What do you know about Upromise?

UPromise is a safe site but it does take a lot of time to accumulate college savings. This is designed to be a program you join and let savings accumulate and grow over many years.

I’ve used it for several years but not very aggressively. The way to maximize UPromise is to get your parents and grandparents signed up and have them route UPromise contributions from their (credit card) purchases to your college savings account.

If you have a UPromise Credit Card savings will accumulate much faster (often 10% of your purchase will go to your account). UPromise has many retailers, restaurants, travel, and a host of services from participating companies who will take a % of your purchase and send it to your upromise account. For example, if your parents eat at a Upromise participating restaurant and charge $50 for dinner, you will receive between 4% and 8% ($2 – $4) in your UPromise account.

Given your age, you likely need your parents to open an account, and then you can add your debit/credit cards to it. Hope this helps. Good luck.

We started using UPromise over ten years ago and have less than $300 saved that way. It’s safe and takes no time or effort but is something you do for the long term. Unless you’re making a really big qualifying purchase like a car or a house you’d be lucky to earn enough to buy a book for graduate school. I guess you could use UPromise to set up an investment account but then you’d have to contribute to it monthly and it still wouldn’t help you out in just the next few years.

I’m with @Sunnybunny – I signed up over ten years ago, and the savings have been next-to-nothing. Mostly because I’d forget to place orders through there when buying items. But I wasn’t diligent to check that all my purchases with registered credit cards and grocery store cards were being credited, etc. As a single mom, my time was very limited.

With only a few months before you graduate, you won’t be able to save much that way.