They always say nothing in the life is free, but I have found a way to truly get free money for your child's college education program. It is a service called upromise.com and you simply need to sign up online to begin saving money.

This is My UPromise Story

In December 2001 the year it launched, I stumbled across a web site called Upromise to help save money for my daughter's college education. I registered with the web site to set up an account. As a part of setting up the account I registered my credit cards, debit card and my grocery cards ( I use Kroger and Giant Eagle). Once the cards were validated, I was able to start saving money by just doing my normal everyday shopping.

In addition, I had my parents register their credit and grocery cards to my account so when they shopped it would contribute to my account. You can also get friends to sign up as well, but mine were reluctant to share their credit card data on my behalf.

One area that provides a tremendous amount of savings is the online stores. There are several retail heavyweights who participate in this program including Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Best Buy and several hundred others. In order to receive the savings you need to sign in to your Upromise account online and click on the retailer's link in the site. it will redirect you to the online stores site and will be able to track your savings based on what you purchase. In addiyion, the retailers will offer special coupons and free shipping to members. Clearly, the stores are trying to influence consumer buying behavior and promote brand loyalty through the program, which is fine by me as long as they are selling quality products.

Another area is retail stores and services. These include BedBath and Beyond (one I take advantage of), Century 21 (up to a whopping $3,000 rebate if you buy or sell a home with them), McDonalds (only with Gift Certificates - which I buy and use for my own family - hey it is 3% and we eat there more often than we should), Whirlpool, and Avis Rent-A-Car to name a few.

I have also taken advantage of their iDining Rewards Network. They have signed up thousands of restaurants who will contribute between 4 and 10% of your bill into your 529 Savings Plan. My favorite pizza joint a mile from my house is in it so I save $1.00 or more every time we eat there.

One of the more challenging programs to get savings from is the grocery program. The participating companies are constantly changing and recently seem to be decreasing in numbers. The key here is to not buy a product simply because it is a part of the Upromise program if there are similar products that are cheaper. For example in the orange juice section, Florida's Natural contributes 1% of the purchase price to your account. On a recent trip to the local Kroger, Florida's Natural was $3.69, Minute Maid was $2.80, and Tropicana was $2.67. If I purchased Florida's Natural I would have received $.04 from them and another $.37 for using my Citi Upromise MasterCard. Clearly it made sense to buy the Minute Maid to save even more money (My family does not like Tropicana or I would have saved even more). Another popular company in the program is Coca-Cola for those who prefer them to Pepsi.

The only complaint I have about the program is that the customer service is difficult to deal with and their call center is in India which makes it challenging sometimes to effectively communicate your needs based on how the customer service reps read their scripts.

So for all of my efforts I have saved a GRAND TOTAL OF $1,385.00 to Date.

Below is a listing of all of the retailers and services I have used as a part of the program: