Grocery stores and other retailers have made saving money easier on customers by issuing loyalty cards and eliminating the need to clip coupons. However, those of us who use those cards know that they add up quickly.

That’s where Key Ring Thing comes in. It lets you combine your Ace Hardware card and grocery store card and whatever else you have.

Spreading your loyalty around

You can combine up to six different cards on your Key Ring Thing. All you have to do is sign up online. Gather your cards, and you can enter in your various bar codes at the company’s web site.

The site also says you are entitled to a free gift with your Key Ring Thing. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but it is not a free cash advance.

Common sense

I tried a little experiment to find out which pieces of plastic in my wallet could be converted onto a Key Ring Thing. As expected, it accepted my Safeway and Albertsons cards. It said it could not find “Subway” or my library card in its database. But, hey, I had to try.

No charge?

Well, of course you have to pay for shipping and handling if you want the company to mail your Key Ring Thing. However, you can print out temporary cards for free and use them as you need them. You can also save your Key Ring Thing information to your iPhone.

Other features

Besides getting your current loyalty cards bundled into one, you can also sign up for new programs through the Key Ring Thing web site. If you need  to be loyal to more than six retailers, you can order multiple cards.

One last piece of advice: If you want to take advantage of Key Ring Thing, wait until tomorrow. This little device made it onto Good Morning America, so the web site is “experiencing an unusually high number of requests.”