What is your goal?

Full disclosure: I previously worked for Prodege for over 13 years, the parent company of Swagbucks and other loyalty points sites. So you can take what you’re about to read with a grain of salt. Or treat it like the honest truth. Because it is. My former mortgage lender can attest to it.

I have earned a total of 676,354 SB (that’s Swagbucks points) in the many years I’ve been a member. That translates to $6,763 and most of that I cashed out as PayPal gift cards and applied to my home mortgage balance over the years. Now you wouldn’t think that cashing out $5 and $10 gift cards could amount to much against something like a home mortgage (in the Los Angeles area no less) but these little dinks-and-dunks really do add up!

So I’m here to say that an aggressive saving and investing mindset in every part of your finances really can make a difference! But that’s not all. Here’s some other ways that we piled-on to knock out this big financial goal.

• Cancelling low-value insurance policies like whole-life. Annual savings = $6,000
• Applying interest earned on any savings or investment accounts. Annual savings = $9,000
• Cancelling the home security system. Annual savings = $600
• Dropping our landline phone service. Annual savings = $600
• Mowing my own lawn (so no lawncare cost) Annual savings = $1,800
• Negotiating with our wireless provider to reduce our bill by 40%. (I know that reads like a Geico ad.) Annual savings = $1,200
• Negotiating on our auto insurance policies. Annual savings = $1,285
• Cancelling under-used streaming services (YouTube TV during NFL off-season, a 2nd Prime account, etc.) Annual savings = $1,380
• Taking sack lunches to work more often. Annual savings = $2,000
• Figuring up how much I’m saving when my 19 yr old son is having dinner on his own, so not eating out with us. OK, this one’s a little ridiculous but money is money. And he’s not going hungry. So annual savings = $1,200

As you can see, these totaled tens of thousands of dollars each year. So now like a snowball rolling down a hill, all of that savings gets applied to the mortgage balance and sprinkle in some regular PayPal gift cards from Swagbucks… and voila! No more mortgage.

No real tricks here, just a singular focus on the goal in front of us. If Swagbucks can help me reach my goal, I’m convinced it can help you do anything! Now what is your goal?