Archive for the 'Deals & Offers' Category
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Still not much action in interest rate land, but here’s another update.
Reward Checking Accounts
These are checking accounts, usually through local credit unions, that pay a very high interest rate if you jump through some hoops each month. However, if you make a mistake you’ll forfeit virtually all your interest for that month, so it can be tricky. But for the very diligent, their rates are still averaging around 3-5% APY usually on balances up to $25,000. A current example is FAB&T Kasasa checking at 3.50% APY on up to $50k, which requires 10 check card purchases each month, a direct deposit/auto-withdrawal, must log into your account once a month, and online statements only.
For more, see my review of rewards checking accounts and also this list of accounts by state. I’d stick with small local credit unions with limited membership eligibility if possible, as the rates tend to be more stable.
Online Savings Accounts Rate Updates
- Everbank is offering 2.51% APY for the first 3 months for new accounts. This rate is higher than any 3-month certificates of deposit currently available.
- ShoreBank Direct is offering 1.95% APY on its online savings account with $1 to open and no monthly fees.
- Ally Bank Online Savings recently raised their “no fine print” savings account rate to 1.64% APY. No minimums, no monthly fees.
Certificates of Deposit
As stated above, for 3-months or less go with Everbank. In general, CD rates have been very low, and given how fast rates can rise as compared to how much further they might fall, I don’t see the benefit in locking up for money for a slightly longer period of time. For example, a top 1-Year CD might get you 2% APY, while stretching out to 3 years might bump you up to 2.80% APY, according to CD “auction” site MoneyAisle.
If you are in a high tax bracket and have a 5-6 year horizon, you may also want to research the Vanguard Intermediate-Term Tax-Exempt mutual fund (VWITX). It currently has an average duration of 5.5 years and an SEC yield of 3.01% that is exempt from federal income taxes. In the 35% tax bracket, that is a tax-equivalent yield of ~4.61%. A top 5-year CD from MoneyAisle yields 3.39% APY. VWITX is not FDIC-insured and invests in high-grade municipal bonds, so weigh your options carefully.
Remember, the new $250,000 FDIC & NCUA insurance limits per titled accounts are currently extended through 2013.
Posted in Banking, Deals & Offers | 13 Comments »
Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Need to check your credit score? Here’s a new coupon for 26% off real FICO scores and all other credit products at myFico.com. Use the promotional code NOVEMBER26 to get 26% off and a FICO score for less than $12, the best discount currently available:
The code is good until November 30th (although try it anyways and see if it works after that date), so be quick about it. For the Equifax credit score only, you can get it for $10.95 using the code SW94608, which is over 30% off. You enter the promo code relatively late in the buying process, right before entering your credit card information. Look for this:
Experian no longer allows Fair Isaac to sell FICO scores to consumers at all (even though lenders still buy and use them). They sell their own “FAKE-O” version now. Lenders almost always use FICO scores in their decisions, so those are the only ones you should pay for if at all.
For the diligent, a cheaper alternative is to sign up for a free 30-day trial of Scorewatch, which includes two free Equifax scores and reports. Just remember to cancel as soon as you decide you don’t need it anymore. You are allowed to cancel online, without having to even call in.
You can always request your credit reports (not scores) once every 12 months at AnnualCreditReport.com. If you’ve already done that, you can still try these other direct methods for the unemployed, those denied credit, and victims of identity theft.
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 2 Comments »
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Coin-changing machine operator CoinStar is running a promotion where if you change $40 in coins into a gift card, you can receive an additional $10 gift card by mail. They offer to exchange coins into gift cards with no fee for several stores, the most popular probably being Amazon.com followed by CVS, Starbucks, Lowe’s, and iTunes.
Perhaps empty out that coin jar and cross someone off your gift list and well? Below is selected fine print from the official rules:
Obtain an official claim form when you convert in a single transaction at least 40 U.S. dollars (in coins only) into a gift card or eCertificate at participating Coinstar Centers. The claim form will be displayed at the end of qualified Coinstar® receipts.
