NEW YORK (BankingMyWay) — Planning for a family member’s education is a complicated reality for most families, but lending giant Sallie Mae (Stock Quote: SLM) is trying to make it easier on their pocketbooks: $600 million easier. That’s the number the lender says that its members have saved toward college by using a secret weapon – Sallie Mae’s Upromise college savings program.

Upromise is a “free service that helps you get money for college bills and student loans from the things you do all the time: buy groceries, shop online, fill your gas tank and much more,” according to Sallie Mae. It works by linking a credit card to your Upromise account or shopping directly with certain Upromise partners.

The partner list includes:

• 700+ online stores (such as BestBuy.com, eBay.com, Expedia.com, Apple Store)
• Nearly 8,500 restaurants
• 21,000+ grocery and drug stores
• Other companies (like Avis, Century 21, ExxonMobil)

The service comes at a good time, as college costs keep right on rising. College seniors who graduated in 2009 had an average of $24,000 in student loan debt, according to the Project on Student Debt. At the same time, unemployment for recent college graduates climbed from 5.8% in 2008 to 8.7% in 2009 - the highest annual rate on record for college graduates, the organization says.

Sallie Mae wants its Upromise customers to think of it as an amped-up “cash-back” rewards program, only the money goes to college savings or to pay off a student loan. The company’s claim that customers have saved $600 million toward college costs would translate into a fully-paid college education for 20,000 students.

Some consumers are undeniably saving some serious cash using the program. “I just paid my son’s last tuition payment with the rewards I’ve saved using Upromise,” said Linda Murphy of Massachusetts, a Upromise customer since 2002. “My savings accumulated to $9,000 primarily from shopping online at participating companies and using the Upromise credit card.”

At 25% cash-back, magazine subscriptions are far and away the best source of college cash through UPromise. But even at 4%, the cash-back rate when dining out at selected restaurants, Upromise does better than most cash-back credit cards.

To get even more mileage out of the program, you can sign up for an Upromise World MasterCard (Stock Quote: MA) through Bank of America (Stock Quote: BAC), which offers an additional 2% back on eligible online purchases at more than 700 online retailers that can be directed towards education expenses.

That’s a pretty good deal, and whether your goal is to save for college or pay off your loans more quickly, Upromise deserves a closer look. The closer you look, the better the deal looks.

—For more ways to save, spend, invest and borrow, visit MainStreet.com.