Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Slow, But Sure Savings with E-Coupons, E-Rewards and Swagbucks

It does take patience to see savings results, but I've been slowly building some savings with the following:

1. E-Coupons at Upromise.com. I signed up with Upromise a couple of years ago, but up until a month ago, had only accumulated a small amount of money toward the college education of my grandson. But, a fun new way to slowly accumulate savings is their new e-coupon system. Each month a new list of coupons is posted and you activate the ones you want to use.

I have my store cards for Food Lion and CVS registered with U-Promise, so when I buy the items for which I have activated the coupons, they automatically go into my Upromise savings account. I am only using the e-coupons for items we really use AND that I also have a paper coupon for. Even better is to buy something on sale, with a paper coupon, earn extra bucks and also to have an e-coupon for college savings.

Example: Occasionally I will purchase items such as diapers for my grandson. This week Huggies are on sale at CVS, 2 for $18.00. I had 2 paper coupons for $1.50 off each. CVS gave me $4.00 in extra bucks. U-promise had a $1.50 e-coupon. I think that's called a "homerun" in couponing circles!

It takes about 3 weeks for the e-coupon amounts show up in the Upromise account, but again with patience, you will see the savings slowly add up.

2. E-rewards for U-Promise: This program offers to pay you to do surveys, but the payment goes into your Upromise account. The only catch is that only a portion of the money goes into the account. For example, if you earn $25.00, $5.00 goes into the account. If you earn $50.00, $20.00 goes into the account. If you earn $100.00, $50.00 goes into the account. Right now I have about $25.00 in the E-rewards account, but will wait as long as I can to hopefully get up to $100.00 for the best deal.

Since my grandson is only 2 years old, I hope to have enough money in my Upromise account to be of a some small help to him, by the time he is college age.

3. Swagbucks: I signed up for Swagbucks, which is simply another search engine. Instead of using Google, I just use Swagbucks. About every 2 or 3 searches I win 1 or 2 swagbucks. This too is very slow, but after you accumulate enough swagbucks, you can order free merchandise. My goal is to accumulate 70 swagbucks, which will earn me a $10.00 Starbucks card. Most of the gift cards are e-cards, which is great, but the Starbucks card is an actual plastic card that you could give as a gift, etc. There are all kinds of things you can order, with many different amounts of swagbucks.

4. Another internet deal that accumulates slow savings is Ebates.com. I don't order on-line too much, but if you go to E-bates to get to the internet site you are ordering from, you earn money which they call your "Big Fat Check". If you order lots of things on-line, you should definitely be using Ebates!

Have a great day and remember: Slow savings is better than no savings!

5 comments:

Little Penpen said...

Girl, how DO you find out about all this stuff??? My brother is the same way.... he knows where all the free stuff and best deals are! :o) My son inherited this "gene" and knows how to earn all the extra freebies by using his credit card for most household purchases. He pays the card off each month, but earns whatever the free stuff is... I think they will be ordering their baby's crib with free money they earned this way!

DarcyLee said...

I love all these ways that you can save some money slowly. I have been doing the MyPoints system for about 3 years now and I get a $25 gift card about every 6 months, although it's getting harder to earn them lately. Great ideas.

C. C. said...

Hi Debbie!

Good job on all of your frugal finds! Your birthday cake looked lovely!

C. C.

Elizabeth said...

Hi Debbie,
Great post. I started a college account for my granddaughter today. I started a new blog that you will love. I will post a link back to this post.
Hugs,
Elizabeth

Alexandra said...

I just joined Swagbucks yesterday! I wish I had seen your link first.

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