Upromise

This post is mostly for those who have school loans. If you've never heard of Upromise, you should sign up now! Upromise is a website that can link directly to your school loans. If you shop a lot online, a percentage of every purchase you make could be applied directly to your school loans for no extra charge. If you don't have school loans but know someone who does, you can also register as a "friend or family" to link up to another person's school loans. This is how it works:

• After you've set up an account and added whatever credit/debit cards you usually shop with, go to www.upromise.com
• Log in
• Search for the store where you are going to place an online order (there is a search bar at the top of the page)
• Upromise will then search for the store and show you what percentage you would get for making your online purchase (i.e. Vera Bradley is 5%)
• ***Click on the store website through your upromise webpage*** You only get credit for the purchases made directly through the site
• Shop for whatever you were already going to buy, check out like normal, and earn extra money!!

Within a few days, your money will be 'funded' to your account. You can track all of your purchases through the account information. I think in the few years that we've been doing upromise, we have funded almost $200.00 to loans. That isn't a huge amount compared to what we owe; however, we would have been making the online purchase anyway so we figured we should go ahead and get credit for it.

The biggest thing to remember is that you have to go through your upromise account before you go to the store website. I have forgotten that so many times and have lost out on money. I use upromise the most when I am booking a flight or hotel, buying a gift card, or shopping for random items. Amazon doesn't have a upromise percentage yet but Upromise does have HUNDREDS of stores available. You can look at the full list of store here.

Another perk to having Upromise is that you can earn money for groceries. You can plug in your various grocery savings cards (i.e. Food Lion MVP) and each time you use your card, you get a few pennies added to your account. When you want to cash in your money, you can either send it directly to your loans or request the money to come to you in a check.

We are all about finding more ways to pay down our debt. If you have school loans and you don't have upromise, sign up today! If you don't have school loans but want to help out, you can become my 'friend and family.' :) Happy Savings!