General terms and conditions: the $10 holiday bonus offer ends 12/6/09. Offer valid in the U.S. only and excludes Puerto Rico. Offer good on qualified coin transactions made between 11/9/09 and 12/6/09. Transactions occurring before or after these dates are not eligible for this offer. Limit 1 per name, address, or household.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »
Friday, November 13th, 2009
BBVA Compass Bank is offering a free 8gb iPod Touch when you open a checking account with $100 and set up direct deposit for 6 months. Unfortunately, there are a lot of restrictions. For one, you must reside in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, or Texas. Secondly, the iPod is offered through a third-party fulfillment company (think mail-in rebates…) to which you actually have to pay the shipping and handling. Thanks to reader Susan for the tip. Selected fine print:
*To qualify for this offer, you must (1) by December 15, 2009, open a new BBVA Compass Build-to-Order consumer checking account with a minimum deposit of at least $100, (2) within 6 weeks of account opening, your paychecks must begin to be directly deposited into your new checking account at least once each statement cycle. At 6 months your account will be verified again to confirm you are still meeting the payroll direct deposit requirement. If not, BBVA Compass will debit $180 (the approximate cost of the iPod touch) from your checking account.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 12 Comments »
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Hawaiian Airlines is celebrating their 80th anniversary by giving out 80 free miles to anyone who registers, or every 80th person will get an $80 eCertificate. As usual, this is a free way to reset miles expiration. Ends today (11/11)! Register here.
All of us here at Hawaiian Airlines are grateful to you — our HawaiianMiles members — whose loyalty has made our 80th anniversary possible.
To celebrate, as we near the big day, we’re giving every HawaiianMiles member 80 free miles or an $80 eCertificate towards a flight between Hawaii and the Mainland U.S. Everyone will receive 80 miles just for registering and every 80th person to register will receive an $80 eCertificate in place of the miles.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
In case you missed this on the front page of Google today, they are offering free WiFi at 47 participating airports and on every Virgin America flight from now until January 15, 2010. Many other airports already offer free internet, so give it a try when traveling. From their FAQ:
Q. What are you announcing?
In addition to working with Virgin America, Google has partnered with over 45 airports across the country to offer complimentary WiFi to travelers passing through these cities this holiday season (November 10, 2009 through January 15, 2010).
Q. Why is Google doing this?
We’d like to make the holiday travel crunch a little easier and more pleasant – and what better way to do it than with what we know best: the Internet?
Q. Who is powering this service?
We are working with Boingo, Advanced Wireless Group, Time Warner Cable, Electronic Media Systems, Lilypad as well as numerous airports that provide wireless services themselves.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 5 Comments »
Monday, November 9th, 2009
Online broker TradeKing has extended their $50 sign-up bonus for new accounts another month, until November 30th. You must open with $2,500, fund within 30 days, and make a trade within 180 days of account opening.
4) To qualify for this offer, new accounts must be opened and funded with $2,500 or more. Account funding must occur within 30 days of account opening, and one trade must be executed within 180 days of account opening, for account to qualify. Offer is not transferable or valid in conjunction with any other offer. Open to US residents only. One offer per household. TradeKing can modify or discontinue this offer at anytime without notice. The minimum funds of $2,500 must remain in the account (minus any trading losses) for a minimum of 6 months or the credit may be surrendered. Other restriction may apply.
TradeKing offers $4.95 trades with no minimum balance requirement. I’ve been using them for a while, they are a good basic broker. For more information, please check out my TradeKing Review.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Investing | 7 Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Just got an e-mail from MicroPlace that they are running a gift certificate promotion where if you buy a $20 GC, you get another $20 GC free. The gift recipient can then lend out the money to a poor entrepreneur and receive interest + $20 back later. Since the person actually gets the money back (or at least most of it assuming some defaults), and thus isn’t the same as a “$XX has been donated in your name” gift, I think it’s a cool twist on gift cards.
Give a Gift that Keeps on Giving
Give a unique and special gift this holiday season. It is a gift of connection, a gift of hope, and a gift that believes that poor people can use their ingenuity and hard work to break out of the cycle of poverty.
Your gift can help fund loans to poor people who could start a business, save, and work their way out of poverty. And when you purchase a gift certificate of $20 or more on MicroPlace, we’ll give you a free gift certificate of $20 to send to someone else on your shopping list!
To learn more about Microplace check out these posts, including my last microlending update.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Giving Back | 7 Comments »
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Here’s a nice credit card offer for those interested in international travel. The Chase British Airways Visa Signature card is offering 50,000 BA Executive Club miles for new cardmembers with first purchase, and another 50,000 BA miles after spending $2,000 within 3 months, for 100,000 miles total. Regular features include earning 1.25 miles per dollar spent. The card does have an annual fee of $75 as well.
50,000 British Airways miles is enough for an economy class transatlantic flight from USA to their “Europe Zone 1″, which includes the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and Switzerland. Note that “all reward flights are subject to taxes, fees, charges and surcharges, including airline surcharges.”, which can add up. I did a quick search and for a random San Francisco (SFO) to London (LHR) flight in March 2010 that cost $807, the taxes and fees alone were $387.
You’ll also need to fly out of a major city that BA services (see route map). Still, two free flights from US to London even for a few hundred dollars each is a big discount for those looking to buy such a ticket anyways.
