Target Hacks

Target is king sneaky when it comes to retail.

The stores are purposefully designed to make you spend more money.

From placing cute, affordable teen fashion right up by the checkout lanes

To remodeling the store to feel more like a leisurely department store shopping experience instead of a necessity-driven wholesale one

To the weekly deals that reward you for buying multiples of things,

You are bound to go way over budget.

(Unless you have impeccable self-control)

And it’s no secret either.

Social media has made hundreds of cracks about Target shopping.

The thing is ... Where there’s a system, there’s a way to work the system.

Here are some ways to actually leave Target, feeling victorious.

*Not all of these will apply to everyone

#1 The RedCard

You might have one of the little credit cards that’s only good for shopping at Target. It might be maxed out.

If you are one of the lucky ones with excellent credit, you might have a Target MasterCard, which lets you shop anywhere but save and earn rewards for Target.

But if you are an average Joe or Jane who doesn’t want to tap into your credit (or can’t) RedCard DOES come in debit form.

Apply online or in store and receive a little red card that is actually attached to your checking account at your home bank.

You spend your own money but you still get the 5% off and maybe some other benefits like exclusive or early access to certain covetable things.

Not always, but sometimes, for applying for and receiving a RedCard, you get a reward. It might be a coupon for $50 off of $150 or more. It might be 15-25% off your purchase for one day. Keep a tabs on it.

#2 The Gift Cards

Target is always offering a $5, $10 sometimes even a $20 gift card for purchasing select items in at least one department. These specials move all around the store from week to week, but typically only apply to the “needs” departments like grocery, baby, pets, household cleaning and toiletries. If you buy the items advertised in the sale, the cashier is prompted to scan a gift card and hand it to you as soon as your items have been scanned into the register. There is no limit to them. If the deal is “buy three bottles of Suave shampoo, get $5”, and you buy 12, you get 4 gift cards.

This is one of their main tactics to get you to spend money. However, if you use the sale to buy in “bulk” the items you will NEED anyway, it’s not really a waste. You are never not going to need toilet paper in your household. If you have a baby or a pet, you are never not going to need to feed them.

#3 The Gift Card Double-down

You can cross the gift card specials to double-down.

The baby department is the best one for this.

If you have a baby, and you like Target, you know that at least once

Every few months they offer $20 back for spending $100 in that department.

If there so happens to be another deal going on where you get $5 back for buying 15 of a certain baby food, and you use the baby food to spend the whole hundred,

You also get the $20 as well as the $5 cards.

#4 The WIC Hack

Statistics show that in 2014, some 62% of American households with an infant qualified for WIC, and 80% of those households took advantage of that offer.

You don’t always have to be struggling on a minimum-wage basis or as a single parent. In my case, my husband is a military veteran. His income from the VA is invisible to the insurance marketplace so it looks like we only have my income, which by itself, makes us fall under a certain threshold. That triggered my newborn son being given a Medicaid plan last fall. In Florida, a Medicaid holder automatically qualifies to be a WIC user.

Look into it.

If you have WIC, you get a certain amount of baby formula, baby food and regular food each month and it’s covered with an EBT card.

Those cans of baby formula are about $17 each.

So buying just 6 or 7 pushes you up over the $100 threshold.

At Target, once you ring up $100 worth of that formula,

You are given the $20 gift card during that special offer.

It doesn’t matter that WIC paid for it.

You still get $20 for free.

 #5 The Split-sale Hack

Let’s say you got the $20 gift card for spending $100 on baby formula.

You can’t use it in the same transaction, but you can split your transactions up

And use it right there with the same cashier.

Pay for the formula, get a receipt, and then start a new tab for your

Diapers and wipes. Observe that a third person has now gotten in line behind you.

Ring up another $100. Be given another $20 gift card.

Then use the one from the first transaction to pay for part of the sale.

Now it’s like you got $20 for spending $80.

Put the rest on your other credit cards and get a receipt.

Start a third tab.

Hear an employee’s crackling voice call for backup over their walkie talkies.

See three other employees come up from the floor

and start taking the people who are lining up behind you.

Buy your makeup and shampoo with the other $20 gift card.

Between WIC and two gift cards, you walked away with

$220 worth of merch for $80. 

#6 Discount stacking

Because they award shoppers gift cards for their own store, and gift cards are the same as money, you can stack the gift cards together with the coupons.

1) You can use store coupons, like the $50 off of $150 for getting a RedCard, at the same time as you go to earn gift cards back on purchases.

2) And you can use the coupons as well as the gift cards when it comes time to pay.

3) You can also use a single item that’s on a temporary price reduction in the sale

And still get the reward for reaching a certain threshold.

The discounted item just lets you fit more in there before you get to the threshold.

I recently bought a $200 baby car seat that was marked down to $160 for that week only, and used $65 worth of the gift cards I had been awarded for purchasing certain things in the weeks before to make the car seat only $100 out of pocket.

Then I used my RedCard for another 5%off.

My bill was down around $90 for a $200 car seat.

When I had a $500 off $150 coupon (for signing my husband up for a Red debit card) we used it to stock up on diapers, wipes and baby food pouches that

Awarded us gift cards for reaching a certain number of items instead of a certain price point. Then to reach the $150 mark, he bought our baby some toys

That for a limited time were buy-one-get-one-half-off.

The toys should have been $100 alone, but came to only $75

And the other baby items were $75 but gave us 2 gift cards,

And we only spend $100 instead of $150 at check out because of that coupon.

The gift cards I earned went towards the car seat.

Over all, you might spend more money at one point but you will save a large amount later. It’s kind of like Target is saying “Hey, I know you came in here to get just enough baby food and hair spray for the next week, but if you go ahead and get a month’s supply now, we’ll give you a much bigger item for half what it costs in two weeks.”

Yep, things even out.