Earn Free Money & Gift Cards with Rewards Programs

The men in our family love buffet restaurants. Unless it's a really special occasion we know we will be standing in a buffet line. While us ladies can always find something we like at a buffet, we really enjoy eating a nice meal in a restaurant where people actually wait on you. Ladies, do your husbands love buffets too?

In honor of my sister's birthday, we are all going out to the Outback Steakhouse to celebrate.

Here's the really exciting part: George and I will be treating our whole family to this dinner and it won't cost us a penny. We are paying for the meal with gift certificates earned through rewards programs and free money earned through UPromise. It is such a nice feeling to be able to treat our family without breaking our budget!

For those of you interested in learning how to make the most of rewards programs so you can earn goodies like this, I'll share how I did it.

The gift cards for our Outback Steakhouse meal came from two sources -- My Points and U-Promise. These are two of the most generous rewards programs (other than CVS) that I am a member of.

What is My Points?

If you've never heard of My Points it's basically a program that rewards you with points for reading emails. I set up a special email folder and direct the My Points emails to it. Then I spend 2 to 3 minutes every day going through the emails. At the bottom of the email you click on a button that says "Get Points" and they credit the points to your account. You can also earn points by filling out little mini surveys, referrals and such. It's really surprising how the points add up! One of the best things about My Points is they have a huge selection of gift cards in various denominations. Since I've been a member for the past couple of years I've earned just under $500 worth of gift cards. I give away some of the gift cards as presents and some are used for special things like our dinner to Outback next week.

How Can I Join My Points?

If you would like to sign up to become a member of My Points and start earning free gift cards, you can do so here.

What is UPromise? Isn't it Just for College?

Have you heard of UPromise? If you have, I bet you thought it was just to earn money for college. I used to think so too. Until one day I read the teeny-tiny fine print. UPromise doesn't go out of their way to let people know this but every dime of U-Promise money you earn can be sent directly to you, to be used for whatever you want!

UPromise is really neat because they have so many ways to earn money. Once you set up an account (which is free to do) you can register all of your debit cards, credit cards, gas cards, even some gift cards you receive, even store cards like Meijer and CVS. A small percentage of your spending is funneled into your UPromise account each month. It works for me!

One of my favorite features of UPromise is new in the last few months. Every month UPromise puts out a few pages of E-coupons. The way these coupons work is you select the coupons you want to use and then once you do your grocery shopping, your UPromise account is credited with the value of the coupons you used -- you do not get the money taken off your grocery order. This allows you to still use all the same coupons you normally would at the grocery store, but gives you cash back for the coupons from the UPromise site!

How can I get a check from UPromise?

Once you've accumulated a nice little balance in your account you mail in this form and get a check! I recently sent in for my $75 check, which we will be using to pay for part of our dinner.

How do I Sign Up for UPromise?

Click here to get signed up to start earning free money with UPromise.

Do You Know of Any Other Great Ways to Earn Free Gift Cards?

I recently signed up for Swagbucks. It is a very new program. The gist of it is this: Basically you earn money by doing Internet searches. I used to use Google all the time, but since I'm getting paid to use Swagbucks, I use their search engine exclusively. When you search using Swagbucks, you win rewards which they call "Swagbucks". You save these up and trade them in for various prizes including gift cards.

In two months' time I've earned enough Swagbucks for a $50 Lowes gift card. This card will be used towards buying a pretty light fixture for the family room we are remodeling.

You can sign up for your own Swagbucks account and learn more about how it all works here.