~Futura Rewards~

Futura Rewards is a program that allows you to accrue money in an account towards either cash savings, retirement savings, education savings, group fundraising, charitable giving, student loan payment, member to member transfer...It pays you in Futura Rewards for collecting UPCs of certain products, shopping at certain retailers, shopping through their online affiliates system, using a Futura Mastercard etc... 1 Futura Reward = $1 Canadian. So no messing around with points conversion or otherwise, it just equals the same.

Futura Loyalty Group is the company that manages Futura Rewards. They also manage the Aeroplan program and other reward based programs. They have been around for awhile so there is every reason to believe that it is trustworthy.

I personally collect Futura Rewards through mostly collecting UPCs from participating products. To see a full list go here: Companies. For this I cut the actual physical UPC off the product and tape it to a page. At the end of each quarter you mail them all in with a Tally Sheet that you download from their site (I use the PDF version from the website) and they credit your account with the value at the end of the next quarter.

I also collect the Gifts to Grow points that are found inside of Pampers products. You find the little stickers with codes inside all packages of diapers and it is printed on the sides of the packages of wipes. When you register a profile at Pampers.ca you are able to input the codes and collect these points for rewards. There are other things you can use the codes for and they change frequently but I redeem mine solely for $5 Futura Rewards. 40 GTG Points = $5. I will do another post on Gifts to Grow in the upcoming days!

I do surveys with Hotspex surveys and redeem my Hotbux for Futura dollars at a rate of 120 Hotbux = $1. I use Points.com to do this and they take care of everything for me!

Lastly I take advantage of offers that Futura sends me. I've gotten insurance quotes and made $5 off them. I used a sign up code FRUGAL10 to get a free $10 at sign up. It should still work so make sure you use that when you sign up!

The biggest key to maximizing your Futura account is family power! You can get your family members to sign up and collect for you and transfer to one account. In my case I opened an account for my husband and son. They each got the $10 sign up bonus, each got $5 for an insurance quote, they each earn Hotbux by doing surveys and I submit UPCs through these accounts. Some UPCs are limited to the number that you can send per quarter so it helps to have extra accounts that you can put them through. For example, you can only submit 3 UPCs for Stayfree...I was able to send in 9. I trade on Smart Canucks and get Futura UPCs in trades and that is how I get so many.

So by doing all these things I have managed to pull $256.16 out of thin air since I started collecting them in November 2008. That is like putting $50 away a month. If I continue to collect at this rate and do this for 18 years for E's education account at a meagre 3.5% I would have over $15,000!!! at 6% it would be over $20,000!!! Not bad if you ask me for FREE MONEY!!!

The finer details of Futura are that you can only transfer between members once your account reaches $25. You can only cash out your account when the balance is over $100. It is paid out by cheque and is subject to a $9.95 administration fee each time you cash it out. Pay outs only occur at the end of a quarter so if you request it in the beginning of a quarter you will not receive it until the end.

There are other ways to earn Futura Rewards. In some areas you can use your card and show it at cerain stores to gain credit. You can get a Futura Mastercard and earn Futura Rewards on your purchases using it. You can shop online through affiliated companies and earn up to 10% back in Futura Credit. You can get certain Financial services and earn rewards on them such as TD Insurance, Sutton Group and more! You can go here for more details!!!

I think that pretty much covers Futura Rewards. Let me know if you have any questions about it and I will do my best to answer them!

~Points Programs 101~

So if you are like me you have a whole lot of cards in your wallet for points! You collect them and then wonder what you are going to do with them...sooo annoying!

So I will be going over how I have maximized my points so far! I look forward to hearing from others on their tricks and tips too! In todays' post I'll just cover the basics and delve into it further in later posts.

