This post brought to you by Upromise by Sallie Mae. All opinions are 100% mine.
Living in a small town means that I do quite a bit of my shopping online — it's just more convenient and I usually end up saving money since I'm not using gas to drive miles and miles away just to go shopping. I am always looking for new ways to save on my online purchases so I was happy to try out the Upromise by Sallie Mae RewardU toolbar.
The Upromise service is a rewards program that is backed by Sallie Mae. The service will allow you to shop via the Upromise site or an installed RewardU toolbar to accrue cash back which you can then choose to spend on savings plans, pay off student loans or save up to request a check.
I registered for a free Upromise account and downloaded the free RewardU Toolbar for my Chrome browser. The process was straightforward and took just a few minutes to complete.
The toolbar is very unobtrusive. In Chrome, there is just a small button on your browser bar that you can click to open and search from. On a shopping site, the toolbar will pop up and let you know if it is a partner site where you can earn cash back. The toolbar is easy to hide.
Once the RewardU Tooolbar was installed, I decided to shop for a lunchbox. My daughter starts school in less than two weeks and we haven't found a box in store that she was happy with (picky!).
I searched for a lunchbox on the UPromise site. Once I found a few that looked promising, I then sorted the results to show the ones that would give me the highests savings first. I found a cute double decker lunchbox on Shoebuy.com that will give me 10% cash back for college!
When my daughter was satisfied that this was the lunchbox for her, I clicked through to the actual Shoebuy.com website to make my purchase.
On the product page, I wanted to make sure that I received my cash back from UPromise once my purchase was made. This was easy to do by checking that the "Cash Back Activated" button on my RewardU Toolbar was green. You may need to press an orange activate button in the notification area of the toolbar on some sites, but mine was automatically green and ready to go.
It was also nice to see that there were a few deals offered through the RewardU Toolbar as well. On many sites you may be able to get extra savings with free shipping, percentages off and other special deals — so be sure to click the Deals button to make sure you don't miss out!
If you don't want to search through the UPromise website, you can also just use the search box on the RewardU toolbar. Remember to be sure to check that the site is part of the program before making your purchase, if you want to earn cash back.
In the end, using the RewardU Toolbar from Upromise by Sallie Mae was a relatively easy way to earn a few dollars in cash back savings for college. I would think if you do a lot of online shopping, you could accumulate a decent amount of savings to apply to college loans or cash out with.
Once installed, shopping with the UPromise RewardU Toolbar is really as easy as 1,2,3.
- CLICK: Cick through to a retailer's store using the UPromise.com website, RewardU toolbar or through a link in a UPromise email.
- SHOP: Shop and pay for your eligible online purchase as you normally would.
- CASH BACK: The cash back earned for college will automatically be applied to your account (usually within 10 days).
UPromise partners with over 900 sites in every shopping category you can imagine. Over 800 of those sites do offer at least 5% cash back on your eligible purchases. When I shopped through Shoebuy.com using UPromise, I earned 10% cash back! (about $2.79 for my $27.95 purchase). With the minimum cash out for the "request a check" option being just $10.00, I'm not far away from earning my first substantial reward!
UPromise members have received more than $750 million through Upromise. With retail partners such as Target, Apple, Best Buy, Macy’s and Old Navy, it's easy to shop at your favorite retailer while still earning cash back for college on eligible purchases. There is also an option to sign up for a Upromise credit card for even more savings. As I mentioned earlier, the money that you earn through Upromise and the RewardU Toolbar can be put in a 529 college savings plan, payed towards student loans, deposited in a Sallie Mae savings account, or even cashed out as a check.
Have you ever used a site like Upromise by Sallie Mae to earn cash back for college or other purposes?
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It sounds easy enough, though it’s nice to have this review to come back to for a reference point if needed. You did a great job breaking it down.
Thanks Rosey! I was surprised by how easy it was to shop using the toolbar!
Gosh I haven’t used upromise in years. I signed up probably 10 years ago when I first heard of them. I need to figure out my login stuff and get started again.
I totally forgot about Upromise! Glad you shared this information. I will have to go check them out again.
Wow, that seems like a great way to earn a little extra $$$ Thanks for sharing.
Oh man, I forgot all about UPromise. I set up accounts for my boys, but stopped using them ages ago.
I have an account for both my kids. I just forget to sign into UPromise before I start shopping online. I really should download the toolbar as a way to remind me. Thanks for the great info.
I re-signed up and now I am getting stuff in the mail from them. I signed up years ago the first time at our grocery store.