Frugality

SmarterBucks is an online rewards program that I recently read about on a blog. The blogger stated that they were using SmarterBucks to help pay down their student loan. Since I have a ginormous student loan and am interested in any way to pay it down faster I decided to check the program out. Doing a quick Swagbucks search I found several reviews of the service and they were all positive so I went ahead and signed up for the program.

SmarterBucks Overview

SmarterBucks is similar to other online rewards programs such as Swagbucks and Upromise. The main distinction between SmarterBucks and other online rewards programs is that SmarterBucks is geared towards paying off your student loans. You are able to set up a student loan in your SmarterBucks account to be automatically paid each month that you have earned $10 or more in SmarterBucks. This allows your rewards to automatically go towards paying your student loan which is a simpler redemption process than most other online rewards programs.

How to Earn SmarterBucks

1. SmarterBucks Marketplace

The marketplace works like an online cash back shopping portal such as TopCashBack or Mr. Rebates and pays you up to 10% back on online purchases made through their marketplace. Some of the reviewers didn’t read their marketing copy very well and stated that the marketplace would pay back 10% or more which had me excited to see what stores were available.

The marketplace ended up being a major disappointment. Their cash back rates are not competitive with other cash back shopping portals. Although they state that they pay up to 10% cash back I couldn’t find any stores paying that much and it appears most of their stores only pay 1% cash back. There probably is some store in their marketplace that offers 10% cash back, but it most likely is overpriced and not a store I’d normally shop at. Here is a comparison of cash back earned at five major retailers with SmarterBucks, Mr. Rebates, and TopCashBack.

	SmarterBucks	TopCashBack	Mr. Rebates
Sears	1.25%	Varies 2% -7%	3.00%
Walmart	1.00%	Varies 1%-4%	2.00%
Target	1.00%	1.00%	0.50%
Kmart	1.00%	Varies 1%-7%	3.00%
Staples	1.00%	3.00%	2.00%

As you can see they generally offer less cash back than the other portals. Even looking at Target where SmarterBucks actually matched TopCashBack for the best rate it would be possible to do better elsewhere. Ebates currently offers 2% cash back at Target. Since their marketplace doesn’t offer competitive cash back rates I won’t be using it unless they start offering more cash back.

2. Surveys

They also offer the ability to do surveys to earn SmarterBucks. The first survey they offered to me paid .57 SmarterBucks for a 15 minute survey. That translates to an earnings rate of $2.28 an hour. That is obviously a terrible return for your time. When I did survey for PineCone Research I was paid $3 per survey and the surveys generally took 20 minutes to complete. SmarterBucks’ survey pay rate doesn’t appear to be very competitive with other survey companies. Surveys in general aren’t a good way to earn extra money so I wouldn’t bother with these.

3. Debit Card

Another way to earn SmarterBucks is with their debit card. The website states that you will earn 1% back in SmarterBucks with the Radius Bank debit card. The 1% cash back only applies to non-pin purchases though. That means you would need to run your purchase as credit rather than debit in order to earn the cash back. If you’re going to do a credit purchase you might as well use a rewards credit card. There are plenty of reward credit cards that offer 2% cash back. Some offer even higher cash back for purchases in certain categories.

The debit card is not for me since I can always do better with my reward credit cards. I could see this debit card being useful for someone who doesn’t have the self-discipline to be able to use a credit card. If you have to use a debit card then this card appears to be a good option.

4. Gifting

A unique feature of SmarterBucks is that you can have family and/or friends sign up to be a SmarterBucks gifter and their SmarterBucks earnings would then go towards paying your student loan. This is not an option I would use since it is basically asking your friends and family to pay your student loan for you and would be a bad deal for them since they wouldn’t get to keep the cash back they earned.

A better option is to have your friends and family sign up for Mr. Rebates or Swagbucks. This way you would earn cash back when they earn cash back but it would not reduce the cash back earning rate of your family and friends.

Conclusion

SmarterBucks is not a good deal for the vast majority of people. There are better options for earning cash back. The only instance in which I’d recommend it is using the debit card if you don’t/can’t use a credit card. I’m surprised at the positive reviews I’ve read of this service. My guess is that the reviewers were biased due to being affiliates for SmarterBucks. I have no problem with being an affiliate of a product you review. In fact, this post contains several referral links for cash back sites since the sites are relevant to the post and in my opinion a good deal for my readers. I do have a problem with people giving a product or service a positive review just because they can profit from it. Although I am a member of SmarterBucks I am not including a referral link for the service since I think it would be a bad deal for the vast majority of my readers.

Here is a breakdown of my expenses for November.

Household	$401.60
Entertainment	$71.70
Transportation	$63.06
Food	$152.17
Student Loan	$106.00
Travel	$149.10
Phone	$26.81
Health	$56.31
Total	$1026.75

 

My November expenses were back at the level I prefer.  I came very close to making my stretch goal of keeping my expenses to $1000 a month.  My expenses would have been under $1000 if it weren’t for my travel expense.  The travel expense was pretty cheap considering I spent five days in Cancun and three days in Las Vegas during the month.  Most of the Cancun trip had already been paid for and the Vegas trip was almost free is why the travel expense was so cheap.

