College costs a lot of money. Most people have to borrow an insane amount of money to cover costs. With that in mind, a company called Upromise was created. “Upromise is a free service that helps families earn extra money for education,” according to their Web site. How do they do this? By partnering with other companies that people use every day. These companies give you rewards in the form of money saved into an account that can be used for your child’s education. Generally this amount is based on a percentage of what you spend at this various companies, which include travel sites like Expedia and Priceline and thousands of retailers and restaurants. Since I don’t have children, I never really explored the site. Figured it didn’t apply to me.

But that’s changed with a new addition someone recently told me about. It would seem that Sallie Mae, one of the largest college loan lenders, is a parent company of Upromise and has started a new program where instead of putting the money earned into a 529 plan for a child’s college education, it’ll apply it directly to any college loans held by Sallie Mae. I happen to have a fair amount of my college loans through Sallie Mae. Works out great. So I signed up for an account, figuring I do most of my shopping online anyway, so why not earn a little to pay off my loans while I’m at it.

Even better, it turns out you can link friends and family to your account as well so anything they earn will come back to you. Which brings me to my point. Help me pay for college. Please. All you have to do is send me your email address, and I will send you the invite. Then when you are doing some online shopping, just go through the links to the stores on the Upromise Web site. It’s as simple as that.

Even if you don’t want to help me pay for college, help a child in your life. You can set up an account to save for you own child or for multiple children by designating certain percentages of earnings to go to various people. For those who want to save for others, click here. But if you have no one to save for, please help me out. I’d really appreciate it.

Edit: Here is a list of all the online retailers who participate in Upromise.