Finances & Money

Want 2% Cash Back from Costco? Get an Executive Gold Star Membership

A coworker of mine gets her friends and family to earn her 2% cash back on all her Costco purchases using her Costco Executive Gold Star Membership Card.

To get the card, you need to be either a Gold Card or Business Card member. Each of those memberships cost $50. You can easily share this account with a friend, neighbor, or coworker and split the cost.

Initial Cost: $25

Then, to upgrade to the Executive Membership, pay an extra $50. You get an extra household card that supposedly must be used by someone with your same home address, but that can be sidestepped. You also get additional benefits and discounts with this card, but the important thing is 2% cash back on all Costco purchases. See why this is important later.

Added Cost: $25-50

The Executive Card is simply a scannable membership card, not a credit card. You can hand it to any friends who have a Costco membership, or want to use your Gold or Business Card, and let them rack up cash back earnings for YOU.

Total Cost: $50-75

Worth it? Eh, if you use Costco for most of your shopping, and you regularly loan your card to friends who pay with cash, then it could be worth the extra cost. Personally, we don’t spend much at wholesale stores just yet to make it worth the extra cost, but perhaps when the little dudes and dudettes start arriving via the Clever Stork, then we might think about it.

Finally, Costco has a really killer return policy, you’ll be able to return pretty much anything you buy there.  Savingadvice has a good explanation of the return policy here.