I'm sure you've all heard of some of the most popular points programs:

Airmiles, Aeroplan, Priority Points, Save-On, Shoppers Optimum Points, HBC, and many, many more. My favorite by far is Airmiles. I live in an area where I can get Airmiles from many retailers so it makes the most sense for me. You, of course, will need to evaluate your spending habits and what is available to make the best deal for yourself! In my area I can get Airmiles mostly from Shell and Safeway but I also use a Low Rate BMO Mastercard on which I earn Airmiles for my purchases.

The easiest way to rack up miles is to double dip whenever you can. For instance my Safeway has bonus airmiles specials weekly. They email them into my inbox after I signed up for it and received 100 bonus airmiles. Nice eh? Anyhow as I was saying, they email me deals. So I look them over to see if any are for items I need. If there are then I look for coupons for them to save money. I make my grocery list and estimate what it will cost me. I then go to Safeway and use my Mastercard to purhcase a Gift Card. I give my Safeway card and my Airmiles card and earn both rewards on the purchase of the gift card. Double airmiles though because I paid with my mastercard which earns me airmiles. I then do my shopping and then pay with the gift card and again give my airmiles card and Safeway card getting airmiles again. So on a $100 transaction you would normally receive 5 airmiles from Safeway. On my shopping trip I would easily earn 15 plus any of the bonus specials that I pick out.

One thing to think of course is redemption on the points. Airmiles has a relatively high redemption rate of $0.14 per airmile on average for items. I usually redeem my airmiles for various gift cards. I often redeem them for gift cards that I can trade for free product coupons for on Smart Canucks. There is no cost to me for them and I get the type of benefit that I'm looking for.

Of course you can also earn airmiles by shopping through airmilesshops.ca at many major retailers. It is all online shopping but if you implement some of my tips for online shopping you just might find a whopping deal.

I hope this whetted your appetite for more info on points programs. I want to spend some time putting out all the details that I know on the various programs that are offered. Look forward to more posts coming on this topic. Coming next on Save a Loonie: What is Futura Rewards?

~Coupon Trains~

Today's post is brought to you by Deb, the moderator at Canadian Coupons Exchange. I chose to contact Deb and have her write how to do a coupon train as I have done many trains with her and find her to be most organized and efficient at them. She has helped me to save a lot of money by getting coupons not available in my area!


A way to save more is to trade coupons with other people, and/or join Coupon Trains. I'm happy to share what I know about trains and I hope it will help you to save alot of loonies!

First, as Wanda has said before, save all coupons you come across. Grab enough for yourself and a couple extras every time you see coupons in stores.

At Canadian Coupons Exchange we do alot of trains with our members. We have lots of trains that are for coupons, but some are for stickers and fun things too! It's like having frugal pen pals all across Canada! So hopefully my explanation makes it easy for you to understand and you'll sign up to be part of our wonderful group!

A train is where a conductor (person who is starting a train) makes a list of about 5people (passengers). The conductor prepares an envelope, which holds many various coupons. When you receive this envelope you may choose any of the coupons you can use, and then replace these coupons with other coupons. Always include the same amount (or more) that you have taken out.

Each envelope contains the coupons in the train as well as a passenger list with all the passengers contact info on it. So if you are passenger # 1, you will then need to send the envelope to passenger #2 whose address you will find on this list.
At the end, the train goes back home to the conductor.

Once you have mailed the train on to the next passenger you go online and post to the group and to the conductor the details of the train. So for example you would put information regarding how much you took out in value for yourself, how much was removed because they had expired, how much you added in value and then who you sent it to and when. You can watch the message board for a posting saying that a train is on it's way to you! It can actually be fun to save!


Thanks to Deb for this great information! I hope you all learned more ideas to save with coupons today. I just wanted to add that there are many other sites that host coupon trains, I get trains from a few. It can get hard to keep track of what is coming and going though so I would advise to start slow! I hope you'll log on to Save a Loonie again and read about the next topic: Points Programs 101!!! Plus what do you think of my new header? My hubby surprised me with it tonight! He's so handy!!!