One of my favorite budgeting blogs I read is Jane4Girls. Erin is incredibly thrifty, living on a grocery budget of only $800/year. She recently blogged about getting a new DSLR camera by cashing in her Swagbucks for a few Target gift cards. Erin’s blog is great if you are looking for good deals, reviews on products, a ways to earn points for free stuff!
After reading her post, I thought, “What a great idea!” There are a few electronic items that I’ve had my eye on for awhile, but can’t really justify spending money on at the moment. I’ve been using Swagbucks and mypoints for awhile and have gotten a bunch of gift cards to different restaurants and stores. These gift cards are going to be especially useful during our Vegas trip in 3 weeks. I have gotten 4 gift cards to restaurants that we probably wouldn’t have eaten at normally through these sites. If you haven’t heard of them, I highly recommend signing up. It only takes a minute and it’s fairly easy to earn points and bucks.
Swagbucks gives you points for searching using their website. There are other ways to win points, but that is the easiest. Instead of going to google, I search through Swagbucks. The amount you win varies, but in general I win 2-5 swagbucks everyday.
Mypoints offers a bunch of different ways to earn points. The easiest way to earn points quickly is to shop through their website. They are affiliated with a bunch of different stores (ebay, target, old navy, barnes & noble etc.) and give you a varying amount of points per dollar. They also send you emails that you can click through to get 5 points. Whenever I want to purchase anything online I always check to see if the store is affiliated with mypoints (most are), but even if you aren’t a big online shopper, you can build up enough points through the emails they send you in a few months to get a $25 giftcard somewhere.
I’ve had my eye on an iPod touch for awhile now. I have a regular iPod that works great, but I’m a sucker for gadgets and that thing is just so cool. I also would really like a nice DSLR camera as well. I’ve been cashing out mypoints and swagbucks to get gift cards for restaurants in Vegas, so I don’t have that many right now, but I’m definitely going to start saving up for these items.
Click below to sign up for swagbucks and mypoints.
