Store Loyalty Programs Are a Scam (And We All Fell for It)

Summary

Frugal Friends Podcast: "Store Loyalty Programs Are a Scam (And We All Fell for It)"

Release Date: May 26, 2026
Hosts: Jen Smith & Jill Sirianni
Podcast: Frugal Friends Podcast

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the world of store loyalty programs—debunking the idea that they're created with the customer's best interest in mind. Through real-world examples, research, and a good dose of frustration, Jen and Jill explain how these programs have evolved into sophisticated tools for price manipulation, data extraction, and consumer "stickiness." They analyze how companies like Starbucks, Kroger, and major airlines use loyalty programs to drive profits, shape consumer habits, and collect valuable personal data, often at the expense of the unsuspecting customer. The episode concludes with actionable advice on how to push back and protect yourself from these manipulative tactics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What’s Broken About Loyalty Programs?

• Overarching Claim: Store loyalty programs are designed to monitor and shape consumer behavior for corporate gain, not to reward loyalty.
• Jen's Admission: She was once a proud, "elite" Starbucks loyalty member, reminiscing over her black Starbucks card days and admitting participation in the very system she now critiques. (03:07)
• Shift in Programs: Over the years, loyalty programs have become more complex and less rewarding, shifting more advantages to the company and away from the customer.
  • "Store loyalty programs are a scam that are there to monitor your usage so they can monitor how much they can charge you without you leaving for a competitor and to offer you incentives to get you to buy stuff you wouldn't otherwise." – Jen (00:56)

2. Case Study: Starbucks Reward Program Evolution

• Recent Changes: Starbucks recently changed its program; now customers earn fewer "stars" per dollar spent, even at higher levels.
  • "If you're green status, you only earn one star per dollar spent. If your gold status, you're only going to earn 1.2 stars… And if you're the highest tier reserve status, you're only ever going to earn 1.7 stars per dollar spent." – Eric (03:43)
• Purposeful Complexity: Starbucks uses its loyalty program data to manipulate customer habits—timing "double star days" or special promos to boost sales during slow periods.
• The Cost to Consumers: To reach the top reward tier, a customer would need to spend ~$1,470/year, or ~$4/day, a level that’s unrealistic for most (06:32).
  • "These are essentially fake benefits so they can make the reward program more complex… It is truly people are letting this corporation that does not care about them, does not care about their employees, doesn't care about anything but money, dictate their lifestyle." – Jen (07:28)

3. The Trap: Breaking Down Loyalty Program Psychology

• Based on Berkeley Research & More Perfect Union: The hosts use a viral video to break loyalty traps into stages.
  1. The Hook: Offer irresistible discounts in exchange for personal info.
  2. The Hack: Harvest data to build a psychological profile, then monitor and manipulate shopping habits.
     • "These loyalty programs, they're complex surveillance schemes designed to harvest your data, build a psychological profile on you and maximize how much you’re willing to spend." – Video narrator (09:37)
  3. The Hike: Once you’re invested, companies often decrease rewards, increase barriers, and even start charging membership fees (Amazon Prime, Walmart+ as examples).
     • "The degrading of the program over time too is one of those slow boil type of situations where you don't totally realize it until you stand up one day and look back..." – Jill (20:10)
• Data Sales: Companies like Kroger collect vast data—including income, education, household size—and sell it, with profits from data sales making up more than a third of Kroger’s net income. (15:30)
  • "A huge part of Kroger's net income is not from groceries. It's from selling the data we give them willingly." – Jen (15:31)

4. How Loyalty Programs Are Weaponized

• Price Customization: Data from loyalty programs allows companies to experiment with personalized pricing—charging each customer the most they’ll tolerate (13:15).
• Stickiness ("Coerced Loyalty"): Programs are deliberately hard to exit, with perks tied to continuous spending or restrictive credit cards (22:15).
  • "They make loyalty programs kind of sticky. Like we...want to stick with them a little bit." – Jill (22:17)
• False Sense of Savings: The illusion of discounts masks subtle price increases and encourages unnecessary purchases (07:28, 12:00).
• Retailer Examples: Dunkin’ Donuts now requires spending $90 (previously $40) for a free latte; Delta’s top-tier status requires $20k/year spent. Best Buy only allows points with their credit card (20:50–22:15).

5. Pushback: What Consumers Can Do

• Legislation Needed: Highlighting the importance of consumer protection laws. Some states are carving out exceptions for loyalty programs in privacy laws—a loophole that needs closing (25:22).
  • "That loophole needs to be closed. That means real discounts, transparent terms, and limited data collection." – Stephanie Nguyen (25:22)
• Personal Actions:
  • Actively deny unnecessary website cookie requests; be vigilant with digital privacy (27:48)
  • Use browser ad blockers, VPNs, and tools that can delete old/inactive loyalty accounts or personal data (29:52).
  • Vote with your dollar: shop at local stores when possible, vary where you shop, and refuse to get locked into one corporate “ecosystem.”
  • "We are loyal to nobody… We find the best price and we do the research and we're patient and we problem solve." – Jill (33:35)
  • Prefer stores that avoid loyalty gimmicks altogether (e.g., Aldi).

6. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "If you are walking around with a Starbucks cup in 2025 and 2026, you should be embarrassed." – Jen (02:15)
• "Loyalty programs do not reward your loyalty. They are tools for the business to be able to extract more money from you and to study your habits, your usage, and be able to charge overall, in general, charge people more." – Jen (23:18)
• On companies beyond just their primary business:
  • "They're a financial institution. They're a data research site selling your data to other companies...Kroger's not just groceries." – Jill (47:32)
• "I want to live a happy and fulfilled life. I don't want the, these, these negatives to decrease the one life that I have to live. But I'm also not going to live in ignorance. Yeah, I'm going to live in empowerment and do what I can do." – Jen (49:38)

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Notable Segments (Timestamps)

• [02:09] – Starbucks Loyalty Program changes: loss of value and increased spending required for “status.”
• [09:37] – Explanation of the “Loyalty Trap” and data surveillance (clip from More Perfect Union).
• [15:30] – Kroger’s data sale business dissected, consequences of data-driven discount allocation.
• [18:26] – "The Hike": price increases and membership fees as loyalty schemes evolve.
• [22:15] – Making loyalty programs “sticky” and hard to leave.
• [27:48] – Steps for consumers: rejecting cookies, using privacy tech, opting out of data harvesting.
• [33:35] – Call to independence: being loyal to no stores, only to thoughtful spending.
• [44:30] – Lightning Round: How the hosts use (or don’t use) loyalty programs, emphasizing strategies for personal autonomy.

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Actionable Takeaways / How to Fight Back (39:47+)

• Reject the Status Quo: Don’t passively accept loyalty programs—scrutinize them, and remember that you’re being studied and manipulated.
• Prioritize Local: Opt for local businesses and simple pricing models over corporate schemes.
• Minimal Participation: Limit loyalty program signups to those offering genuine, significant, immediate benefits—especially from small/local shops.
• Vary Shopping Habits: Don't give all your business to one chain. Rotate as possible to avoid behavioral lock-in.
• Digital Vigilance: Use browser privacy tools, refuse unnecessary cookies, delete unused accounts. Consider services that help manage your digital footprint.
• Advocate: Support or vote for local and state legislation that closes privacy loopholes and ensures companies can’t exploit or resell your data via loyalty schemes.

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Tone & Closing Thoughts

Staying true to their friendly-yet-firm tone, Jen and Jill blend personal anecdotes, humor, and justified skepticism about big corporations with actionable advice. While the episode is sometimes laced with frustration, the ultimate message is empowerment—encouraging listeners to take back control, stay vigilant, and be proactive rather than pessimistic.

"We don't want to be conspiratorialists…We want to live in empowerment." – Jen (29:52)

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For Further Reading/Listening

• Book: Buy What You Love Without Going Broke by Jen & Jill
• Research referenced: UC Berkeley study on loyalty programs, Consumer Reports on data collection and pricing

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Summary:
If you’re tired of feeling like a pawn in the game of corporate loyalty programs, this Frugal Friends episode gives you insight, laughs, and—most importantly—tools to reclaim your spending habits and resist being mined for profit. Listen for a rousing reminder: True frugality isn’t about brand loyalty—it’s about conscious, empowered decisions in a world that increasingly wants to track and nudge you toward spending more.

Transcript

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[Jen]

Store loyalty programs are a scam and we all fell for it.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a richer life. Here are your hosts, Jen and J.

Welcome Frugal Friends. I'm Jen, she's Jill. And store loyalty programs are a scam that are there to monitor your usage so they can monitor how much they can charge you without you leaving for a competitor and to offer you incentives to get you to buy stuff you wouldn't otherwise.

[J]

We're not wasting any time, we're just going to get into it and talk about how loyalty rewards don't reward behavior, they shape it.

[Jen]

This episode really started small with my disdain for a certain company that we will get into. And it grew into something that has become my entire personality for the last couple weeks. And the sad thing is, is that store loyalty programs have become so embedded in our shopping behavior that we cannot sell separate ourselves from it. And we will look at that in this episode. And so there this episode will half be opening our eyes to what these things really are. And the other half will be okay, how do we then live with it without moving into the forest and living off the grid?

[J]

So it was a bit inspired by your disdain for Starbucks.

[Jen]

I. Yeah. And if you, you guys, if you've been with me in this podcast for any amount of time, you know how I feel about Starbucks. If you are walking around with a Starbucks cup in 2025 and 2026, you should be embarrassed. Wow.

[J]

Embarrassed. Should be embarrassed.

