Tip: Upromise & Ebates

Every time I shop online I always check 2 places for savings Upromise and Ebates. Here's why: both sites offers savings discounts and special sales codes to their members. In addition to special sales and deals, they also give you a percentage back for your purchases if you shop through them. Upromises gives you money back for education (to be transferred into a 529 account and it can only be used for education such as college) and Ebates gives you cash back which you can cash out once you've accumulated $5.01.

How do I choose which one to go with? Well, I check both sites and which one would give me a bigger percentage back for the store I want to shop at. Sometimes Upromise gives a bit more back, sometimes Ebates does. It really varies and depends.

Another thing to think about is, the money given back from Upromise can't be touched or accessed without penalty. It cannot be withdrawn from the Upromise account and the only way to access it is to link a 529 educational account to it. There are pros and cons to this of course, with the biggest pro for me being that it forces me to save for my kids' college fund. The con is I can't access it...which is actually a good thing.

In addition to online savings and cash back towards education, Upromise also have tons of coupons you can load up your grocery store cards with! You simply add your grocery cards (all of them!) to your account because buying select brands of items also gets you cash back. Then go to their list of eCoupons, and with a few clicks, all available coupons you want have been loaded to your grocery cards. No software download, no printing, no ink, no paper.

The pro with Ebates is you get the cash back in a check or PayPal. The con is, well...I personally haven't had too much luck with Ebates. The one time I remembered to shop through them I never got the credit and because I shop through Upromise so much more, I couldn't remember which merchant it was that I used through Ebates to get them to give me the credit so it was lost. I'm not ready to give up on them yet. I personally know someone who has received a check from Ebates (I've seen the physical check myself) so I know they're legit. I recently shopped through them again. Hopefully I'll get my credit without problems.

On occasion, you'll come across a merchant who isn't very on top of the ball when it comes to their donations, so you have to contact Upromise or Ebates to get your credit. For me, Best Buy was the worst in this. Every single time I made a purchase through Best Buy I've had to wait the 45 business day period to see if my credit showed up in Upromise and every single time, it wouldn't make it there and I have to contact Upromise to investigate. Upromise has always been great about it and always saw that I got the credit I deserve.