Did You Hear About The Guy Who Paid A Semester Of College With Rebates?
I thought this was interesting. Wonder if he ever browses here?
He paid for around $3,500 of his $4,500 semesters tuition with mail-in rebates he saved up.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/genius-phd-student-paid-tuition-232906757.html
What really made me think of a parallel to our little world here was this part:
"He shops exclusively online, trolling message boards on deals site Fatwallet.com to find rebate offers he may have missed. It was tips from Fatwallet members that led him to deals at Newegg.com and Frys.com that helped cover his tuition. "
Has anyone here ever really racked up the rebates? I think for the most part, our type of deal-hounding tends to avoid mail-ins. I see them often get downvoted it seems.
That's nuts. You have to buy a lot of crap to get that much in rebates, and I'll bet he spent more time tracking all that stuff down than if he'd just gotten a part time job.
I agree that it sounds nuts and wouldn't be for me. Way too much time involved. But for a college kid who doesn't want to work or can't find a job (a very real situation) I think it's a wonderfully resourceful idea.
Wait a sec. Don't you have to make a purchase to get a rebate?
So he received $3,500 in rebates for how much in purchases? Doesn't make sense if he had to purchase $10,000 worth of products to receive the rebates to pay for college. It would have been cheaper to just pay the tuition.
@cengland0: It said in the article that pretty much all of the rebates were the "free after rebate" kind. So he paid, received the item, then basically got all of his money back. Plus he used a cash-back credit card, so he made a bit of money on each purchase. Then he sold a lot of the items and made some more money. Things he didn't sell were donated, if he didn't keep them. It's the "free after rebate" part that makes the whole scheme work.
@cengland0: Exactly. When I read the comments on Yahoo, people seem to think he got everything for free. You either paid for the items or you paid for the tuition with real money. Secondly, the items you can get "completely free after rebate" are usually few and far between, generally very cheap AND have a household limit. So you can't just buy 200 $2 packs of pens and get rebates on them all. The amount of time and effort this kid has to have invested in this is unreal. I'd give him more props for working a part-time job or even volunteering that time in a soup kitchen.
Yahoo even goes so far as to call him a "genius". I think that's a bit extreme...
I do. Usually rebates are money makers for me before I'm interested. Staples in particular. I recycle my maximum 20 ink carts per month for $2 each, then buy stuff that free-after-rebate with the rewards. $20 this week on hammermill reams of paper ($4.99 -$4.99 staples easy rebate)
Staples rebates are easiest because you submit online and can either get a check, visa prepaid card, or paypal. So far this year I used all their free-after-rebate software back in Jan/Feb to hit $1,000 in spending to qualify for premier rrewards, with 20 ink caarts per month instead of 10, and free shipping on all orders. Most of the free-after-rebate software also was a money maker because they had a coupon at the same time for 25% back in rewards.... so I spent $1,000, got it all back in rebates, and the $250 in rewards (25%) more than covered sales tax.
On a typical year I usually get at least $2K back in rebates, most years $3K.
I also do the SINGLE CHECK REBATES at rite-aid for tons of free stuff
final thing to factor into the equation is what you do with the stuff after you get the rebate. I sell or donate most of what I get. On a typical garage sale I have 2-3 times per year, I usually make $800-$1,200.
90% of that is new stuff that I got free or near-free.
By combining rebates with couponing at CVS/RiteAid/Walgreens/Target, $200 per month not only feeds our family of 5, but it also covers diapers, shampoo, razors, bodywash, laundry supplies, cleaning supplies, OTC meds, etc.
I typically spend 10 hours per week shopping, and it's never worked out to less than $15 per hour when I figure how much I save our family.
At staples, once you start rolling your rebates into rewards and your rewards back into cash rebates, you're ALWAYS spending their money, not yours. I know a few people who easily profit 500+ per month doing rebates and careful shopping... Hell, I even paid for my Kindle fire with staples rewards!
I can almost guarantee he has no life. That would take way to much time to keep up with.
@kamikazeken: I guess the 20 empty ink carts each month are from printing all of your mail in rebates? And I don't know how you feed a family of 5 on $200/month, but kudos!
When I was in college, they use to have websites that would pay you to surf the internet. Basically it was a tool bar on the top of the screen that shot advertisements at you. You had to be actively using the computer and would get paid like .25 an hour, or something like that. Since we were online all day anyway, we just had it running in the background. We'd get like 10 bucks a month or so, beer money
The key was the afffiliate program that was a pyramid like setup, where you got money from your refereals, their referals and so on. This was 1996, basically these were legit at the time and we racked up a ton of money. We got our roomates to join, then the entire floor of our dorm, then beyond. At one point we were all excited because we were making $10.00 a day, it capped out right about $100.00 then the bubble hit.
The internet was so young we had to develop our own programs to cycle through web pages and auto refresh that is now an after thought in today's browsers.
the story is about @iggz
fact.
@kamikazeken: same here on the kindle....sorta. Used my Amex points for one.
@kamikazeken: 10 Hours a week for a year is 520 hours. $3000 profit divided by 520 is $5.77 per hour which is below minimum wage. Then you have to factor your time to sell those products and to fill out the rebate forms.
@pinchecat: Why, yes, yes I am a genius.
great, now A&E will make a reality show out of this......Extreme College Coupon Clipping
What kind of PhD program is he in for $4,500 for a semester?
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