Two useful things

Popping in to share two useful things today:

Number One: EBates

You may recall that one of my March goals was to “investigage Ebates and possibly sign up.” I’ve known about Ebates for a few years, and though I can’t remember what prompted me to finally take action, I’m very thankful something did!

Ebates is one of those things that sounds too good to be true — I simply begin my purchase from their site, and they’ll give me a percentage in cash back? Up to 14% at some stores?? And it’s free? And I get a $10 gift card to Target just for signing up?? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. In fact, I had to laugh when my gift card arrived in the mail — they’re clearly used to dealing with skeptical people, because the card said “Yes, it’s real!”

For me, the only trick is to remember to start from the Ebates site — you can’t go back and “sign up” your purchase after the fact. They pay cash four times a year, and since March we’ve gotten almost $100 back in cash, which is a pretty amazing amount of “free” money. I particularly recommend it if you’re going to be making a large purchase online — we bought our refrigerator online at Lowes, and got 6% cash back just for going through Ebates. It’s like an instant discount!

You can sign up with my referral link here (in the interest of full disclosure, I get $10 for anyone who signs up, but it goes without saying that I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t a service we used and loved!). And if you’re already an Ebates member, let’s talk about how much you love it! :)

Number Two: Doodle

I’m not sure what the technical definition of a “life hack” is, but I think Doodle would definitely qualify. I was introduced to it by my friend MacKenzie, and ever since, I haven’t planned a get together with more than one couple without it. It’s a major timesaver for my group of friends, who have some of the oddest and busiest schedules around.

Basically, instead of lots of emails or texts back and forth to try and find a mutually agreeable day for an event, you send out a Doodle poll and everyone votes for the options that work for them. From there, it’s easy to see which date is the best!

For example, I sent out this poll earlier this summer:

Yep, the Rays were only available one date out of seven. See why this is helpful for my peeps? :)

Doodle is free and incredibly easy to use, and I can’t recommend it highly enough!

I hope these two tips come in handy for y’all. Do you have a favorite useful thing to recommend? I’d love to hear!!