Cashing in on the Economic Stimulus?

Through a typ­i­cally ser­pen­tine path of fol­low­ing links this morn­ing, I dis­cov­ered that both Sears and Kroger are offer­ing incen­tives to con­sumers will­ing to cash in their Eco­nomic Stim­u­lus checks.

Sears Hold­ing Cor­po­ra­tions is offer­ing a 10% “bonus to every cus­tomer who con­verts their gov­ern­ment stim­u­lus checks into gift cards at Sears or Kmart.”  The gift cards will have no expi­ra­tion and no fees.  They can be used at Sears, Kmart, or Lands’ End retail stores or on-line at Sears.com or Kmart.com.

For some it might be a very attrac­tive offer but since I don’t shop at any of those stores, I think it’s an offer that I will pass.

But the Kroger offer does inter­est me.  I’m prac­ti­cally a daily Kroger shop­per.  Kroger’s deal, as shown below, is sim­i­lar to Sears’ in value — it works out to 10%.

The prob­lem is, we won’t be receiv­ing a Stim­u­lus check. We’re expect­ing a direct deposit.

Sears, appar­ently, has already addressed this issue.  Following is a quote emailed to me by The Hus­band (sorry, I don’t know the source):

Sears rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kirsten Whip­ple said details for shop­pers who elect to receive the fiscal-stimulus check by direct deposit are still being worked out, but they will likely be able to reg­is­ter online to receive a coupon to bring to stores.

I imag­ine that there will be more retail­ers jump­ing on this Stim­u­lus incen­tive band­wagon, and, in an inter­est­ing way, encour­age us all to do exactly what the gov­ern­ment wants us to do with our checks — stim­u­late the econ­omy.  I’m going to keep a sharp eye and ear out for other retail­ers’ incen­tives before mak­ing a deci­sion (with The Hus­band, of course) as to what to do with our money.

In the end, I’d have to bet that if we do any sort of retailer gift card exchange, it would be with Kroger (pro­vided they come up with a way to entice those of use get­ting direct deposits) because it wouldn’t, in any way, be encour­ag­ing us to spend money that we wouldn’t oth­er­wise spend in a place we wouldn’t oth­er­wise spend it.  Oth­er­wise, my guess is we’ll do exactly what the gov­ern­ment doesn’t want us to do, stick it in savings.

No related posts.