The Deal Finder: Earn Free Gift Cards While You Shop

Reposted To Help Save You Money:  Attention online shoppers!  Put down your mouse and stop everything you are doing.  I am about to tell you a way that you can continue to shop online and wait for it…earn FREE gift cards while you’re at it! I can’t believe that everyone doesn’t already do this, but I have a feeling you will start now.

I have belonged to a website called MyPoints.com since May 2005.  Let me tell you how easy it is.  You log onto MyPoints.com and immediately you will see a search engine.  That’s where the magic begins.  Type in a store you frequently shop from (my faves lately are eBay (I earn 2 points per dollar spent), Lakeside Collections (I earn 1 point per dollar spent) and Walmart  (I earn a whopping 12 points per dollar spent!) and MyPoints.com will send you directly to that site.  Proceed how you would normally shop, as long as you are linked FROM MyPoints.com, you will get points.

Maybe you don’t know what you are in the mood to shop for? You can click on “shop” and they will show you several categories. You can click on “deals” and you can instantly see coupons for groceries, local deals or cool perks like free shipping. You can also see some amazing daily deals that someone has already done the dirty work for (an example of a current daily deal: – “The iRobot Roomba 620 Vacuuming that has just dropped from $419.99 to $339.99 and then to $271.99 by using the code PUMPKIN at Kohls.com.  Plus, the shipping is free and you’ll receive $10 Kohl’s cash for every $50 you spend. This is the best price we could find for this Roomba by $32. However, If you’re a Kohl’s charge card holder, you can get an even better deal by using the code TRICK30 in place of the previous code to drop the total to $237.99”). The daily deals are awesome! You can find deals on anything from clothing to beauty supplies to school supplies.  Sometimes I log on and didn’t even know I needed another outdoor fire pit but heck, for $40, I am checking off a gift on my Christmas list.

One of my favorite parts of this site is that you have the option of filling out surveys. Once these are filled out, they will customize deals that will fit your needs (and wants)! You have the option to have these emailed to you (but once I realized how easy it is to click the link and browse for hours, I disabled this option and get to pick and choose when I want to browse!)

I used up a good chunk of my points to redeem a few Starbucks cards right before school started (hey, don’t judge, every teacher needs to up their caffeine intake right before school!) So, since August, I had to start almost all over. Luckily for me, I HATE to shop in stores and all our back to school shopping was done online (did you know you can buy glue sticks, notebooks and sharpies online?) and currently I am back up to 10,064 points (with another 1,900 pending) sitting in my account. If I wanted to redeem my points tonight, I could pick between an iTunes card, an Applebees card, a Barnes and Nobel card, a Groupon, a Starbucks card (I HAVE almost made it through the 1st quarter), a Visa Prepaid Card or 260 other options!

One option I LOVE about MyPoints.com is that I get to share this information with other people and let them in on this great deal! They have a referral program and if you sign up with them through me, I can earn more points! Send me your email in the comments and I will hook you up.  Ha!

What am I going to do with my points? I think I am going to do the same thing I do every year and keep building them up until the holidays. I redeem them for several different gift cards and use them for purchasing holiday gifts for my friends and family or heck, I give them the actual card. No one has to know that I didn’t spend any actual money on them.

There are so many great things about this program and there are many ways to save money (have I even mentioned they have a game center where you get points to literally pay games?) Give it a try! What do you have to lose?

Kristi Reinke, 7th and 8th grade social studies teacher in Minot, North Dakota

Image Credit: Africa Studio’s/ Shutterstock.com