"Free" Money for Education

Box Tops For Education is a great way to help out your local school. The site has coupons, recipes, activities for the kids, and links to shopping where you can earn a % of your purchases for your school.

You can set up an account online & choose where your online earnings go. Paper Box Tops get sent to the school directly. I stick mine in a small sandwich bag & send in with the Prince every month.

My favorite part about this is that they are gaining from something I'd have anyways. The only time I specifically buy an item because of the box top is if they are equal in value & price (like fruit snacks, old el paso stuff). If you watch your sales flyer you can find bunches of qualifying items on sale. The website has coupons to print out. So if your grocery stores aren't stuck in the middle ages, like mine are, you can use them to save more off the sale prices. Very often I have had newspaper coupons & hit sales where I was getting the items 75% off regular price or better.

Labels for Education is another way to get money for your local schools. They did change some of their redeeming rules so check that out, if you didn't get a notice from your school about it. Instead of the whole label, now you only need the UPC code or the jar lid (Prego & V8).

Upromise: Register your grocery card and save when you shop!
It is a way for you to save for your children's further education. You can register your grocery cards, credit cards for additional savings & your 529 accounts. You can allocate the money to more than one child for even distribution. They even have started a program where you can earn money for your current school through additional programs or your earnings.

There are only 2 restaurants that participate that are anywhere near me. But, if you are lucky enough to have a bunch, and you are going to eat out anyways...All you have to do is use a registered credit card to pay for it.

I think I only have one grocery card registered right now. I'll have to fix that (I have 3!).

They give you a little money when you use McDonald's gift certificates (it doesn't work with the new gift card, so it still has to be the books). It wasn't much, I think $0.10 each book or something. But, then if you go there a lot (or even occasionally) it makes sense to purchase the books (if you can). Then you just enter the codes online

There are participating grocery products here too, so you aren't getting $ on everything you buy all the time, just what is participating... The biggest one I can remember is Nestle. There are over 7000 products, so there is an alphabetical list on the website.