Pick the best financial product and get rewarded with free stuff? Surely, there must be a catch...
I'm a loyal Tesco shopper. I live in the town where they have their headquarters (Cheshunt), one of their biggest stores is five minutes from my house, and thanks to my family shopping there over the years, their Clubcard points are paying for my honeymoon flights.
But my head has been turned by Sainsbury's this week, thanks to a new initiative the rival supermarket has launched.
If you take out one of Sainsbury's financial products, you can collect double Nectar points on your shopping for two years. TWO YEARS! That's staggering!
How the promotion works
Indeed, if you get more than one product, your points get ramped up even further - get two Sainsbury's products, and your Nectar points are trebled for two years, three products and your points are quadrupled, and four new products, and see your Nectar points quintuple!
To put this into context, at Sainsbury's, you get two Nectar points for every pound you spend. Obviously, it takes a while to build up enough points to get something decent out of the scheme - sure, you can get a few bits and pieces for 1000 or so points, but if you can get at least 10,000 points, you can get some cracking awards, including microlight aircraft lessons, or journeys on Eurostar.
On that basis, if you take out a financial product, to get 10,000 Nectar points you only need to spend £25 a week at Sainsbury's for the next two years - hardly a stretch, if you do a couple of big shops there!
All this is well and good, but are the Sainsbury's financial products any good? After all, it's a bit of a palaver lumbering yourself with a fairly useless product, just for the sake of some Nectar points.
Thankfully, I have more good news on this front!
The Sainsbury's credit card
Last week, Sainsbury's revamped its credit card, and in a quite brilliant way. It now offers a whole ten months of 0% interest on both purchases and balance transfers, making it the best all-round credit card in the market, toppling the Halifax All in One card, which boasted nine months.
I love all-round credit cards for two reasons. Firstly, they are a lot easier than having one card for purchases and another for balance transfers - if you want a simple life, they are a good way to go.
The other reason I love them is that they neatly sidestep negative payment hierarchy, a nasty trick providers use to get you to pay interest, by making you pay off your cheapest debts first.
If you use the Sainsbury's credit card for shopping at Sainsbury's itself, the offer is even better. For all in-store purchases, you get an extra two months of 0% interest - a whole year! However, remember that this potentially exposes you to negative payment hierarchy at the end of the 10 months.
For more on the Sainsbury's credit card, why not check out our video review of the product?
The Sainsbury's loan
If a credit card won't give you the sort of spending power you need, and a loan is your best bet, how does Sainsbury's option match up?
Well, yet again, the supermarket giant comes up trumps, with the market-leading loan, which you can find out all about in this video review.
Watched it? So you'll know you have to have a Nectar card to get the Sainsbury's personal loan, but that's not exactly a hardship, and it gives you access to a loan with a typical APR of just 7.9%. Obviously it pays to remember that lenders only have to offer the typical APR to two-thirds of applicants, so there's no guarantee that will be the rate on offer should you be accepted.
In fairness, Sainsbury's is not the only place you can get a £10,000 loan at 7.9%. The Alliance & Leicester personal loan, the Nationwide existing customer personal loan, and the loans from fellow supermarkets ASDA and Tesco all offer the exact same rate.
However, that still means Sainsbury's has the top product in the market for both credit cards and loans. That Nectar point promotion is looking even more attractive!
Watch our review of the Sainsbury's loan now!
The Sainsbury's saving accounts
Sainsbury's currently offers three savings accounts, so let's look at them separately.
First up we have the Online Saver, an account paying an annual AER of 3.2%, variable, on sums between £1000 and £500,000 for the first year. While this is an easy access account, there's an irritating catch - you can only make three withdrawals a year.
At 3.2% AER, the Online Saver does pay an excellent rate however - just 0.1% behind the current market-leader, the Citibank Flexible Saver Issue 6 account. If you're keen to get those Nectar points, it could well be worth sacrificing 0.1% a year - for example, a basic rate taxpayer with a balance of £1,000 would lose out on just 80 pence in interest over the course of a year, by opting for the Sainsbury's account over the Citibank account.
What about the Sainsbury's Easy Saver account? This deal pays 2.8% AER, variable, for 12 months, with a guarantee that it will always be at least 2% above Bank Base Rate, which could be pretty handy once rates start to move upwards.
However, I'm not a fan of the Easy Saver, as you have to keep at least £5,000 in there at all times, and you still have to put up with limits on your withdrawals - only five with this account, per year.
The last account is a Child Trust Fund, provided by Family Investments, one of the biggest providers of Child Trust Funds in the UK. If you're a parent, this might appeal, but you'll have to work out for yourself it is right for you.
On savings then, the Online Saver is easily the best account on offer from the supermarket, and well worth a look - as long as you don't need to make more than three withdrawals a year.
Sainsbury's insurance
Onto the last financial product on offer from Sainsbury's, and certainly the hardest to judge. Sainsbury's offers a full range, including home insurance, pet insurance, car insurance, life insurance and travel insurance.
Unfortunately, you will have to check for yourselves just how competitive Sainsbury's is for you. Handily you can use the lovemoney.com comparison engine to compare quotes on home insurance, car insurance, travel insurance and life insurance!
So is it worth it?
Overall, I reckon this new promotion is a definite goer. With the market-leading deals in credit cards and loans, and a decent savings account on offer, even if Sainsbury's range of insurance doesn't tick your boxes, there are more than enough reasons to go for at least one of their financial deals.
Combine that with a regular shop at Sainsbury's, and you will have a couple of free Eurostar tickets before you know it. I might have to reconsider my shopping loyalties!
More: New top card for 0% on purchases! | Five top tips for getting a personal loan