[Jen]

But that's besides the point. This episode is actually inspired by. In March they changed their loyalty program and I will admit to be a. A strong Starbucks loyalty program like elite highest member. Like back in like what, 10, 15 years ago where they actually gave membership cards. I had a black Starbucks card that I could load money onto and give like an AMEX black card but for Starbucks and it had my name on it. Drop, please drop in the comments. If, if I'm not alone if you remember this card. But this was like one of my credit cards and I yielded it proudly. I was a Starbucks loyalty member. And over the years, as this company has devolved into chaos and lack of empathy, it really, the rewards and loyalty program has developed with it to where you've got this new loyalty program that is kind of just actually scamming all of us.

[Eric]

Did we all just get screwed over by Starbucks? Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we all earn 2 stars per dollar spent using the Starbucks app? Starbucks just released a new status program. And look at this. If you're green status, you only earn one star per dollar spent. If your gold status, you're only going to earn 1.2 stars per dollar spent. And if you're the highest tier reserve status, you're only ever going to earn 1.7 stars per dollar spent. Whoever came up with this at Starbucks, you deserve the biggest raise possible because I'm pretty sure you are saving Starbucks a ton of money. So much money, I'm not even surprised. This is typical of companies screwing over the customer, not putting the customer first and trying to squeeze out as much money as possible from everyone.

[J]

It's so much worse here. It got so much worse.

[Jen]

Yeah, so we'll throw up that, the image on the, on the screen so you can see it too. But yeah, essentially if you paid with your digital Starbucks card, you used to get two stars for every dollar purchase. I knew that I did that. I was still at that higher level until maybe like one or two years ago. And they brought back the personalized reserve card to mark your achievement for the highest level. They're, they've, we've went like analog and then we went all digital. And then companies are now realizing the benefit to analog again or to actual like physical things. And so they're bringing them back. It's just so funny to see. But yeah, they have made a worse reward program across the board for every tier. They have made it so complex to. They've taken so much data from their years, decades of loyalty program so that they can make a super complex program that brings people in on slower days that can kind of shift at their whim. If so you've got like free mod Mondays. Mondays are a typically slower day, but then they can also shift at their whim with these double star days where they just like pop up randomly when the company wants a little boost of income. And so after decades of studying your data, your usage of the loyalty program and the app, they have distilled this new benefit program that does not benefit you, it benefits them more. They've just extracted your habits to benefit them more.

[J]

Yeah. And surprise, surprise, it's going to be less. You're getting less for maybe the same amount or maybe more. Like their prices are increasing, their benefits are decreasing. What used to be getting two stars per dollar spent, now the top tier isn't even getting that. And then it just decreases from there with all the tiers. And what's wild to me about this top tier is that in order to achieve it, you would need to have earned 2,500 stars. To earn 2,500 stars, you would need to spend $1,470 a year to earn that. That comes out to about $4.03 per day. If you were 365 days a year getting Starbucks at $4.03cent, really it's not doable. Like it's not that reasonable. They're probably, there's obviously people out here doing that.

[Jen]

But yeah, even if you utilize the double star days and the Bonus for adding $30 into the app, which makes Starbucks like a bank, which we've talked about before, it's super not doable. So these are essentially fake benefits so they can again make, make the reward program more complex. And so it is truly people are letting this corporation that does not care about them, does not care about their employees, doesn't care about anything but money, dictate their lifestyle, go out of their way to get a double, you know, get the double star day to maintain this monthly quota that they need to maintain their status within the company. Because once you've earned the status, you don't want to lose it because then you pay more money to get that status again. They know that. That's why they have created such strong restrictions with expiring stars and stuff. And Starbucks is not alone on this. I truly thought we were just going to rant about Starbucks for 30 minutes, but then I saw this video, it's a three minute video from More Perfect Union and I need to unpack it with you because it's not happening at just Starbucks. It is affecting us even if we don't go to Starbucks.

[J]

Yeah. So it's based on this investigation at UC Berkeley on loyalty programs. And so we're kind of going to use the term loyalty program as a catch all phrase for all these other type of benefits, your discount clubs, rewards programs, other programs in which companies provide rewards, discounts or other benefits to customers in exchange for your continued engagement, for your loyalty, for your Repeat business to keep you coming back, to keep you essentially locked in and chained up to their prices. So we wanted to go through this three minute video, but in three sections and kind of dissect it together. So the first part is going to cover the two, the first two stages, which we're calling the hook and the hack. So let's first talk about the hook.

[Narrator (Loyalty Trap Video)]

There's a trap in your grocery store that you don't even know about. Kroger wants you to think that you're saving money by joining their loyalty program. But that's not the full story. These loyalty programs, they're complex surveillance schemes designed to harvest your data, build a psychological profile on you and maximize how much you're willing to spend. And it's happening everywhere, all across the economy. This is the loyalty trap. Here's how it starts. The checkout clerk will offer you 10% off your purchase in order to join the store's free loyalty program. Or the airline says you can accrue miles or points on your flight, all in exchange for your personal information like email address, phone number and consent for the company to build a profile on you. It's designed to feel irresistible, but really it's like a Trojan horse. Once inside, companies unload hidden fees, data extraction and other traps that only really surface later. They push you to download apps or digital coupons in order to track what you buy, how much price pain you'll tolerate, and how your habits change over time. The company can experiment with rewards, segment customers by willingness to, to pay, and steadily ratchet up data extraction. A Consumer Reports investigation revealed that Kroger collects such vast amounts of data that it builds its profiles of its customers, including income, gender, household size and education level. And it sells or shares loyalty profiles with more than 50 companies, from tobacco firms to financial companies and data brokers. Home Depot captures Internet activity including browsing history and in store wi fi usage. Macy's tracks customers license number, search history and even ethnic origin and sells it to data brokers. It's all part of an emerging industry, how to hack your brain.

