Couponing 301: Layers of savings, getting cash back using online offers

You don't need to coupon like a champ, or ever even clip a coupon, to earn some cash back. There are plenty of places and ways to save, but I'm going to talk about the ones I know and use. These companies are legitimate, unlike many of the scams online. You can use them safely, cross my heart. :D

My favorite site, I've been using and saving there for a decade, is Upromise. With Upromise, and a minimal amount of effort, you can just go about your regular shopping and earn back money.

Upromise has a deal set up with SO MANY websites to earn cash back on your purchases, all you have to do is shop through the link on the Upromise website. If you don't care to remember to do that, and generally I don't, they have a program you can download called Turbosaver. It runs on your computer, and when you surf your way to a Upromise company's website, a box pops up at the top of the browser window letting you know they're a Upromise company, and a link is provided so that you can click there to get your Upromise savings. Click that button and shop as usual. Earn money.

Easy, right?

Upromise also has a dining program. Register your credit cards (and debit cards especially if they're a Visa or MC) on the Upromise site, and when you eat out at a Upromise restaurant a percentage of what you charged will get credited to your Upromise account. Once you register them, they validate in a few weeks, and you're done. The savings is automatic. If you never look up a restaurant, so be it, but you might accidentally dine in one, and earn some cash. Just remember to register each new card you get, including replacement cards when old ones expire.

Upromise also has a cash back deal on gas, I think through Exxon/Mobil. Exxon near me is 3-5 cents more per gallon than the cheapest place, and the Upromise did not cover that, but they may be more reasonably priced near you. IIRC, the cash back doesn't trigger until you've, using your Upromise registered credit card, pumped 20 gallons in a calendar month. If this is where you normally fill up, cash back rules.

Upromise also has a deal for it's own branded credit card, I think it's with Chase. Get and use the Upromise credit card (and yes, you should register it), and your everyday purchases can earn you money through Upromise. Shop online through Upromise, and pay with your Upromise credit card, and earn extra cash back on that purchase.

Upromise even has a deal with McDonald's. Buy a McDonald's gift card, and register it within 30 days to get 1% of what you loaded deposited to your Upromise account. If you don't register within 30 days, you won't get credit for THAT one load to the card, but you will get credit for every load after you register. I don't much eat at McDonald's, but I do stop on occasion for a drink at the drive thru. I registered a card with Upromise, and I just keep reloading it. Every time I reload, I get 1% back on my Upromise. It may not seem like much, but if you're a McDonald's family, a little forethought can get you a little cash back. If you take your family to McDonald's once a week and spend $25, and you began loading $25 to a Upromise registered card and paying with it instead, at the end of the year you'd have earned $13. It can add up fast. Every year my Mom puts McDonald's gift cards in Xmas stockings, and I always ask, "did you register them?"

Which brings me to another point. Upromise was created as a way to save for college (you don't actually have to use the money for college, but I'll get to that), and you can ask friends and family to help in your college savings goals by signing up for Upromise. You email them from the Upromise site an invitation to help save for college for your kids, they sign up and what they earn for your kids shows up on your page. If you have friends and family that really don't want to sign up, that's OK too. You can log on to Upromise and get a guest link, which you can email to them. My husband doesn't want Turbosaver loaded on his computer, so he's got my guest link saved in his favorites. Anyone anywhere can shop through your guest link and a percentage of the purchase goes in to your Upromise account. Here's a link to my Upromise if you'd care to have a look at who is a Upromise company, or to shop it. :D

So, those are some of the more passive ways to save with Upromise. You register cards and you're done, you download Turbosaver and you're done, you get a Upromise credit card and you're done, the savings going forward are practically automatic.

The most active way to regularly save (IF you loaded Turbosaver, your internet shopping savings is pretty passive) with Upromise is their ecoupons. Every month new ecoupons come out. Don't worry about remembering, they'll email you. Go to Upromise and register your grocery and drug store loyalty cards, in a few weeks they'll validate, and then load all those ecoupons. Upromise ecoupons do not come off at the register. Let me say that again, UPROMISE ECOUPONS DO NOT COME OFF AT THE REGISTER. That is the most awesome thing ever. It means you can use a paper coupon, and still get the ecoupon even if your store doesn't allow ecoupon stacking with paper coupons. If your store does allow you to stack an ecoupon with a paper coupon, you then can get the store's ecoupon AND the Upromise ecoupon at the same time. Upromise ecoupons credit to your Upromise account.

