Our Thrifty Tip

My friend Kristin is hosting Thrifty Thursday on her blog, Bits & Pieces from My Life, throughout the summer. Stop by her blog for great thrifty tips and to share your money stretching or saving ideas.

Our tip involves iron on transfer paper,stainless steel water bottle, USB flash drives, a cordless phone, Italian leather toddler shoes, a glow in the dark Frisbee , and rechargeable batteries. What in the world do all these have in common? We got them for free by using gift cards we received for free. That's right, free things from free gift cards. That's a whole lot of FREE!

I would have to say that one of the ways our family has saved the most money is by joining and using Swagbucks. If you've read our blog in the past you probably already know how much we love this program, but if not I highlighted a few of the reasons here and here.

Swagbucks is a search engine that rewards you for searching. Just by using Swagbucks to do everyday searches such as "healthy muffin recipes" or "free coloring pages" you can gain points that can be used to get all kinds of free prizes. Our favorite prize is the $5 gift card to Amazon, although a Starbucks gift card is a nice treat for date nights. Amazon gift cards can be combined without a limit and a lot of their products also ship for free if your order is over $25.

Remember, Amazon isn't just a place to buy books anymore. While they do still carry lots of great titles, they also carry sippy cups, knife blocks, book lights, men's hats, nursing bras and much more. How do I know? Because we've order all of those items and received them for free by combining gift cards that we earned through Swagbucks.

When searching with Swagbucks you randomly earn points. With their new setup I've earned anywhere from five to 35 swagbucks. We've also earned the random 1 to 3 swagbucks for having the swagbuck toolbar. When you join Swagbucks you also have the opportunity to have people sign up through your affiliate link. You can easily do this through a blog, facebook, or even email. When people sign up through your link you are given a swagbuck for every one they earn by searching up to 1,000 swagbucks per friend.

By using Swagbuck's search engine, installing the toolbar, and getting friends and readers to sign up using our affiliate link, we've been able to earn over $600 in Amazon gift cards. Since we're in a tight financial period with Tim in school, this extra income has been a wonderful way to purchase things we need as well as gifts for our family. Right now would be a great time for you to sign up and start piling away gift card codes to use for Christmas presents.

While I'm telling you about the wonderful blessing this has been for our family, I need to take a minute and say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has signed up using our link. Our family truly has been blessed by this program and we are very thankful!

Now, you may be thinking that unless you can get a lot of people to sign up with your link this program is pointless. That's not true. Yes, it will take you longer to earn prizes, but it is still very possible. For example, my sister uses the Swagbuck's search engine and has the toolbar, but has not had anyone to sign up using her affiliate link. In the past year she has received a $20 Target gift card and has enough swagbucks to order $15 worth of Amazon gift cards. While this isn't a huge amount, $35 in free gift cards is still a nice gift for doing searches that you would have done anyway. You can also earn more swagbucks by shopping online and trading in old electronics.

So, what's my thrifty tip? If you search online, use Facebook, have a blog, shop online, or know people who do, I would suggest signing up with Swagbucks to start earning "bucks" towards lots of great prizes or gift cards. What do you have to lose?

Disclosure: The links in this post are affiliate links. If you sign up and earn swagbucks you will be helping us earn swagbucks, too. Thank you in advance!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to A Heart for Home! If this is your first time here you may want to

subscribe to receive free updates through e-mail or our RSS feed.

Thanks for visiting and we hope you'll be back often!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~