[J]

It sounds so conspiratorial does but it's,

[Jen]

it's actually, it's real. Like this isn't a conspiracy. And we will, we'll link to, to the study that this, this video is about so you can read it and we'll link to several of the other things that, that they reference. But so we all know the hook. It's a free loyalty program. It gets you free discounts. Like Publix has this free loyalty program that if you sign up for it, you get $5 off your first $20 purchase, and that's great. We're frugal people. We love saving money. So you're probably signed up for, I don't know, at this point in your life, probably 20 to 50 loyalty programs. Right?

[J]

Right.

[Jen]

We may not use them regularly, but we are all signed up for them.

[J]

And on the surface, we all do get that. We know that they are trying to get us to keep coming back. And I'm okay with that, especially for the stores where I am going to keep coming back. I'm going to come back to the grocery store. I'm going to come back to this restaurant. Fine. If you think that it's worth it to benefit me in some way to keep coming back, that's great. I think that's the knowledge that we all have. That's an exchange we're all willing to make. But what we don't realize, I didn't up until this point, is how much deeper that goes and the data extraction that is happening as we are a part of these loyalty programs, that the benefit we're receiving is nowhere near the benefits that the companies are receiving.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[J]

The thing that stood out to me the most is the. The price tolerance. How much people are willing to pay. Meaning could they arbitrarily increase the prices because they've extracted enough data to inform them that, yeah, they'd be willing to pay even $2 more for that thing.

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[Jen]

Yeah, why not? It's small, right? It's not $2 more. It's like 40 cents, 30 cents more.

[J]

More.

[Jen]

Perfect Union actually also has another video that says goes into studying like, it's a. You can't. It's. It's so hard to see the price fluctuations between individuals, but they brought as many people together as they could. I believe a couple hundred to. In the like, same location, same app, same time of day, same grocery list to like make it and send it and see how much it came out to. And there were price disparagements by like a couple dollars, like from end to end. And it's not much, maybe like $2 difference, but over like hundreds of millions of people. Everyone shops for groceries, so they don't need to do more than a dollar or two. They just need to make your whole cart a smidge more expensive and push it as far as they can without you leaving for a competitor because they've already tied you in with the loyalty you have status, you're getting discounts. And that is the true, I believe, like trap with these loyalty programs, they are extracting deep amounts of data. I didn't know they were selling the data too. Yeah. So this consumer report study they referenced says Kroger collects data to create an income predictor. And they can actually take the the levels of education. And a shopper who is deemed to have less education or with a lower income, for example, could end up getting fewer of Kroger's best discounts. But here's the thing. More than 95% of customer transactions are tied to a Kroger loyalty car. So Kroger leverages that customer data into a lucrative business. Kroger's precision marketing division, it's a whole division, sells customer data to other companies. And it is estimated that this alternative profit business now represents more than 35% of the company's net income.

[J]

That's huge.

[Jen]

Significant. That's huge. A huge part of Kroger's net income is not from groceries. It's from selling the data we give them willingly.

[J]

Yeah. And it's not just them who are doing it. There's all sorts of companies. They're just a good example. They're one of the ones that this Consumer reports highlighted tons of companies that any really anyone with a loyalty program might be probably doing this with the data that we're giving them.

[Jen]

Yeah. And that's just loyalty programs. We could go into a whole nother episode of the data being extracted from us through web trackers, which are those cookies that we all mine mindlessly say accept all two. Like that is on another a completely different level.

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[J]

Okay, so we've covered the hook and the hack. The next stage is the hike.

[Narrator (Loyalty Trap Video)]

Because companies invest a lot in these programs, they expect a big return on their investment. They're increasingly charging for the privilege to participate in these loyalty programs. A big strategy Take something that customers took for granted, like ad free videos or lounge access, and then gussy it up like it's a premium perk. Or simply steadily raise the price of membership over time. And they'll degrade the program too, devaluing points, limiting redemption options, and curtailing benefits. Meanwhile, companies make loyalty programs hard to leave or sticky. In other words, coerced loyalty. By now, you're fully caught in the company's trap, which means that they flip the bargain, making you, the customer in the loyalty program, pay more than you would have outside of it. The result is a wholesale transfer of wealth from consumers to corporations, with companies collecting More data while diminishing savings.

[J]

I love it here.

