Free Starbucks Stars

Free Starbucks Stars (How-To)

This is a great way to get some free Starbucks Stars just by waiting in line at the store. Stars are accrued when a transaction is made on a registered card. When you buy a cup of coffee or muffin you'll receive one star for the transaction... not one star per item. It's this mindset that allows this to work. What you need to do is buy two Starbucks gift cards then register them online at www.starbucks.com. Once your cards are registered then proceed to a Starbucks location and ask them if they could please transfer the balance of one card to another. Generally they ring this up as a transaction where you purchase store credit with your registered card which nets you a gold star.

Benefits of Starbucks Gold

If you are not sure what these stars are used for or why you would want them then here is a quick breakdown of Starbuck's Gold Program.

• Free drink or food reward every 12 Stars
• Personalized Gold Card
• Special Offers just for you

Transfer Money for Free (Dwolla)

About Dwolla

Dwolla is similar to PayPal in that you can transfer money from one individual to another. The major difference between the two is that Dwolla is free for transfers under $10 and only a quarter for transfers over $10. In addition to that by inviting friends to Dwolla you can save $10 in transactions fees which is basically getting 40 transactions for free!

Is Dwolla Secure?

Dwolla is about as secure as any other site you trust your credit card with these days. The company is from Iowa and the Iowa government allows its citizens to pay their cigarette stamp taxes with Dwolla. My logically train of thought is that if the Iowa government is that supportive then it can't be too bad. They've shown in the past to take preventative measures including starting a service called Grid so that users can avoid entering their credit card information.

Summary

If you're looking for a cheap way to pay people money and receive payments then Dwolla is currently the way to go! The only limitation is that it is only available in the USA.

Free Gift Cards for Sharing Location Data (Panel App for Android)

The Premise

There's an app for the Android market called Panel which offers rewards and prizes for sharing your location with it. After installation it runs in the background and silently sends your location data to their server every hour or so. If you're close to a company that they partner with then you may receive a survey for bonus points. The idea of the app seems like Big Brother trying to keep tabs on you... but it's not too much different than checking in with Facebook or Four Square. The only real difference is that with Panel the people running the company will get a more holistic idea of where you go during the day instead of just where you eat or stop in at.

Free Gift Cards

Panel will tell you about how many points you should receive per day and then translates that into a general yearly number of points. They're very straight-forward in how much gift cards cost ($5 Amazon card is 5,000 points) and truly don't try and trick you. It seems that with running Panel for a year (and factoring in bonuses) you could end up with somewhere around $20 to $50 in gift cards. Really it's not too bad for doing absolutely nothing.

Things to Consider

Some things that you'll need to consider is that now a company knows how you spend your day. They'll have a general idea of when you're home and when you're at work. A lot of the surveys you receive revolve around "Where were you at 6:45 pm on May 19th?" then proceed to give a list of stores that you were nearby. If you're willing to give this information out for about $50 a year then I'd say download Panel and start saving!

Bing Rewards Bot (New Reward Site)

Bing Rewards Bot

Looks like these sites just keep popping up all over! Everyone wants points the easy way without actually having to search using Bing. Here is the newest Bing Rewards bot website called... drumroll please... Bing Rewards Bot! Yes... I wish I had thought of that crafty name as well but since I didn't I'll just have to recommend it to the sites readers!

Why It's Fun

What makes this one different from any other search out there? Images. This allows you to set the time and category that is searched so you can finally see with your eyes what you've been randomly searching for. I've always wondered what "Hijivi" looked like and now I finally know! Did you know that "Yakafoyes" is kind of spelt like "Yaka Fruit"? Did you know that there was yaka fruit? You'll understand these jokes if you use any of the Bing Rewards Bots because they search for the most absolutely ridiculous stuff that three out of four times isn't real. Anyways I hope this one will actually bring some fun and joy to your life because it sure has to mine.

Bing Rewards Hack (with Bing Rewards Automator)

My previous post titled Bing Rewards (With Hack) went over the benefits of using the Bing Rewards program to its full potential. Since that article was published there have been numerous other ways to enjoy gaining Bing Reward points including an app for Android phones. The app is called Bing Rewards Automator and is free to install. There is a Pro version as well which includes an auto search which performs the searches at a specified time during the day which literally takes all effort out of it.

Minty Fresh (Mint)

Managing your money is one of the keys to financial success. Everyone should know how much they spent last month on groceries. Think about how much you spent. If you can't come up with the number in less than a minute then you should probably create a Mint account. Mint aggregates all of your financial information (bank accounts, credit cards, loans, etc.) into one place and lets you categorize all of your income and spending. This shows you exactly where all of your money is going. I'm not exactly happy about how much I spend but at least now I never think "where did all my money go?"

Cash Back Marathon

Cash back sites are popping up and sticking around longer now than ever before. If you don't know, a cash back site is a website that gives you money for shopping at online stores that you already shop at. This might sound kind of strange at first but hear me out. Tons of companies pay money for referral traffic... for example every time someone clicks an advertisement on this site I get somewhere between 30 cents and 60 cents. Online stores will pay a finders fee for referral traffic like this and these cash back websites just split it with you. My favorite cash back sites are as follows:

1. Mr Rebates
2. Ebates
3. Fat Wallet

I love these sites because I end up saving a ton through them. Whenever I find an item online that I want to buy I just go here first and see if the store is featured on any of these sites. If so then awesome! I'll be getting money back. If not then that's no problem as I didn't really waste any effort.

If you know of any more cash back sites that I missed please post them in the comments and I'll add them to the list!

Bing Rewards (With Hack)

Bing Rewards is a program put out through Microsoft in their Bing search engine. The idea of it is to drive traffic to their search engine using rewards as a lure. Many people, like myself, already have a favorite search engine and don't want to switch over to Bing. I would never try and persuade anyone that Bing is a great unless I was talking about the Bing Rewards program.

Once you sign up for the rewards program you are able to early 15 rewards points per day by searching using Bing. They give out a few additional points here and there as well but the ones you can count on are the 15 per day. For the average month you'll be receiving 450 points if you do this every day. An example of an award through this program is Hulu Plus (625 points). Therefore if you and your friend/spouse do this (each with one account) you can essentially get Hulu Plus free forever.

Now for the fun part (the hack). There's a number of websites out there (I prefer this one) that will make the searches for you. Once a day I'll open up that link and click "Start!" and then go about my day.