Alexander's College Fund

We're starting a college fund for Alexander. If you want to send him some money, any direct donations we receive will go straight into a savings account for him, and will only be used for his education.

Another way we've found to start saving money for Alexander is through Upromise. Upromise offers two ways to earn money for Alexander. Anyone can do it, and it doesn't cost anything (see comments below).

One way is to register your grocery store cards with them. Certain food companies will give Alexander a small percentage of your purchase of selected items when you use your grocery store card, which you would be doing anyway if you have one.

The other way is to register your credit cards with them. When you use your registered credit card with certain merchants, they will give Alexander a certain amount of money or small percentage of the purchase.

If you would like to do this, great! If not, that's okay, too. I'll never know anyway. However, before you say yes, please read the next part...

There is no direct catch to this! There are two indirect catches to this.

One is that they hope to get you to buy the goods and services that will earn Alexander money. That's fine, but I have no intention of letting that guide my purchasing decisions. If all else is equal, I'll choose the one that earns Alexander a few cents. Otherwise, I'll choose whatever I think is best. I would not expect anyone else to do any different.

The other indirect catch is that they track and sell information on your spending habits. This is the biggest thing. If you are using a grocery store card, the grocery store (and whoever the store sells the information to) is already doing this. I don't see any harm is letting Upromise do the same.

However, I do have concerns about letting them track (and sell information about) my credit card purchasing habits. I'm sure the credit card companies and banks are already doing this to some extent, and there is not much we can do about that. Is it a good idea to give Upromise information about all of our credit cards, and give Upromise permission to track all of them and sell that information? I don't know. For now, I have decided to agree to that. I would never ask anyone else to do so.

On that note, if you decide you want to join in and help build Alexander's college fund this way, go to Upromise.com and sign up. After you have created an account, you should get an option to specify who the account is for. A page will be displayed to "Add a Student." On that page, select the option "You are saving for the student of a relative or friend". From there, you will be asked for the email address of that person; use eg_upromise_com@email.burr.cc.

Thank you!