Well, the program has saved me significantly more than that. But for the purposes of this post, I’m talking about money I was able to bank in our Capital One savings account by using Swagbucks.
As some of you remember, we have a new strategy for rewards programs. When we used rewards program gift cards for purchases, we bank an equivalent amount. Buy a $20 item on Amazon, send $20 from checking into savings.
So far, the results have been good. We’ve added $275 to savings since November.
The number should have been about $400, but sometimes I forgot to transfer the funds. Guess I’ll be more careful about that in the future.
Meanwhile, we’ve also banked about $225 from Mr. Rebates, Ebates, and Inbox Dollars. Those were already coming in, though. So I’m far more excited about our new strategy netting us $275.
Of course, Swagbucks has saved us a lot more than that over the years.
I checked my Amazon account history from November ’09 to present. In all, GCs from Swagbucks paid for just over $1,525 of items.
Whoa.
Those GCs went to buy books, video games, consoles, collectibles, t-shirts, underwear, shoes, razors, shampoo, toilet paper, cereal, vitamins, pet supplies and more.
This gives me a new determination to concentrate on the program. Frankly, in the last five or so months, I’ve been slacking pretty badly.
What with the emotional and physical blows over the last 18 months, I just haven’t felt up to wading through surveys every day. Looking over those numbers, though, it’s hard not to have a renewed enthusiasm for the program.
Clearly, it’s possible to save big with Swagbucks — even bigger than I’d realized. Of course, I have to remember to actually put the funds into your savings account. It’s a process.
Point being: Here’s to another $1,500 in freebies!
What rewards programs do you use? Do you use it for free stuff or just to stretch your dollar?
Donna Freedman says
Swagbucks is my favorite (thanks for introducing me to it!), but I still do MyPoints and InboxDollars.
A new one has just come out, Qmee.com, but I just started that. Did an interview with the co-founder and he said most people can expect to make $10 or less per month — but it's just an app you download that occasionally returns search results while you're searching on Bing, Yahoo or Google. There's no extra work involved; you simply choose to click on a Qmee result vs. the other search engine's. Qmee searches return anywhere from 5 cents to $1, although most are in the 5-to-50-cent range.
The advantage: It's cash, not points, not gift cards. Maybe not a lot of cash, but again, it's just an occasional search result while you're searching anyway.
KC @ genxfinance says
This can be pretty convenient. Hope they'll implement this. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Ro in San Diego says
I like My Points and Swagbucks but find myself rarely remembering to use them. I think I should get more serious about Swagbucks as one of my friends says there's a way to earn Swagbucks for watching videos.
I'll put the toolbar on my computer tonight.
Personally, I prefer mail in rebates and purchasing products from Office Depot when they offer 100% rewards.
I've been tracking rebates from various sources and so far have received approximately $1,407 from all sources including $565 from Office Depot (gift cards). I thought this was a pretty good haul for buying products I would have purchased anyway.