[Jen]

The first things that I think of are Walmart plus and Amazon Prime. Like these, these membership programs. We are paying to be a part of, paying for the opportunity to be to impulse spend more. We are paying for the opportunity to spend more money impulsively.

[J]

Yeah. Charging for the privilege of particip. And we've just been blindsided to it. We're just like, yeah, sure. Oh my gosh, look at all these perks. Yeah, right.

[Jen]

Perks that you may or may not use, but they just add up and they add up to something that's like, oh, look at this value. Thousands of dollars of value.

[J]

Yeah. I think the, the degrading of the program over time too is one of those slow boil type of situations where you don't totally realize it until you stand up one day and look back and realize. But it used to be like this. I think about with travel rewards points that's happening a ton. Where the, the redemptions are not what they used to be or the points don't go as far as they used to, but it still sounds like a lot. It's tens of thousands of points. Yeah. But you need millions of points to be able to book the thing that you want to book. And so I think we, we see it in all these pockets of loyalty.

[Jen]

Yeah. We found an article by Fortune of customer loyalty programs. Not as good as they used to be. And so some of them include Dunkin Donuts, which changed its Reward program in 2022. So now customers have to spend more than double what they previously did. Now $90, up from $40 to earn a free latte for Delta to, to attain the highest reward status at Delta. A point of pride for many frequent flyers. I think frequent flyers have like the most pride in their status with an airline that is definitely an identity thing, like a success thing. But Passengers must spend $20,000 in a year in addition to mileage requirements, up from $15,000 last year, a roughly 33% increase to get the highest reward status with Delta.

[J]

And just one year too. That's an insane hike.

[Jen]

Yeah. And then on the retail side, Best Buy customers used to be able to get points for making purchases. Frequent, frequent purchases. And now the only way to even earn rewards points is by purchasing goods using the retailer's high interest credit card.

[J]

Yes, yes.

[Jen]

So many of these are tied to credit cards.

[J]

And then as the last video pointed out too, they're making it harder to leave these loyalty programs. They make loyalty programs kind of sticky. Like we We. We want to stick with them a little bit.

[Jen]

That's the. The term they use in marketing to make it sound less coercive. So we use the word coercion. They're literally like putting their hand on your throat and be like, if you don't buy a latte this month, you will not keep your gold status. And they call it sticky.

[J]

It's just a different.

[Jen]

It's a synonym.

[J]

By offering the personalized rewards and creating those tiered status levels that, like, you're pointing out, you could lose. Yeah. Similarly.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[J]

Once you're a gold Starbucks member, it costs more to regain it. So you don't want to lose that status. So you're going to do the things that you might not have otherwise done in order to maintain that status. And that is. That's sticky.

[Jen]

Yeah. Or you'll just make purchases, not even like to. To regain status, but they're making points expire. So then you are forced to make a purchase or to do something in order so you don't lose the reward that you worked for. And it is. It is benefiting the company more than it benefits us. Just like we say, sales are a marketing tactic. Sales benefit the company or they would not do them. They do not do them out of the goodness of their heart. It's the same with loyalty programs. Loyalty programs do not reward your loyalty. They are tools for the business to be able to extract more money from you and to study your habits, your usage, and be able to charge overall, in general, charge people more and to

[J]

keep you coming back to also still maintain your business. It's like it's this dual purpose. The one purpose you're just very aware of, and the other one is happening behind your right in front of your nose. Behind your back.

[Jen]

Yeah. Okay.

[J]

All right. The last thing, the last part, it's not all dire.

[Jen]

There is hope. And I think the biggest mistake we can make with all this and I think with all the things we talk about. Right. Like, it is bad out there. Right. But I think our biggest mistake would be to just become nihilists, to say, there's nothing we can do, it's hopeless, Everything has already gone to crap. That is what they want. That is lying down and taking it. And so I think we have to do what we can do, knowing that what we can do is limited, but doing it anyway, because laying down and taking it is literally the worst thing we can do. And so I think the last part of the video really does offer a smidge of hope for the future.

[Narrator (Loyalty Trap Video)]

How do we stop it. I called up Stephanie Nguyen, who wrote the report exposing the scheme, to find out.

[Stephanie Nguyen (Interviewee)]

States have passed laws to protect privacy and stop predatory pricing, but many carve out loyalty programs from those protections. That loophole needs to be closed. That means real discounts, transparent terms, and limited data collection. States can act now to protect loyalty programs and stop surveillance pricing.

[J]

So there.

[Jen]

I hate. I hate that the first thing that we can do is literally out of our hands. But that is, and typically always is consumer protection laws. The more consumer protection laws that are eroded, the worse it is for us, because we're taking the CFP review for the test. And one of the things for retirement plans is you have to come at that. Every retirement plan is made by an owner, and he references the Bruce Springsteen song where it's like, poor man want to be rich, rich man want to be king. Right. And so we have to remember that that's the mindset of all these businesses, of all these business owners. They are not there for us. They are there because they want to be kings. Right. And so we need consumer protection laws against that mindset that always has been and always will be. And so that's kind of like the broader level.

