Paid to Shop

I keep waiting for an opportunity to catch up on...life. You'd think that with my mom here all last week, I would have had all kinds of time to blog and get a thousand projects done...not so much. I find myself baffled as to how I ever managed to post every day in November! Same old story around here: so many post ideas, so little time...

In the meantime, I wanted to quickly pass along a free money tip. I basically started and finished my Christmas shopping yesterday. I had bought a couple of things earlier, and I still have one or two things to pick up, but the vast majority of it was accomplished with a fast-clicking mouse and a smoking credit card yesterday. I am soooooo thankful for online shopping--give me that over a crowded mall any day of the week.

This Christmas season's greatest shopping find has been Ebates. My friend Lydia tipped me off to this great little website: You sign up, and then if you're going to shop online, you hit this website first and see if your store is one that offers cash back. If it is (and hundreds of stores are), you click to the store's website via Ebates, and then you get a set percentage of cash back on your purchase.

Sounds too good to be true, but it's for real--I got my first check from them a few months ago. I can't wait until the next checks go out, because yesterday I earned:

10% cash back from Snapfish
8% cash back from Shutterfly
8% cash back from Barnes & Noble
3% cash back from iTunes

Nice, huh? I may be too late to help you out this Christmas shopping season, unless you're a crazy procrastinator like me, but go sign up for Ebates and you can reap the benefits next time you have some online shopping to do. And if you use the links in this post, I get a referral bonus, so that'd be great :)