Swagbucks Slowdown

As I've mentioned many times here before, I am a big fan of Swagbucks. I've used it to get a couple hundred dollars in Amazon gift cards over the last two years. For a while I had three or four referrals, which definitely helped in accruing those Swagbucks.

Now, either those people have stopped Swagbuckin' or I've hit my referral limit with them. And now that it's just me, my gift card earnings have slowed WAY down. I have one five dollar gift card saved, and I'm close to earning another one, but it's taken over a month to earn it. Obviously, this is better than nothing, but I miss the days where the Swagbucks came rolling in.

So, this is a shameless plug to get you to sign up.

If you aren't yet using Swagbucks, it's super easy and worthwhile. I always go for Amazon gift cards, but they have tons of different gift cards on their site. Last year I bought a few Christmas presents for free, and I've also bought little luxuries that I don't want to take out of my regular budget (fancy shampoo and conditioner). It's easy to use, and if you sign up I can give you some more tips to earn.

For those who are already users, any tips to up my earnings? I do the daily polls, NOSO, and searches. I occasionally do surveys. Are any of the other earning strategies worthwhile?

Spending My Swagbucks!

This week most of my Amazon gift cards posted from Swagbucks, so I went online and placed two orders. First, I ordered my carry-on luggage that I will use for my trips to Alaska and Chicago this summer. (And for a three day San Francisco trip to go to a Giants/Dodgers game next week). I chose purple to make it easy to spot and because it's pretty. It arrived today, in plenty of time for all my travels. I was glad to get this for free, especially since being able to carry-on my bag instead of check it will save me a hundred bucks or so just this season. Here is a stock photo of my pretty new luggage:

Both bags were $40, but FREE for me since I used my Swagbucks!

I also ordered shampoo and conditioner by Enjoy. Basically this is a fancy pants, sulfate-free shampoo and conditioner that I love. I like how it smells, how my hair feels, and that it doesn't leave any build up in my hair. The damage for both of them was $30. Which is a lot for shampoo and conditioner, but after switching to cheaper brands I really still missed my Enjoy products. So I splurged...oh, but wait...they were FREE thanks to Swagbucks. :) 

It's nice to have Swagbucks for things like this. No, it's not as exciting as buying a Kindle or an iPod (which I almost had enough for, actually), but the little things make me happy and it makes me even happier that it didn't come out of my budget!