Learn How To Easily Save Money For College When You Shop Online With Upromise

This post brought to you by Upromise by Sallie Mae. All opinions are 100% mine.

I discovered Upromise in 2004, long before I had kids. At the time Upromise by Sallie Mae was one of the first cash back sites, and I knew I wanted to have kids some day, so I figured I might as well earn cash back on purchases I was already making. Fast forward nine years, I have two kids and more than $500 in my Upromise account — not too shabby.

Now Upromise is making it easier than ever to remember to earn cash back with Upromise. (Because let’s face it, I am certain there have been many, many times that I have forgotten to shop through Upromise to earn my cash back.) The RewardU toolbar takes the responsibility of remembering off you and tells you when cash back is available — automatically. Easy peasy.

How to use the RewardU toolbar to help you save money for college:

Start by downloading the RewardU toolbar. It is available for Chome, IE and Firefox users. (Note, it only works on Firefox for Mac users. Upromise dev team, please work on that. I am a Mac/Chrome girl!) 

Once you download the toolbar, you will see three important features. First you can use the toolbar as a search bar and actually search for anything within the bar. Next you will find your total lifetime earnings with Upromise (to motivate you to earn more!). Finally, for every website you visit you will see whether or not cash back is available. (Sorry, no cash back available from my site!)

When you get to a site that offers cash back (like Shutterfly), the cash back button on the bar will turn orange indicating the cash back is available. In order to take advantage of cash back on that site, all you have to do is click the other orange button that says “Click to Activate Cash Back”  that appears. 

Once you activate cash back, the cash back button will turn green to indicate that you are now earning cash back. You will also see how much cash back that you will earn when you make a purchase on this site (i.e. 5% with Shutterfly). And finally the button you clicked to activate cash back will turn into a button to check out any special coupons or deals that might be available.  

That’s it — that’s all you have to do. Now when you make a purchase you will earn a percentage of your purchase in cash back. You will see that (after coupons) I spent $18.53 at Shutterfly, I will earn 5% cash back on that purchase — about $.92. 

It may not seem like 5% is much, but over time you will be surprised how it adds up. (Hello, I have more than $500 in my account from cash back.) 

Note – cash back percentages vary across sites and over time depending on the current promotions. 

If you haven’t tried Upromise by Sallie Mae, what are you waiting for? It is free and the RewardU toolbar makes it even easier than ever.