I just joined uPromise just now. Basically the premise of the program is you can link up your store shopper cards (From A&P, Pathmark, Stop & Shop, etc.) and credit cards and you’ll earn free cash on various purchases. This does not affect your current rewards with your credit cards in any way. There is no further effort required other than just inputting your current shopper cards. uPromise just uses your credit card to track your eligible purchases. The money earned is suppose to be earmarked for education but you can withdraw it by sending them a letter (instructions are on their site). This is basically a free cash back program. I plan to actually use this money to save for my future kid’s college education. Is this kid lucky? You bet. He (or she) isn’t even born yet and someone is thinking about saving up for his college education.
My thinking is this: College tuition grows at a rate that far exceeds inflation. So in today’s dollars, college tuition in the future may be insanely expensive. This is a free way to save money and by starting early, I’ll have about approximately 28 years worth of free savings for college (Based on me planning to have a kid in about 10 years when I’m 29, kid goes to college when he is 18, hence the 28 year number).
Note: This is not an alternative to saving for college. It is merely a means to supplement college savings for FREE.
For example, one of the credit cards I registered was the Chase Cash Plus Rewards card which gets me 5% off gas, supermarkets, and pharmacies. Because the fact that I already get 5% off of gas by using the credit card, I’ll also get 1 cent per gallon free deposited into my uPromise account. This is just one of the examples of where you are basically getting free money.
My plan is just to forget about it and occasionally log in to register new credit cards as I get them and occasionally remove the ones that expire. Maybe I’ll update yearly with earnings, they may be measly as my spending is not that high right now, but free money (with no real effort) IS free money.
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[...] not surprised at all though by the lack of “savings”. Read my original post about joining Upromise back on October 7th, 2006 which discusses why I [...]