Here's an example of stack-stack-stacking. There was a coupon for Bounty napkins that expired 7/31 for $1 off any. Harris Teeter had an ecoupon for $1 off any Bounty napkins that expired 7/31. Upromise had an ecoupon for Bounty napkins for ... I think it was 50 cents. The smallest pack of Bounty napkins were on sale at my HT for $1.99. Let's do that math, $1.99 - $1 - $1 = 1 penny towards my sales tax is covered, and then I get 50 cents in my Upromise account. Sales tax in my state would have to be over 25% for one pack of napkins to not make me money. Real money. Not money off the rest of my order, cold hard cash.

Back to the saving for college bit. Upromise markets itself as a way to save for college, and it is if you want it to be. If you don't want it to be, you can request a paper check so long as the balance in your account is at least $5. Check request are processed 4 times a year, so check and see when the next request deadline is before you request one. If one has just passed, you might want to wait another 2 months so that you can request all of your money, not just what is in there today.

Earning $5 isn't hard if you commit a nominal amount of thought to your purchases. For example, a few months back my printer told me the cartridge was low, so I started pricing new cartridges. The going rate everywhere was about $70 for one. In my searching, I checked Staples.com, which is a Upromise company. Staples had them for about $70 each, like everyone else, but they were offering a rebate of $20 when you bought 2. $20 back on 2 brings the cost of them down to $60 each, and with as much as I print I'm going to need another cartridge this year, so for me this is a good deal. Staples.com was paying 3% back on Upromise at the time. I ordered my 2 cartridges shipped to my home (free shipping over $50, had I needed to pay shipping I would have done a free site to store and picked them up because paying shipping cuts in to my savings, and you don't get Upromise credit for the portion of your bill that is shipping, just the portion that is product). Sent in my rebate, and waited on Upromise. About a month later, $4.20 was credited to my Upromise account from Staples.com for my purchase, and I got my rebate. $4.20 in cold, hard cash because I shopped around for the best price and found it on something I was going to buy anyway, and most of the way to the $5 minimum for requesting a check.

EDIT: On top of getting my rebate, and my Upromise for buying my ink at Staples, I'm a Staples Rewards member. I earned $14 in Staples Rewards (10% back in rewards when you buy ink and toner), which arrived in my mailbox in the form of a coupon good for just about anything (no gift cards, blah, blah, legalese, blah) in the store or online. Staples Rewards come off pretax. I needed a new binder, and $14 off a nice Case-it 3 inch worked for me!

It is worth noting that many companies are Upromise companies if you shop online, but not if you shop in the store. If I walk in to a Staples, I'm not going to get Upromise credit for my purchase. I will get credit for shopping online. Many stores offer free shipping site to store, if you have the forethought to order stuff before you absolutely need it. Some stores, like Best Buy, allow you to order online, which will give you Upromise credit, and pick up in the store same day just as if you'd browsed the store and picked up the item. I do that, a lot.

The other site I use is SavingStar. I'm always hesitant of new ways to save that involve giving up a lot of personal information or downloading apps to my phone, but in reading up on SavingStar before signing up, I saw that they are actually the company that handles Upromise's ecoupon program. Hmm, more ecoupons from the people who've already been doing my ecoupons? Sounds good to me. You can sign up online (which I'd recommend, it makes entering your store card numbers a heck of a lot quicker than using your phone) or you can use their app, or both. I do both. I prefer using the website, but I like the convenience of being able to check, in the store, if I have a SavingStar ecoupon, what the requirements are for a particular deal, and to check last minute that I did, in fact, load ALL the ecoupons I possibly could.

Like Upromise, SavingStar ecoupons do not come off at the register. They get held until you have earned at least $5. Any time after you have hit the $5 mark, you can request payment. There are a couple of payment options, including a bank deposit, a Paypal deposit, and an Amazon Gift Card, as is your want.

I accidentally earned $2 in my SavingStar account in June. Welch's Grape Jelly was on sale for $1.79, and I had 55 cent off coupons that would double, making the jelly 69 cents. I needed jelly, and 69 cents seemed like a fair price. I had loaded a $1 Welch's Jam or Jelly SavingStar ecoupon. Similarly, I had loaded a $1 ecoupon for Stouffers. I almost never buy them, because they're expensive. I found them on sale for $2.50, and I had a $1 off coupon that would double making them 50 cents each. I earned $2 in my SavingStar account for these two items, which is 81 cents more than I paid for them. I'm OK with that.

You do have to actually load the ecoupons, so it's not entirely passive, but like Upromise, SavingStar will email you and let you know that there are new ecoupons available to load.

It's not hard to earn a little cash back. A few minute of your time to sign up, a few minutes of your time to download Turbosaver, remembering to click on the box to get Upromise once you've loaded Turbosaver, and loading ecoupons when you get an email about new ecoupons. Signing up for both, including entering all your cards, should take you about 30 minutes. You can load all the ecoupons in about a minute a month. That's just not a lot of time.