$25,000 for College from Upromise

Upromise and Sallie Mae are giving away five $5,000 scholarships? Awesome! And this time around, it couldn’t be easier to enter. Just:

1. Join Upromise, if you haven’t already — it’s free!
2. Install the TurboSaver Toolbar

Now, ordinarily, I am not a fan of browser toolbars. I don’t like a lot of third-party things crowding up the area between my “Back” button and the website I’m looking at. But TurboSaver is a toolbar I actually recommend. Why? Because of the number of times I’ve seen people make a purchase online, and then about a day later say “Whoops, should have done that through Upromise! It would have given me 3% cash back!”

Yep, people who are already Upromise members miss the crucial step of going through Upromise to make purchases online. Not to name names (isn’t it funny how we always say that before we name names?), but my mother does this all the time! And my mother is a smart, tech-savvy lady. She just forgets which sites are affiliated with Upromise. Who can blame her? The list is really long and constantly growing!

So in this case, I believe in the power of the toolbar. Because all the toolbar does is alert you when you’re on an online shopping site that’s affiliated with Upromise. It’ll remind you to log in, so that you don’t miss out on any cashback from things you were about to buy anyway. (Which is what I really love, being a personal finance blogger and all.)

So even without the $5,000 prizes up for grabs, I’d recommend the TurboSaver toolbar. But because there is prize money up for grabs, you should definitely go get the toolbar now! (The sweepstakes ends October 15th, 2009 — so hurry up!)