92. Make $500-$1,000+ per year – Make money with Upromise to pay for your child's education costs
Upromise.com puts money in your kids college funds while you do your normal spending.
You actually make money with Upromise every year, over $500-$1,000 per year, that accumulates to over $5,000-$10,000 over 10 years to pay for your children's education.
There are a few ways to actually make a decent amount of money with upromise. First of all, what is upromise? Well, it is a college savings program that provides you with a portion of savings for every dollar you spend at certain retailers and on certain products. Every been to the grocery store and seen the "upromise" logo? Yep, if you buy, say Del Monte pineapple, you may get 2% of the purchase price added to your account if you used a card that upromise can track.
You can use a credit card that is through upromise or one that you already have that is linked to the account. You may also use store cards.
The idea is that you will build up a balance and then transfer it to a 529 plan that is for your child's college education. It works wonderfully, but will never pay for all that much unless you learn how to play the system in order to get more out of upromise.
There are thousands and thousands of retailers that work with upromise. You grocery store, drug store, restaurants, and Exxon gas stations are just a few examples. With all of these retailers working with upromise, how can you actually make some cash?
TIPS FOR MAXIMIZING YOUR UPROMISE ACCOUNT:
1. Buy all your magazines through the site. You sign into your account and then link to magazines.com. You will receive the same saving at the magazines site (You should buy all magazines here as the savings are great. ) as you normally would, but upromise will also contribute 25% of the purchase price to your account.
An example involves Smartmoney magazine. The current issue lists a one year subscription for the low price of $19.97. However, if you go to magazines.com, you can get the same one year at $12. You will also get $3 contributed into your upromise account. In essence, you are paying $9 for a full year subscription versus the great offer of $20 that is in the magazine itself. EVERYONE SHOULD BE SIGNED UP FOR MAGAZINES.COM AND LINK TO THE SITE THROUGH UPROMISE. THE SAVINGS ARE TREMENDOUS.
2. Buy your books through the upromise site. You can do this in the same way you link to magazines.com only you will have about five different book sites to choose from. Otherwise, you are looking at the same advantages.
Another example involves James Patterson's "4th of July". The book is currently on the Amazon best sellers list and runs a little over $27 on the book shelf. You can get it for $19 on amazon.com. Link through upromise to buy.com and you can get it for $16 and they will contribute 2% of the purchase to your upromise account. Link to Walmart and you will pay $17 and get a 4% contribution.
3. Do you make purchases through an online drugstore? If so, do it through upromise. You can link to all the major players and will see similar savings as I mentioned above. You will also find that upromise will contribute up to 5% on certain purchases.
4. Book your online travel through the site and get savings. My wife and I spent $4,000.00 on a recent trip tot the Cayman's and booked through expedia.com. We got a 1% contribution to our upromise account. I will take $40 any day for making three extra clicks. If you are a frequent traveler this is a great benefit. You can get up to 5% for renting a car and 3-8% for hotel stays. I spend four days every few weeks on the road and take a rental car. I end up with $20 from the car and about the same from the hotel stays. A quick $40 to a college savings plan is pretty good when I am paying nothing- the expense account pays- in order to get the $40.
5. Send flowers through the site. You can get 5% to your upromise account for sending through this site versus just going directly to the web site. You will also find that there are often bonuses paid during holidays or special occasions. Right now, the major online florists are paying a 15% contribution. If you send $50 of flowers for mothers day you will get $7.50 contributed to your account. If you go directly to the web site, you get nothing.
6. Check the site before dining out. I live in Atlanta, GA and tonight there are 41 different dining options that will provide contributions to my account. The minimum is 5% of your purchase and the maximum is 20%. On a $50 dinner I am looking at $2.50 to $10 in contributions. These are good restaurants that range widely in price. We will look at options before going out on a night where we have no plans. Why not go to a Django's when they will provide a 5% benefit versus a Hal's that does not when they both cost roughly the same?
7. Get your gas at Exxon/Mobile. For every gallon you get a penny. I know this is not much, but it does add up in a hurry. I go through an average of two tanks a week. That is $.28 every week or a dollar a month. My wife spends half as much so we are at $1.50 a month simply for filling up at a certain gas station. This becomes $18 every year.
8. Get your parents and grandparents to sign up, including any brothers or sisters that have passed their education already. I have both sets of parents signed up in order to get the same savings from what they spend. The results are that in the past year I have accumulated $300 in savings in my account. The two sets of parents have reached $170 total. That totals $470 of free money. If you do that every year for the next 18- years for a newborn until college- you will have close to $10,000 in savings. That is $10,000 that you did nothing more than make a couple of extra clicks in order to receive. It is $10,000 even if you do not invest it and grow it in a 529 plan. This is the biggest no brainer I have ever heard of.
I am only touching the surface of how this works, but hopefully have provided a few reasons that everyone should sign up for upromise. If you simply sign up, you get the savings for doing what you already do. You also can use your current credit card and, essentially, double the rewards potential of that card. This is the best find that I have found that provides what is basically free money. What upromise really is, is a match on your 401k. Only with a 401k you have to save money; here you simply get credited on what you spend. A huge no brainer.