My Rewards
I’m a member of a number of Rewards programs. Here are a few of them:
Mypoints.com. This one is great. In total, I probably spend an hour a week clicking on e-mails or going to the website for more points opportunities. I became a member in March 2004 and over the past four years I’ve gotten two gift cards for a total of $75. I’m about to cash out for another $50 gift card in the next week or two, as well. There have been periods off and on where I wasn’t dilligent about earning points, and so I probably could have earned more money over time.
Presently, I have 6,816 points, though only 6,301 are available right now…the other 515 points are pending and won’t take too much longer to go through. Once I get to 6,350 I’ll cash out for a $50 Gap gift card.
If you want to join, comment so that I can send you an invite and get some points from the referral!
E-Rewards. This one I’ve complained about before, but it’s still something for almost nothing. The surveys take some time, but it’s not too bad. I have my account linked to my Upromise account, so any reward money will go directly to paying down my student loans (more on this) rather than to gift cards or percentages off at their chosen retailers.
Cashing out at $25 e-dollars will put $5 in my Upromise account, $50 e-dollars will put in $20, and $100 e-dollars will put in $50. Obviously I’ll wait until I have $100 to make it worth every penny. Right now I have $21.50 and that’s just since July.
Upromise. I’ve written about Upromise here before, too. You earn money from linking your credit cards and grocery savings cards to their account and getting cents back on certain items (I get one cent off per gallon at Exxon…and they round up). Once I have $50 in Upromise dollars, I can make a payment to my student loan servicer. I could just save the money for my childrens’ college one day, but right now I have no kids and I DO have student loans. Presently I have just $5.70 in the account, but every little bit will help one day.
EDIT TO ADD: After I wrote this yesterday (and saved to post today), I discovered CashCrate.com. I wasn’t going to post about it until I’d spent a little more time on it, which I did today. Also, I read Gather Little By Little’s post today and he mentioned CashCrate as a way that he makes a little extra money, too. You cash out at $10, and I already have close to that from completing offers on the main page. I think that it’s definitely worth checking out if you’re unfamiliar with it.
My Borders Bucks
Yesterday B and I went to Borders at Dulles Town Center so that I could use my $15.00 in Borders Bucks that expire on 31 August. (These are the ones that I got from E-rewards before I decided to switch my account to get Upromise benefits.) I wanted to make sure to go this weekend since it was the sales tax-free weekend in Virginia and I wanted to get the most bang for my Bucks. I also printed out a 30% off coupon from my e-mail, so I was pretty pleased with myself when I found two books I wanted for $7.50 each. The only problem was that to use up all of my Borders Bucks this trip, I needed to spend exactly the right amount or just over and I was under (thanks to the 30% off coupon). The girls that worked there suggested that I pick up some of the chocolates that they had at the counter which is what I did. So I ended up with two books and seven chocolate balls for a total of sixteen cents. Not gonna complain about that!!
My Less-Than-Rewarding E-Rewards Experience
Okay, so I’m somewhat bent out of shape about E-Rewards. Last week I mentioned that I wanted to switch it to link to my Upromise account, but first I’d get the $15 credits to my Borders rewards account. I started to do this today when I found out that I can only redeem that particular award once a year. Super.
I redeemed it once, then decided to just find anything else so I could close my account. I wound up with six free movie rentals from Blockbuster, that can only be used once a month for the next six months. This is fine and I bet that B and I will use them. I still had $10.50 in e-rewards currency available, so I cashed that out for $10 off at ProFlowers.com. This offer expires 31 July, but that’s the same day as my grandmother’s birthday, so I’ll go with it. The cheapest arrangements I saw were $29.99, so I’ll wind up paying $20+tax and shipping. That’s not awful and I won’t have to put any more thought into the gift, so I’m okay with it.
Now I’ve cancelled and reopened linked to Upromise and I’ve discovered what I have to earn to get the rewards. For $25 e-rewards currency, I get $5 to Upromise; $50 is $20; and $100 is $50. So it’s only worth it if I cash out after $100 each time. I knew that I wasn’t going to get the full amount, of course, but I’d hoped that it would be a little better than this.
Still, though, I won’t have to try to search through all the different rewards that mostly suck. This way the money will actually go to something I need—paying off my student loans.
My Snowflaking?
A long time ago I opened up a Upromise account. I don’t remember WHY I did it, exactly, but a couple months ago I went ahead and linked it with each of my credit cards. I didn’t think anything of it (knowing that I’d only earned about forty cents in four years) until I went to my student loan servicing site today and saw a link about using Upromise to help pay off my loans.
I’m not certain how it goes yet. I have to wait five to ten days for it to go into effect or something. I’m assuming that it will draw money automatically from my Upromise account, which would be rad. Since I linked my accounts up (this was probably in April) I’ve only gained about two dollars, but I explored the site a little more and found out that I could also link my CVS and Giant discount cards. This will give me a tiny percentage if I buy certain brand names. It probably won’t help too much, but anything I get is free for me.
One of the companies that offers a discount is Exxon, the gas station that I use the most, so I was pleased to see small amounts coming from those purchases. For the next 2 1/2 months or so I’m getting 5% back from gas purchases from my Discover card, and one cent per gallon from this, so a little money is being saved.
Also on the Upromise website, I saw that what I earn through taking E-Rewards surveys can be transferred over to Upromise. After e-mailing E-Rewards’ customer service, I found out that I’d have to cancel my current account and open up a new one linked to Upromise. After I choose a reward with the $50 I’ve earned so far, I think that I will. Most of the rewards on the site are only things like $50 off when you spend $125 at E-bags.com, and that’s not really worth it. The only good reward (for me) is having money transferred to my Borders Rewards account. This can only be done in $15 increments, so I may just transfer the $45 I’ve earned and let the other $5 go…or wait until I’m up to $60 and then open a new account.
Since I never pay attention to the Upromise account, it’d be cool if even a dollar a month gets added to my student loan payoff. I’m not going to go overboard trying to always buy things that are asssociated with the account, so this won’t change anything I’m doing. And since I’m continuing to pay the same amount in loans each month, this will just be a little snowflaking. I read about snowflaking a lot, but it’s not something I’m terribly interested in utilizing for everyday life, so this is just a tiny way to help.
Anyway, for those of you who don’t have a Upromise account and aren’t squeamish about linking your credit cards and discount cards, this might be a fun thing to sign up for. Once my student loans are paid off, I’ll continue with the account and use the funds for my kids…even if they each only get $5 once they start college.