[J]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is so important because this is the future of pricing, it's the future of affordability, it's the future of our privacy and our own autonomy and decision making. And so whatever we can do, I think is really important to be considering. And so, yeah, the consumer protection laws, if there's ways to be able to vote and advocate and inform other people. But then what changes can we be making? And some of it was kind of referenced throughout, or we can kind of understand that, oh, this would be the next step. The. When a website asks, you know, do you want to allow cookies? Do you want to allow? That's really asking, can this website continue to track everything that you're currently doing? And we will often just click allow all because we just want to get to the next thing.

[Jen]

I still, I have in the past couple weeks since I wrote this outline, I have put. I've made it like an intentional decision to not just allow all, but to, like, say no or to select only necessary. And there have still been times where I have not been thinking and just hit allow all and been like, dang it. So it is so easy for them to get this data because we're all just kind of like trying to go through our day as quickly as possible and do what we need to do. But that is one easy, easy step

[J]

to Take, we can request to delete. At least certain states would allow that. California is one of them where you can request businesses to have your personal information deleted. So if that's an option that's worth looking into, certainly having ad blockers. So that could be extensions on your web browsers that can block ads, block the trackers that is going to, you know, be collecting the data from you vpn. So virtual private networks are available and they are tools that can work again with browser extensions that can conceal your location, your browsing history, the files that you download. Not exactly this, but it's one of the reasons that I book my flights in an incognito window because it's not tracking, it's not able to shift the pricing as much because they're not able to track the location. But certainly your own VPN is going to be really helpful. I don't want to get too into the weeds of we've got to be so hyper vigilant. But like, but, but we kind of do like everybody wants, these companies want a lot more money and they want to extract as much information from us as we can. And so it's just a matter of how much can I maintain to be able to keep things as fair as possible for me and other consumers.

[Jen]

We don't want to be conspiratorialists. Right. We don't to be off the grid, you know, living in isolation and fear. We are not living in fear. Right. We want to live in empowerment. So I think sometimes I can see these different privacy things as kind of like a live in fear sort of sort of thing. But we do owe it to our children and their children to protect them from the price gouging that that is coming because of these loyalty programs. It is here and more is coming. And I will just read you a quote on a recent earning call from Delta Airlines. As they told investors it could soon abandon the practice of matching competitors fares and Instead tack on 20 to $40 more simply because its data suggests passengers will pay it. Ordinarily, one might expect competition to discipline such price hike. Not so, Delta explained. By mining internal customer data and external market signals, the airline can engage in what its consultant calls hyper personalization, a euphemism for charging each traveler the maximum they will tolerate without losing share to rivals. And it is imperative that we start now with what we can do. And so it's these small things and if you feel, if it feels a little out of control, which for me it does. But so this is not an ad and we are not sponsored by them. But we do use aura a u r a frugalfriends podcast.com aura there's a. We have a deal with them, we do have a relationship with them, but we use them for stuff like this, typically for just the identity theft insurance. Like they will help with getting all of that stuff back and they'll save a bunch of time. So like initially that's why I started using it. But R can also. It's. It's got a vpn, it's got ad blockers. It can also find old loyalty accounts you forgot about. It can scan for online accounts, link to your email market any inactive ones. So you can delete accounts that still store your purchase history and personal data. ARA will also flag any loyalty accounts tied to past breaches or poor privacy policies. It will constantly check data brokers to scrape your information from them. It does all the requests for you. So and it alerts you if your data has been exposed as well. So this is something that we use and have only found out that it does stuff like this in doing this research. It does a ton of things, especially the family plan if you've got kids like that are playing Roblox or are on the Internet. So again, frugalfriendspodcast.com aura check it out. If you have the means to pay for a service that can do this stuff. But also you can manually be checking for these things and requesting your data be removed. And everyone can hit the don't allow cookies on the website.

[J]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jen]

Choose another website.

[J]

You can't use the website unless you accept the cookies. Get your information somewhere else then.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[J]

It is reminding me of kind of an old school, tried and true tenant of frugality. And that is we are loyal to nobody.

[Jen]

We're loyal to no one.

[Ad Speaker (Quince/Chime)]

Yeah.

[J]

We find the best price and we do the research and we're patient and we problem solve. We don't just get so locked in on a brand brand that we don't even care if they're going to charge us $40 more for something we can get for a hundred dollars less just because we like the brand.

[Jen]

We don't do that.

[J]

Frugal people don't do that.

[Jen]

No. And it's also one of the reasons

[J]

why I love Aldi so much. They don't do coupons. You don't gotta have the app. You just go in and the price is the price and it's cheaper than everywhere else.

[Jen]

Amen.

[J]

Amen.

[Jen]

We're also not sponsored by all. No. I'd Love to be.

[J]

I would love to be sponsored by all Aldi. All of us. I know you're watching. I know you're here listening. AI, you know what else is here? Watching and listening. Always. We're watching and listen.

