The 411 on Upromise

Upromise is an on line site that offers a program to help participants add up some savings to be used for higher education. This college savings tool takes part of the money ordinarily spent on purchases and returns a small portion of it into a Upromise.com account. You're not making deposits into a college savings account in traditional way. Rather you are just shopping as you usually would, and hopefully some of the items you're already purchasing qualify for a rebate into your Upromise college savings account.

Is it hard to set up an Upromise account?

Setting up am Upromise account takes about 15 minutes. You can add a child or several children and decide which percentage of your returns you would like to go into each account. Next you will add your accounts through which the purchases are verified. For example, you may add your debit card, credit card, grocery store card or drug store card.

Which purchases qualify for Upromise funds?

In store purchases on groceries, drug store items and some retail stores and restaurants qualify.

Groceries:

Upromise blue and tan labels on select groceries in many grocery store chains including Kroger, Piggly Wiggly and Albertson's, alert shoppers of qualifying purchases.

Drug Stores: Purchases at Upromise affiliated stores like CVS, Eckerd and others will also earn money toward your savings.

Retail Stores: Some retail stores such as Sharper Image, GNC and Bed Bath & Beyond also participate in the Upromise college savings plan.

Restaurants: Participating restaurants vary with a greater selection of course in major cities. McDonald's gifts certificate purchases do qualify.

Other participants: This isn't an all-inclusive list but here's a sample of other services that participate.

• Allied Van Lines
• Caldwell Banker
• Terminix
• American Airlines
• TruGreen
• ChemLawn
• CitiBank
• ExxonMobil

Online Shopping Sites:

A very large number of on- line retailers participate with a percentage of each purchase going into your savings. A few examples are:

• Avon.com
• Magazines.com
• Blockbuster.com
• Target.com
• Priceline.com
• HomeDepot.com
• Giftbaskets.com

It's important to remember to go to the Upromise website and link to the retailer through their site to make sure you get Upromise credit for your purchases.

Since your card numbers are already registered, the percentage returns, which can range form 1 to 25 percent, are automatically deposited into your account within a few days when you use a registered credit, debit, or shopping card at check out. So Upromise really takes no extra work once you've registered. You can just check in to view your account balance. For most families, simply using the Upromise account this way will only accrue cents or dollars per month.

Other ways to save money for college with Upromise:

A Upromise Credit Card: A Upromise Credit Card has no annual fee and donates back a portion of purchases regardless of whether the store is listed or not.

Add Family Members: Another option for increasing the college saving is to get family members to let you aDd their grocery or drug store cards to your account and every time they shop you'll get more added to your account. Family members may be happy to give you their Kroger or CVS card number but they may not be willing, understandably, to hand over their debit or credit card number!

529 Savings Plans: There is also a college "529 savings plan" offered through Upromise.com, in conjunction with Vanguard mutual funds. Through this 529 savings plan, you can elect to have your Upromise.com money automatically transferred each month into the 529 plan and you can help the money grow faster by establishing a savings plan whereby Vanguard debits your checking account automatically each month for a fixed amount of money. 529 Savings plans offer federal income tax deferred growth and tax-free withdrawals, as long as the money is used for higher education.

Any Consumer Complaints about Upromise? Some users say that their Exxon purchases using their debit card didn't appear on their statement if they ran their debit card as a debit and that it only appeared if they used their debit card and ran it as credit.

Others say that while there are lots of stores affiliated with Upromise that they wish that Upromise could hook up with Wal-Mart, where they feel that they do most of their shopping.

Realistic Expectations:

There are many popular brands associated with Upromise like Kleenex, Duncan Hines and Coca Cola. To have realistic expectations of your savings check out these two examples:

One example of an offer is a one percent return on 3 two-liter bottles of Coke. That means that a purchase of three two- liter bottles of Coke, costing about $3.00 total, will add only three cents to your account. Even if you made it a point to buy three bottles of Coke every week, you would still have only $1.56 in accumulated funds each year from Coke purchases.

On the other hand, there are sometimes deals that give you back five dollars for purchasing 5 out of 10 listed items. Of course you're not really "saving" any money if you don't normally buy those items but if you do, then that is an easy five-dollar return. Often the five items are common grocery items like cake mix.

In the end, users agree that Upromise can't replace a disciplined college savings plan but most feel that as a supplement for saving for higher education, that it is relatively easy and worthwhile. Upromise isn't hard to use but it takes some getting to know to maximize the savings. Shopping through the Upromise website on items you would normally purchase online anyway, such as sending flowers, seems to yield the highest returns.