Please note that I was compensated by Upromise for the content of this post. However, all opinions expressed below are my own, based on my personal experience with Upromise.
Even before our son was born, my husband and I wondered how we would ever be able to pay for him to go to college. Granted, going to an in-school university can be fairly “affordable” (if there is such a thing when it comes to college these days), but with both of us being University of Michigan alumni and my husband being one of their biggest fans, I know that's the school my husband would ultimately like our son to choose. The University of Michigan is great. They've got the largest college football stadium in the world, it's often named one of the best public universities in the world, and they've got the second highest endowment for a public university at $9 BILLION. Another thing Michigan excels at? Being one of the most expensive out-of-state public universities in the world, with tuition and fees totaling more than $57,000 this year. Go Blue!
My husband and I on one of our first dates in Chicago… watching a Michigan game, of course!
This is all to say that we have our work cut out for us if we are ever going to afford to send our son to our alma mater.
Dad and his future Michigan student.
The first thing we did after our son was born was open up a 529 Savings Account. We put money in each month, but from my estimate we would need to put away approximately $1,200 per month for 18 years in order to pay for four years of out-of-state tuition. Yikes! As we are A. Not rich B. Live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and C. Hoping to buy a house in the near future, setting aside $1,200 per month is out of the question.
Luckily, there are other ways to save money for college costs that rely less on having unlimited amounts of disposable income. One of my favorite ways " that I've actually been using for years " is Upromise.
With Upromise by Sallie Mae, you can save money for college by partaking in a host of activities that you're probably already doing. For instance, you can earn money for college by shopping certain categories on Amazon or booking your travel through the Upromise website. Or, you can register your credit and debit cards with the site and automatically earn money when you shop at certain stores or dine at certain restaurants. In other words, you can save money for college by living your everyday life. There's literally nothing to lose!
While Upromise is easy enough to use on its own, my favorite and the most convenient way that we've begun saving money for my son's college fund is by using the Upromise MasterCard.
With the Upromise MasterCard you can earn up to 10 percent cash back when shopping at certain retailers online. You can earn up to 5 percent for shopping through the Upromise portal and then an additional 5 percent for using the Upromise MasterCard as payment. That's the high end, but you'll earn a minimum of 1 percent cash back for college on all purchases with the Upromise MasterCard.
Some of the easiest ways that we've been using our Upromise MasterCard to save big money include using the card to pay a few of our bills and then pay off the credit card each month. Now, instead of earning points that we rarely get around to using, we're saving for college. We also go out to eat way too often, and we've been basing some of our restaurant decisions around where we can earn extra cash back through Upromise.
Other Upromise MasterCard Benefits include:
- $25 Cash Back Bonus after first eligible use of the card within 90 days
- No limit to the total cash back you can earn on eligible purchases
- $0 fraud liability on unauthorized transactions
- No rotating reward categories
- A chip card makes paying for your purchases more secure at chip card terminals in the U.S. and abroad
- Complimentary FICO® Credit Score
My husband and I are ecstatic anytime we can set aside a little bit of extra money for our son's college savings account. As I mentioned above, we set up a 529 college investing account for him. Well, the extra money we're acquiring through Upromise? It's automatically transferring into that 529!
Our son's first of many visits to the University of Michigan. Unfortunately, he's sitting on the bronze “M” in the middle of campus, which means that according to lore he's likely to fail his blue book exam. Oops.
College prices are exorbitant and don't seem to be getting any cheaper. If you want to ace your savings for your child's college fund " or even pay down your own student loans faster " setting up a free account with Upromise is a no-brainer. Â Getting the Upromise MasterCard, which has so far helped card members save $500 million for college, can escalate those savings even faster. While I'm not sure that we will be able to save up the entire amount we will need to pay for our son to spend four loan-free years at the University of Michigan, I know that our chances of saving anywhere close to that amount is possible in large part to the ease with which Upromise is helping us save.