[Jen]

It's us. We are the trap.

[J]

The of the week.

[Jen]

That's right. It's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck Bills. Buffalo Bills. Bill Clinton. This is the bill of the week.

[Caller (Carrie from Tennessee)]

Hey, this is Carrie from Tennessee. So part of my New Year's resolution, like everybody else was to help my family get out of debt. Of the biggest areas that I thought we could start in was cutting cost. So cutting back on subscriptions and just make changes to where I felt like we overpaid. So I am happy to announce that in the month of January I did swap our homeowners and car insurance and I was able to save my family over $488 a month. Which is crazy to me. That is over $5,000 a year and a shameless plug. I did swap to Farm Bureau and I am super excited that this is jump started our New Year's resolution. Hope you'll have a wonderful day.

[J]

Yes, carriers, you're gonna be debt free. Cause you made the call.

[Jen]

Make the call.

[J]

Yeah. One day, one call saved you $488 every single month. That's not, that's passive. That is, that becomes passive. You putting now probably hopefully $488 a month towards your debt or the $488

[Jen]

per month price hike in groceries.

[J]

Oh no. We're not becoming pessimistic.

[Jen]

We've been pess.

[J]

Bitter and pessimistic. This is, this is incredible.

[Jen]

And this is absolutely fun. The best.

[J]

This is the number one area we hear people saving the most money. If you have not done an audit of your homeowner's insurance, your car insurance, literally any of your insurances and now's the time.

[Jen]

Take the call, make the call. Take or make the call. You could do both. Yeah.

[J]

And truly policygenius is a helpful one with that. That's like a partner of the show. If you're uncertain. How do I even shop around? They are a platform that helps you find that. Frugalfriendspodcast.com PolicyGenius or is the other way around. We'll link it in the notes.

[Jen]

I just go to policygeniusygenius.com sponsor the Shout anymore. Honestly, not enough people were buying insurance through them, so they gave up on us.

[J]

All right, well, still a helpful. Still a helpful resource. Then again, we'll make no money for it.

[Jen]

But we are so bad at this.

[J]

If you have a bill that you want to submit, if it has to do with saving money, making the call, paying down debt, or your name is Bill, we can't wait to hear it.

[Jen]

Frugalfriendspodcast.com Bill does anyone else get the

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[J]

And now it's time for the lightning round.

[Jen]

All right, what do you look. So the question is, what do you look for when choosing a customer loyalty program or rewards solution? And for me, I would say I really only use just keeping it like minimal. Again, I am loyal to no one as a frugal person. Yep. I am loyal to my husband. And that's it. That's. That's the only loyalty you got from me? And me, actually, yeah, I am loyal

[J]

to Jill, but she's Obligated.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[J]

Contractually and legally.

[Jen]

It's similar to the marriage license. Yeah. There. There are tax benefits, but I want to be in as few loyalty programs as possible moving forward. I don't want to give them up completely.

[J]

Yeah.

[Jen]

Because there are some places that I am loyal to.

[J]

Yeah. And I do want the freebies.

[Jen]

Right. At my local coffee shop, my loyalty program. There's, like, what data are they extracting from me over at the blend, you know?

[J]

Right.

[Jen]

So. Right.

[J]

Yeah. Local places are more about just keeping repeat business. So I'm gonna.

[Jen]

I'm gonna stay on my local stores.

[J]

Oh, I like that.

[Jen]

Yeah.

[J]

Keep it local. That's always the answer for the.

[Jen]

For the corporate ones. Just as few as possible. Yeah. And, you know, just varying my loyalty, like, varying my shopping.

[J]

Yeah.

[Jen]

Not going to multiple grocery stores in a day. Like, that's not for me, but like, Costco one week, Walmart the next week, Publix the next week, back to Walmart and just kind of cycling through them.

[J]

I didn't hear Aldi. Why didn't I hear Aldi? Out your mouth.

[Jen]

I actually haven't been to Aldi in a while because I just ended Walmart plus in your mouth. Okay.

[J]

I thought it was gonna come out better than that.

[Jen]

How about you, Jenny?

[J]

I just look for freebies. If they're gonna give me some freebies, then I'm here for it. That's the hook. Yeah.

[Jen]

Right.

[J]

No, it's.

[Jen]

Yeah, that's.

[J]

I'm hooked on the freebies. I really don't have many, many loyalty programs because I go to Aldi. That's where I shop. I don't have loyalty programs because even if I do go to Publix randomly, because it's random that I would choose to go there, you can ask for a store card and. And get whatever discounts are being offered. So that's usually what I do. So I don't actually have to have it because I'm not there all that often. And so I think the only other one I have is for Chick Fil A, because there's. I just get so many French fries.

[Jen]

I have Chick Fil A from them. Yeah, I do have Chick Fil A. Yeah, I do.

[J]

But then every other one, like, if it's fast food, I just, like, I delete the app. But then if I'm gonna go there, then I'll download the app right before I go there and just see, all right, are there any freebies? And then I delete the app.

