Free Gift Cards

Over the past sev­eral months I have been able to save a good amount of money by using free gift cards.

NuRide

Accord­ing to NuRide’s web­site:

NuRide is the nation’s largest online rideshar­ing com­mu­nity where mem­bers are rewarded for shar­ing rides. NuRide is free to join and free to use and is sup­ported by spon­sors who reward NuRide mem­bers for reduc­ing global warm­ing, traf­fic con­ges­tion and energy consumption.

Since I started using NuRide in June, I’ve received the fol­low­ing awards:

• $5 Star­bucks gift card
• $5 Star­bucks gift card
• $10 Old Navy gift card
• $10 T.G.I. Friday’s gift card
• $5 Burger King gift card

That is $35 just for car­pool­ing! That isn’t even count­ing the sav­ings in wear and tear on my vehi­cle because I only drive every other day now.

In addi­tion to the gift cards, I was entered into a draw­ing for a $250 gas card (I didn’t win), and am cur­rently entered into a draw­ing for a $500 Visa gift card.

MyPoints

Accord­ing to Mypoints’ web­site:

Earn Points when you shop, book travel, play online games, take sur­veys, search the Web, and do other easy, every­day things.

Redeem your Points for gift cards, online cer­tifi­cates, gas cards, travel, din­ing and more– all from your favorite brands. It’s easy, fast and free!

I’ve been using MyPoints since 1999, and have earned dozens of rewards with­out spend­ing a dime more than I would’ve already have spent. Just in the past few months I’ve earned:

• $50 Wal-Mart gift card
• $25 Wal-Mart gift card
• $25 Wal-Mart gift card

That is $100 in free money just for going through their web­site when I buy stuff and for respond­ing to emails.

My Coke Rewards

I started using My Coke Rewards a few months back when I started buy­ing Fresca on a fairly reg­u­lar basis. Basi­cally, you buy Coke prod­ucts (Coke, Fresca, Minute Maid juice, Pow­eraide…), get the code from the bot­tle, enter it online, and claim a reward.

I’ve since stopped buy­ing soda almost entirely, but even with the few points I pick up now and then from friends and fam­ily, I’ve earned the following:

• Free 12-pack of Coke
• Free 12-pack of Coke
• $2 Sub­way gift card
• $2 Sub­way gift card
• $2 Sub­way gift card
• $2 Sub­way gift card
• $2 Sub­way gift card

Again, that is around $18 of free stuff just by being slightly annoy­ing and bug­ging my co-workers, fiancee, and friends to give me their bot­tle caps.

Work

At work I jok­ingly said that I should get a reward for per­form­ing a task that is out­side of my nor­mal job require­ments. I wasn’t expect­ing them to actu­ally get me any­thing, but they got me (and every­one else that par­tic­i­pated in the task) a:

• $25 Shell gas card

Sum­mary

Indi­vid­u­ally it may not seem like a lot, but for just a tiny bit of effort I’ve man­aged to get around $175 in gift cards.