The only expense I’m not happy about is the food expense.  I spent almost $100 on fast food. I plan to keep the fast food expense to less than $50 this month. All of the other expenses will probably remain about the same.  It should be another low expense month.  It is possible that Christmas will somehow mess up my low expense month, but I don’t think it will.

I am happy to report that I received my check from Healthy Wage this week.  Now that I have received payment I want to share my thoughts on the entire Healthy Wage process.

This post contains affiliate links to Healthy Wage and I may be paid a commission if you sign up. I have personally used Healthy Wage and would not recommend them if I didn’t think it’s a great service.

Things didn’t start off too great with Healthy Wage. On their website you have to enter your information like you are making a bet in order to see what the bet would pay. I placed several different fake wagers in order to see what the different payouts would be. It appears that the maximum you can win is $600. After a certain point larger bets just mean that you will get your own money back plus the $600.  Even though I could have won the same $600 with a smaller bet I’m glad I bet $3000 since the fear of losing that money was a major motivation to lose the weight.

Bet on yourself and start your HealthyWager today.

The problem I had with making my healthy wager was that I intended to bet $3000 that I would lose 25 pounds in six months. I thought that was the bet I placed and even wrote a post stating that was what I had bet. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that I noticed in my Healthy Wage account that they had my wagers as being to lose 30 pounds in six months.  Apparently, one of my test wagers ended up being my actual wager rather than the wager I had actually intended. The wager process needs to be clearer and it would be nice if they would send you an email confirmation stating the terms of your bet.

During the six months I just had to weigh in once a week or so to show my progress. These weigh ins didn’t have to be verified so they were easy to do.  There isn’t really much interaction with Healthy Wage between the initial weigh-in and the final weigh-in so everything was fine there.

You have a two-week period at the end of the bet to do your final weigh-in.  I was still losing weight to get to 30 pounds lost when the weigh-in period began. I managed to lose the last of the weight a few days into the weigh-in period and went to my local gym to get my weight verified.  After I had my weight verified my girlfriend and I went to Pizza Ranch to celebrate. That probably wasn’t a wise move, but I did enjoy indulging in some of the foods I had been denying myself.

The buffet celebration almost turned out to be a costly mistake. I did my verification weigh-in on Saturday and Monday I received a notice that Healthy Wage wanted me to do a second weigh-in.  I certainly understand that when there is this much money at stake that they want to be sure everything is legitimate.  The tone of the email seemed overly accusatory though and the statement that they often require a second weigh-in contradicted the information on their site that states that they rarely require a second weigh-in.

The first place they chose for me to weigh-in was over three hours away.  I’m not sure what they were thinking there.  After contacting them I was able to get a weigh-in scheduled at a gym in Kansas City. Luckily, I had only gained a couple of pounds from my weekend indulgences and was easily able to lose that weight again before the second weigh-in.

After they received my second verification weigh-in they did quickly send me an email stating that I had won and that I would receive my check in about a week.  My check did arrive in about a week. I was quite happy with the speed of settling the bet after my weight had been verified. Overall, I was pleased with the Healthy Wage process even though they do have some things that need improvement.  I would make another Healthy Wager since I still need to lose another 30 pounds, but once you have won one Healthy Wager you cannot make another one.

Want to get in on the “dieting for dollars” craze and up your potential for weight loss success? Bet on yourself and start your HealthyWager today. Then lose the weight and get paid, simple as that!

Here is a breakdown of my income for September.

Online Income	$646.75
Achievemint	$25
Interest	$5.20
Account Bonuses	$75
Cash Back	$35.80
Mystery Shop	$43
Amazon FBA	$50
Dividends	$19.87
Medical Study	$700.00
Jobs	$91.59
Total	$1692.21

My income was pretty good in September considering I had very little job income.  The job income was unexpected since it was a final paycheck from a job I had back in 2008. It took them a while to find me.

I didn’t do a very good job of tracking my Amazon FBA income in September. I’m guessing I made about $50, but that might be a bit high since most of the stuff I sold made only a small profit and some items were sold at a loss.

I received some bonus income from the Motif referral bonus and the Betterment referral bonus.  Unfortunately, the Betterment bonus has ended. If you want to sign up through one of my referral links they are in the sidebar. If you want more information on the Motif bonus feel free to email me or leave a comment. I’m going to try to make more money from  referral bonuses. I like them because they make me money and make money for my readers as well.

My cashback income stayed about the same. If you haven’t joined Mr. Rebates yet you can get a $5 bonus for signing up through my referral link and I’ll make a little money for referring you as well.

September was the last month of the medical study so I won’t be getting any more checks from that. Those checks did help my bottom line quite a bit. I have worked the first couple weeks of October which should result in a reasonably good income for October.