[Jen]

I'm actually gonna show this episode to Travis, because he is embedded in loyalty apps, he cannot buy something unless he is being rewarded for it. Please drop in the comment. If you have a person in your life who cannot purchase something,

[J]

he might be okay with the data that they're extracting from him. He might think he's getting the better end of the stick. And for how much he uses them, he might be. He might be the one tricking the whole system.

[Jen]

I don't. I don't know. I don't know what they're. He could. He's an anomaly in so many ways. But I will present this episode to him to open his eyes for sure.

[J]

Yeah, our husbands love it when we do that. Listen to me talk for an hour and you can't interject at.

[Jen]

Yeah, I made this for you. It's just me talking for an hour. Bye. All right, thank you so much for listening. Please comment like this video. Subscribe to the channel. If this is some. If this is something you feel like more people should know about, nobody will hear it. Unless you like the video, subscribe to the channel and leave a comment. That's like, I agree. Loyalty programs are a trap to monitor your usage and extract as much money from you as possible. And because I know you watch and listen to Frugal Living tip videos, I just like, know that about you. If anybody ever recommends loyalty programs again as a way to save money, I need you to comment on the video with that exact phrase. Like, we can't do it alone. We all have to be in this together. Okay? All of us have to comment that on Facebook. It can no longer be a Frugal Living tip. So please, please, please do that. And if this was interesting to you, we also have a book called buy what you love without going broke where we try to balance how do I spend intentionally without moving off the grid and living off the land. So that's what the book is about. And a lot of people have a lot of nice things to say about it. Like Stephanie here gave it a five star review on Amazon. She said said, I've always wanted to be more frugal, but my main issue is impulse spending. As someone who is neurodivergent, sometimes it's really hard to stick to a routine, habit, budget, et cetera. This book was an approachable, engaging way to learn better finance methods without feeling like a total bore. It genuinely feels like a friend teaching better habits.

[J]

Yay. I love that. I love being a friend. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being our friend. Yeah, please do. Subscribe.

[Jen]

Subscribe.

[J]

We'll See you next time.

[Jen]

Bye. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.

[J]

You took out a video, but I found it so interesting.

[Jen]

I wanted us to talk about it in the after show.

[J]

Yeah, about Starbucks and the being able to load money onto the app or the card and how so many people have a significant amount of money in their Starbucks cash, whatever, equaling up to I think it was like one point something billion dollars.

[Ad Speaker (Quince/Chime)]

Yes.

[Jen]

And it's not insured. It's not FDIC insured. It is a essentially free loan to Starbucks and they only have to pay it back in lattes over time, like in $6 increments.

[J]

They are essentially an unregulated bank managing billions of dollars that, that we. Not me, but collective. The collective. We are giving them. Not receiving any interest in return.

[Jen]

No, nothing. Oh, but they are giving extra stars. If you reload, reload over $30 now. Wow. They're new. Yeah. Yes. So they're going to get. That's going to get even more because the minimum to load was 10 and so I would just put $10 on there, you know, every time. And now they're incentivizing, tripling that.

[J]

And that's what's nuts is that a lot of these companies, these big companies where we just think, oh, they do coffee.

[Jen]

Nope.

[J]

They're a financial institution. They're a data research site selling your. Your data to other companies like it's Macy's isn't just clothing, Kroger's not just groceries. They are now endeavoring upon all of

[Jen]

these different

[J]

businesses that are so lucrative to them beyond the core of what

[Jen]

they actually, while still lobbying in Congress to be able to pay their workers as little as possible. That is the reality we live in. I hate it here, but I think the solution is local, to buy local when you can. It's not feasible to buy local groceries. I understand that. But buy less, buy less, waste less, to just overall opt out as much as possible without going off the grid.

[J]

Yeah, it really, it does make me so angry. The three of us, you, me and Eric, you know, frugal friend. We're just talking yesterday. How much abhorrence. Is that how you pronounce that of companies that we are like, we are increasing in our disdain for big companies. It's just getting grosser and grosser and a lot of it is hidden. But so much is then being revealed and not because they're disclosing it, but because it's being exposed. Because people are going in, digging in, revealing what they can. So much is redacted so much we don't have access to because it's protected for some reason or another. Meanwhile, we're not being protected. And I'm just so over these big corporations on so many levels. But yes, I don't want to just sit in anger that is just going to lead to bitterness and is ultimately going to hurt me.

[Jen]

Right. I want to live a happy and fulfilled life. I don't want the, these, these negatives to decrease the one life that I have to live. But I'm also not going to live in ignorance. Yeah, I'm going to live in empowerment and do what I can do. Ultimately, money talks and so I'm going to talk with my money as much as possible and that's, that's what I can do. And I still stand by the fact that if you are walking around in 2026, the year of our Lord 2026 6, with a Starbucks cup, you should be embarrassed.

[J]

Come at her because she's ready for it.

[Jen]

I'm so ready.

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