Paying More to Pay Less

With Tamara home recovering from surgery, we're largely relying on Instacart (that is an affiliate link -- if you sign up through it, we each get a $10 credit) for our groceries.

We pay about $10 a month for their "premium" membership, which means we don't pay the "delivery" fee. 

On the other hand, the prices are a little higher than in-store, and there's a "processing" fee (I think it's $2), and I try to tip well.

But we're still saving money in several ways:

• There's not a bunch of impulse buying;
• We're not using gas and putting wear and tear on the car going to the store;
• We're doing more preparing food at home and getting less from out.
• I've been buying Instacart gift cards using cryptocurrency via Bitrefill (another affiliate link -- once you've spent $50, we each get $5 worth of BTC) ... and while I pay 25 cents above face value for the cards, lately they've been running a "15% Bitcoin back as spendable rewards" special.

I suspect that 15% back alone more than makes up for the price difference in the grocery purchases.

There's another benefit, too:

When I buy a scooter, I want to do so locally instead of using crypto to buy an Amazon gift card, and it's unlikely, although not impossible, that I'll be able to use crypto to do that. So right now, I'm using crypto to pay expenses that would normally come out of Tamara's checking account. The money she's not using on that stuff can be used toward the scooter instead.