Who doesn’t love saving money? I certainly do! After all, I’m fondly known as the Coupon Queen.
For the curious, I earned this title the day I sat at my dining table opening 1000+ Monopoly play pieces from my local grocery store before they expired in two days. Just in case we won big. We won $20 of free groceries and about 35 free donuts. But I’ve always been on the lookout for a good bargain. We’re not talking Reality TV levels of Extreme Couponing: Hoarder’s Edition. But I’ve been pretty happy in the past when I’ve managed to find coupons off cereal for my kids, to use in a week it went on sale. Grand total: 53 cents a bag of cereal. It was a rare treat that I was delighted to score.
These small wins are still fun for me, even now that we have more breathing room in our budget. So I always enjoy sharing my methods when I can attest to how they work. Personally, I enjoy Swagbucks.
What It Is
What is Swagbucks, you ask? It’s one of the many rebate/cash back programs you can sign up for. This just happens to be mine. And yes, if you click that link, it will take you to the site without any referral code.
Like other programs, it has a percentage cash back on your purchases. You can also take surveys, browse the web with their browser extension, play their regular Swago, pick up new mobile games and play a few levels, fulfill their daily bonuses tasks, or receive notifications when there’s a SB code popped up on their social media.
I typically don’t fuss with the extra methods, though if I get a notification they have a code that went live on Facebook, I guess sometimes I’ll click. Depends if I’m busy. What I do, however, is go through their website before I tackle any online shopping.
Earn Rebates from Shopping
Examples from the past:
- Buying airline tickets home for Christmas when living in the Pacific Northwest
- Buying a refrigerator for our new house when we moved cross country (again)
- Christmas shopping for the family, using Amazon Prime for delivery
- Setting up AT&T Fiber at our new house when we moved
- Ordering our air conditioner filters on a subscription from Home Depot (Look, filters come in, it’s time to change. It works! A little life hack.)
- Placing print orders for at home work from Office Depot
- Shopping Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales
Please notice, I’m not doing any extra funsies shopping in this list. These are everyday things (well maybe not Christmas flights or new refrigerators, but you get me) that I’d be doing anyway. I’m just collecting a little rebate on the spending that life throws at me.
How It Works
When you accumulate enough swagbucks, you can exchange them for gift cards to your favorite retailers, or even for a pre-paid Visa GC. What I like to do is hold out for the $25 gift cards to either Amazon or Walmart. These are 2500 SB (that’s swagbucks for the uninitiated), though once a month, they often go “on sale” for 12% off or 2250 SB instead. Then I use them to take care of buying necessities or niceties. While it’s technically not FREE money because you did already do some of the shopping, I appreciate the little kickback of being able to snag more books from my Amazon wishlist. Or this month, in particular, I went with the Walmart GC and used it on my pickup order to refill my skin care products, and hand soap for the house. (There was a $5 cashback through Ibotta on those skin care products. Talk about a win!) Other uses have been to buy a video game I’ve been pining for at Gamestop, go a lunch date with my Hunny at Applebee’s, and getting a fashion in the cash shop of my favorite MMO.
“Isn’t that a lot of work for a very little reward, Momma?” You would think so, and if you fall deep into the farming for them by picking up games and extra web browsing and surveys? Then yes. But for my part, I just go to the website, click on the retailer I need to do business with, continue on to the site and get it done. Then roll in once a month to pick out my reward, if I want it.
What You Can Get
But let’s say you’ve got your eye on a slow cooker on Amazon. And you’ve accumulated 4500 SB. You could wait until the last day of the month to get that 12% off $25 GC to Amazon. Then the next day at the start of the new month, get another 12% off $25 Amazon GC. Now you’ve got $50 to spend on the appliance, potentially making it free, depending on the model you picked out.
Is Swagbucks the only rebate site I use? Mmm no. I tend to use Upside for gas purchases and Ibotta for groceries. But it’s the backbone of my “couponing” now. Especially since I’ve moved away from a Monopoly-playing, free-donuts-gifting grocery chain. However, Swagbucks has been good for me, and I’m believing it could be great for you too.
**Legal Beagle Transparency Stuff: I have provided a link to Swagbucks and Ibotta above. Just a straight link. No referral code. Yes I could get SB if you used a referral code, but more importantly, I just want you to win with money.**
