"Free" Money to be Had!

I know I've mentioned a few different ways that I earn free gift cards and such, but I don't recall if I've ever made a centalized list of all of those. Me? Without a list? Say it ain't so! Having made this realization, I give you:


I started "swagging" about a year ago and just installed the search toolbar on my computer figuring a search here or there might add up to something eventually. Around Christmas last year I decided to see what I had and what I could cash in for. What I ended up with was $50 in Amazon gift cards! Wowza! Anyone who frequents Amazon during December knows that it's the best time of the year since the sales are abundant and I was lucky enough to have a free trial of Amazon Prime, so I stretched that $40 into a LOT of Christmas gifts for people!

My Points
I've been using MyPoints as my starting point for online shopping for years. They also send random emails to your account that have you click through for 5 points each. Sometimes you can earn 10-25 points for filling out a survey, but I rarely do that. If I am looking to buy something online, I ALWAYS start by seeing if it's a merchant that works through MyPoints. I've redeemed over 55,000 points, which works out to a whole lot of gift cards to places like Sam's Club, Chili's, and Starbucks! One thing they did recently was link up to Coupons.com, so if I print out 10 coupons from them (which is incredibly easy for me to do with the amount of coupons I use!), I get 10 points, and you get points for redeeming the coupons as well.

My Coke Rewards
This is a hit or miss one really. I have redeemed my MCR for a few good things like Chili's gift cards and Omaha Steak gift cards, but the pickings on their site are pretty slim. You have to check back often to see if there is anything good there to cash in on. I bank up well over 1000 points before I even think about cashing out. I have a lot of friends who drink Coke products but don't do the rewards program, so they just give the codes to me.

Speedway Rewards
If you drive a car, you pretty much are guaranteed that you have to buy gas. There are less than 5 options on my way to/from work to get gas, and Speedway happens to be one of those. As long as they are the cheapest option, I will choose them to get gas from in order to build up my Speedway Rewards points. At Christmas last year we cashed in our rewards for a $25 gift card to Applebee's and the year before that we cashed in for a $25 card to Lowe's. It's not big money, but we aren't loyal to just Speedway so we don't earn as many points as we could be. If someone offered you $25 wouldn't you take it?

I've gotten random gift cards here and there for filling out surveys, but am always interested in more ways to free up cash in our daily expenses to put towards the snowball.