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You buy some things at Kohl’s and the cashier hands you Kohl’s Cash you can put toward a future purchase. But you can’t use it immediately. You have to wait until a certain date to redeem it and if you don’t use it by its expiration date, it’s no good.

You leave the store wondering whether you should make a return trip to Kohl’s in another week or so to use your Kohl’s Cash or just toss it and keep your cash in your savings account. Thanks to some tricky rules buried in the fine print, the answer’s not as straightforward as you might think.

How Kohl’s Cash works

You earn Kohl’s Cash on online and in-store purchases made during certain promotion periods. You get $10 in Kohl’s Cash for every $50 you spend. If you later redeem that Kohl’s Cash on a regular-priced item, you’ll get $10 off. However, you can’t use Kohl’s Cash on Sephora beauty products or Kohl’s Cares charitable merchandise. You also can’t use it to purchase gift cards or pay off your store credit card balance.

The rules are straightforward enough in these cases. But it gets more complicated when you add in coupons or returns.

Kohl’s Cash and coupons

When you pay with Kohl’s Cash and use a coupon, Kohl’s first applies the Kohl’s Cash and then the coupon. This isn’t usually the best outcome for the buyer.

Consider a $20 purchase you make with $10 in Kohl’s Cash and a 20% off coupon. The way Kohl’s calculates it, it would first subtract the $10 in Kohl’s Cash, leaving you with $10. Then, it would apply the 20% off to $10, giving you a final payment of $8, plus taxes and possibly shipping fees.

You’d actually save more money if Kohl’s applied the coupon first. In this case, you’d get 20% off of $20, bringing you down to $16 and then you’d get the $10 Kohl’s Cash, leaving you at just $6.

Also worth noting is that if you’d just used the 20% off coupon, you would have paid $16. So the true value of your $10 Kohl’s Cash in this case is actually just $8. This doesn’t mean it’s worthless. You’re still saving money, just not as much as you expected.

Kohl’s Cash and returns

When you make a return for an item you originally purchased with Kohl’s Cash, you get that Kohl’s Cash back. For example, if you bought a $50 item using $10 Kohl’s Cash and later returned it, the store would refund you $40 in cash and $10 in Kohl’s Cash.

But it’s more complicated if you earned Kohl’s Cash on the returned item. Say you spend $100 and earn $20 in Kohl’s Cash. Later, you return $50 worth of items. If you hadn’t spent your $20 in Kohl’s Cash yet, the store would reduce its value to $10 because after the return, you only spent $50 and you must spend at least $100 to earn $20 in Kohl’s Cash.

If you had spent the $20 in Kohl’s Cash prior to making the return, Kohl’s would actually reduce the cash back it gave you. So instead of getting $50 back in cash, you’d only get $40 back because you used $10 in Kohl’s Cash that you didn’t actually earn since you made a $50 return. This can also be frustrating, especially since the example above shows that Kohl’s Cash isn’t always worth its face value.

How to decide if Kohl’s Cash is worth it for you

Using Kohl’s Cash could make sense for you if you shop at the store frequently and have specific items you want to buy there. But it might not be worth bothering with if you don’t shop there often, don’t need to buy anything, or just find the rules a little too confusing.

There are other ways to save if you decide Kohl’s Cash isn’t right for you. The store has its own credit card, which can help you earn rewards. You can also use a cash back credit card that offers bonus rewards at department stores. The advantage to this is that you can redeem these rewards at many retailers, not just Kohl’s.

Ultimately, you’ll probably have to decide whether to use Kohl’s Cash on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it might be worth it and other times, it won’t be. Just make sure you understand exactly what you’re getting before you use it so you aren’t surprised by any of the rules mentioned above.

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