This is a pregnancy / baby blog and can you believe we are already talking about college.   I remember reading when my daughter was born that the cost of a standard public  four year college would be over $100,000 or more by the time she was old enough.  Ughhhh – that’s a lot of money to come up with!!  It’s never too early to get started saving for college.

The best thing we did for college savings was enroll in Upromise and I can’t recommend it enough as it is completely free.  Basically Upromise has partnered with numerous companies and when you buy from those certain companies, they donate to your college fund.   You can register all your grocery cards and when you buy certain products at your grocery store, you get money donated to your upromise account .  It’s basically money for free.  You don’t have to buy things that you wouldn’t normally buy.   You will also register your credit card / debit cards with Upromise.   No, they don’t charge your cards at all.  This is also a way of knowing what you bought so that you can get credit to your upromise account.

There are dining programs, travel programs, mortgage lenders – - all different types of ways to get companies to donate to your Upromise account.  We have earned the most with our upromise credit card.  Everything we charge on this particular cards gets us money in our upromise account.

You also have the option of linking your Upromise account to a college 529 account.  Upromise will then rollover the money you have received from Upromise in to your investment account.

There honestly is no downside to this.  Since 2000, we have earned $6,000 toward my daughters college fund.  This is $6,000 we would not have had for college without upromise.  Friends and family can also sign up for their own upromise account and then “link” in to your so that their money goes to you.  This is great for grandparents to do and is also part of how we receive our upromise money.  Grandparents don’t have to play favorites, they can donate their account to more than 1 grandchild and you can have more than one child on your account as well.  Will this money pay for all of  college, not a chance but it will certainly help.

Upromise – Turn your everyday spending into college savings