Money Saving Monday: Bing

Have you all heard of Bing? It's basically Google but instead it's Bing. I've been using Bing for a couple years now along with Google. You might ask yourself, why in the world wouldn't I always use Google? Good question my friend. The answer is Bing gives me gift cards for using them!

Right now I'm sure you are thinking what's the catch? Nothing. Really. Every morning when I need to Bing something I just visit Bing.com and type my search terms in the box, exactly like Google. It spits backs a ton of answers, just like Google. For each 2 items I "Bing" I earn 1 credit up to 15 credits per day in basic searches. Then I can Bing on my phone and earn an additional 10 credits and they always have at least one freebie of the day like a trivia question (that you can Bing for the answer).

By now I'm sure you are thinking that it must take years to earn enough credits to redeem for a gift card but that is not so! In fact, you can realistically earn a $5 Amazon credit every month without much problem at all.

Let's do some math…

30 searches a day on a computer = 15 credits
20 searches a day on a phone = 10 credits
1 (minimum) freebie search a day = 1 credit
Total = 26 credits a day!

I'm currently a Gold Member which is nice because it means I get discounts on rewards.

A $5 Amazon gift card costs a Gold Member 475 credits and a non-gold member 525 credits.

A handful of different gift card options available.

So 475 credits divided by 26 credits a day is roughly 19 days of searches. Which means, if you do as many searches as allowed every day, you will be able to have a $5 gift card every 19 days. Not too bad since you are probably Googling stuff every day anyway.

I don't normally Bing 50 different options a day on my own so what I typically do is click through the basic story headlines on the homepage. You don't have to do anything but click on each one. Takes maybe 2 minutes to click on enough to earn all your credits for the day. I also don't do a lot of bing searches on my phone (not convenient so I don't waste my time) so it does take me a little longer to earn the gift cards but not too much longer.

At this point I have redeemed for three $5 amazon gift card codes and I currently have enough credits for two more $5 codes.

Are you going to get rich with Bing? No. You will earn a few gift cards every now and then though for doing something super simple that you probably do daily anyway. Seems like a no-brainer to me!

Does anyone else Bing? What do you think of it?

P.S. I do earn referral credits if you click one of my Bing links above and use it to earn credits. No pressure… ;)

(No I'm not a sponsor of Bing, I just think it's pretty cool)

Money Saving Monday

I've realized I have about a million little tricks and tips for saving money. Since I'm pretty sure everyone loves to save money I have decided to do a little series occasionally called Money Saving Monday. 

With this series I will share ways (that I actually use) to save myself and my family money. This ranges from making freezer meals, to couponing, to using certain websites or apps to earn things like gift cards, cash and magazines!

If there is something in particular you are interested in saving money on let me know in the comments below. 

To get started…here's a link to a post I did a few weeks ago. I have currently earned approximately $70 in gift cards just from this app. (Hint: If you use the link I provide I earn bonus points and so do you!)

How I Make/Save Money with my Phone

Aren't cell phones amazing?! They are basically tiny little computers that fit in our skinny jeans and save us money!

I thought it might be a good idea to share a couple of my favorite apps that are super simple and have saved, even earned, me money.

My favorite money making app is Shopkick.

All you do is open the app when you walk in certain stores such as Target (where we all shop), JcPenny, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and more. When you open the app you typically get anywhere from 30 to 100 kicks (sometimes even 200). In some stores you can scan certain products to get you additional kicks. Many times these range from 10 to 100 kicks per scan. Once you have accumulated enough kicks you can cash them in for gift cards. Using Target as an example: you can cash in as few as 500 kicks for a $2 gift card or 6250 kicks for a $25 gift card.

I have earned a total of 14,500 kicks which is equal to over $50 in gift cards. I have cashed in enough of my kicks to equal $35 worth of gift cards at JcPenny and currently have 5,750 kicks I can use whenever I want. The gift cards are codes that pop up almost instantly on your phone when you redeem them. You show the cashier the code which they enter as a gift card and ta-dah, free stuff!

How cool is that?

I'll do a follow up post to discuss a couple of the other apps I use to save money. What are your favorite money saving apps? Tell me in the comments below.

Enjoy and happy Shopkicking!

7 Quick Takes {15}

1. Well it's Friday and in a small town that means Friday Night Football! We rarely go to the football games because let's face it, it's kinda weird to be in your 20's with no kids and go cheer on the high school football team, but tonight we're going to make an exception. My Aunt is having a party after the game so we figured we should probably go for a little while. Plus, I'm sure they will have some yummy concessions stand food at the game. 

Plastic cheese? Yes, please!

2. Pretty sure I have been an emotional disaster this week, so to my dear husband, I apologize. A few extra hours of sleep tomorrow morning and I should be good to go:)

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3. It's free lunch day at the bank today! Just another perk of living in a small town. Free dogs and burgers to all!

4. My house is the disaster of all disasters right now and it's seriously wearing my out! I just want everything to be put away and sparkly clean. I don't think we have caught up yet from vacation and it's kinda depressing to know that I'll be cleaning my whole weekend. Bleh. 

5. Earlier this week I found an amazing debt snowball calculator online and it currently has me motivated to spend zero unnecessary dollars. According to the calculator, if we keep paying what we are paying every month (on all debts) and roll it using the snowball method (the hard part), we could be completely debt free, including the house, in 7 years! Holy bananas that would make my life! Unfortunately that doesn't factor in lots of extras, like vacations or kids so we will see how long it really takes. 

6. It's been almost two weeks that my husband has lived in the same house as me and I must say I'm enjoying it. It's nice to have someone there when I get home and that helps with the dishes or cleans the pain in the butt wood floors for me. Or maybe he just knows that the floors would never get dusted if he didn't do it. Either way, I'm glad he's home. Plus he's pretty cute:)

7. Thinking the rest of my day will be spent making lists. Since I'm stuck at work and can't actually accomplish anything on my lists at least I will have a plan of attack for the weekend. 

Happy Weekend Blogiverse!

Linking up over at Conversion Diary.