and habits, and the fee only works out if you spend enough at the right stores, so I'm not going to recommend one. I'm just reporting what ours did.
Was the time worth it?
Fifteen minutes a week is about 13 hours a year. The card takes no time once it's in my wallet, so I left it out of this part. The apps and loyalty programs paid $270.40 for those 13 hours, which works out to about $20.80 an hour. That's more than I'd guessed.
It's also less than it sounds, because it arrives in dribbles of 25 and 50 cents, and twice last year I forgot to redeem points before an offer expired. The tradeoff I think about most is attention. On weeks when I'm tired, Ibotta nudges me toward a brand I don't usually buy, and that's how the 75-cent salad dressing happens. I've learned to treat it as a rebate on my list, never as a list of its own.
What I'm keeping for 2026
- Ibotta: keeping it, same rules.
- Fetch: keeping it. Lowest effort per dollar of anything here.
- Kroger digital coupons and fuel points: keeping them, since I'm at Kroger or doing a pickup most weeks anyway.
- Tom Thumb for U: keeping the account, changing nothing.
- Paper coupons: still no. I tried a coupon binder in 2016, when Wyatt was a baby, and it lived on the counter for a month before it went in the recycling.
The first January receipts are already scanned. Fetch says I'm 3,140 points closer to the next gift card, which at this rate arrives sometime around Easter.
