My 4 and 1/2 Cent Dinner at Olive Garden

Yes, it's true. Nathan and I slipped away the other night for a romantic dinner at the Italian legend. How did we get it so cheap? First of all, we had a coupon from the newspaper for $4 off two entrees, so we ordered two entrees. Then, we had a $25 gift card that I'd gotten for free through MyPoints. After subtracting those two things the bill came to $.18! But where did I get the 4.5 cent tally? While we waited for our meals we enjoyed the complementary breadsticks and soup/salad. It was a busy night, so by the time our meals came we were nearly full! We took most of our meals home in a box and had them for dinner the next night. So we got 4 meals for 18 cents! At that price, we could afford to leave a veeeeeery nice tip.

This is the second time I've gotten a $25 gift card to Olive Garden by participating in MyPoints for only a few months. You can build up points just by opening emails from them and following links to their partner sites. You never have to buy anything, but if you're planning on buying things anyway you can build up points by going to MyPoints first and then going to your destination (eBay, Barnes & Noble, walmart.com, etc.) You can also earn points by filling out surveys online or participating in free trials, like Netflix. If this sounds like fun to you, let me email you an invitation to sign up. (You will probably want to create a new email account just for MyPoints because some of the ways you can build points are by signing up for newsletters and stuff that you wouldn't want to go to your regular email.) Of course, you could just go to MyPoints and sign up yourself, but if you let me invite you then we both get more points!