What if you like to fly in style? 100,000 miles is good for a single business class ticket from USA to Europe Zone 1… and the fees are more reasonable on a relative basis. A business class flight from SFO to Paris (CDG) in March 2010 would have cost around $4,700 in cash, but the fees/taxes are only about $400 as well:
Finally, if you can manage to spend $30,000 a year on the card, you can even earn a 2-for-1 companion voucher. Time to buy some coins? Thanks to reader Paul for the tip.
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 15 Comments »
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
Prosper.com was the first big name in the person-to-person lending space. Things have been quiet recently, as they took a while getting SEC approval for their investment notes. In addition, the problems with “old” Prosper included the fact that they let just about anyone apply for a loan in the beginning, including people with horrible credit who had been basically turned down everywhere else. Many lenders thought charging a 35% interest rate was enough - it wasn’t. But as this recent Washington Post article outlines, things are picking up in the P2P space.
The way I see it, LendingClub (review, $25 bonus, performance update) basically looked at all the problems that Prosper had and tried their best to fix them. So now, Prosper is back, and in turn looks a lot like LendingClub. For example, LC requires a 660 minimum credit score to qualify for their lowest grade loan (amongst other things), and now Prosper requires a new borrower to have at least a 640 credit score with their new ratings system. With both, you can have them automatically construct a portfolio for you based on your risk/return preference, and you can buy/sell notes before maturity on a open trading market.
Prosper still has their “reverse auction” eBay-style method of determining the interest rate, but lenders are now are restricted to a specific range of interest rates. (LendingClub simply sets the interest rates for you.)
In order to stimulate lending activity, they have a few incentives going on. If you sign up as a lender and bid on two loans (minimum total investment of $50), they will provide you a free $50 bonus. Click here and on the orange “Invest Now” button and you’ll see it. You must reinvest this $50 by the end of 2009. On top of that, Prosper is also offering a 1% or 2% “rebate” back if you invest at least $1,000 or $5,000, which would help juice your returns. Details:
Starting on October 12 if you invest $1,000 - $4,999 you will receive a 1% cash rebate into your Prosper account or, invest $5,000 or more and receive a 2% cash rebate into your Prosper account. Lenders must invest the funds during the promotional period of October 12 through November 15 by being a winning bidder on loan listings that result in funded loans. Notes purchased through the trading platform are excluded from the promotion. Once you have bid and invested on the loan listings your 1% or 2% cash rebate will be deposited into your Prosper account by December 4.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Investing | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Here’s a timely offer, at least for me. New-ish online broker OptionsHouse is offering 100 free trades when you open a new account with at least $3,000 with the promo code FREE100. The 100 free trades work for both stock and options trades, and are good for 60 days after funding. On top of that, their regular price for stock trades is only $2.95, while their options trades cost a flat $9.95 with no additional contract fees. Finally, there are no monthly minimum balances and no maintenance fees. Not a bad price structure.
Quality-wise, they promote the fact that Barron’s rated them #1 in Trade Experience and in the top tier overall in their March 2009 broker review. Although not a big name yet, they do seem like they are ready for serious traders. Here’s a snippet of the review:
Pros: As its name suggests, Options House has a lot of great tools for the options trader. Backed by market maker Peak6, this broker lets its retail customers use quite a few professional-level tools. Building a spread is very intuitive on this system, as is rolling a call or put from one strike to another. The site’s motto is “Fast matters,” and that goes for everything from finding possible trades to populating an order ticket to executing the trade itself.
Portfolio-analysis tools are top-notch here, too. The Risk Viewer includes a what-if calculator showing what could happen based on various market scenarios.
Options House also offers the Maxit tax-management tool for free. Although this is a Web-based platform, it has the flexibility and power of many of the software platforms.
Cons: No mobile access yet. However, the company says it is coming later this year. Limited fixed-income and mutual-fund offerings.
As noted I am starting to invest in some ETFs, so I might give these guys a spin. After looking through their fee schedule I noticed that they all partial outgoing ACAT transfers for free, which means that it won’t cost very much for me to move my holdings out if I need to. (Just transfer the important holdings out, keep one unimportant holding, and then sell it later.) I hope their free tax-management tools does my Schedule D for me.
Update: I just applied - relatively straightforward application, at the end you need to fax/mail in a signature page and a copy of your driver’s license or utility bill. They allow ACH funding online.
Posted in Deals & Offers, Investing | 7 Comments »
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
The Chase Sapphire Card is a new rewards credit card that is offering 10,000 bonus points after your first purchase on the credit card, which can be redeemed for $100 cash. No annual fee.
As a rewards card, it offers 1 point for every dollar in purchases (100 points = $1, or the usual 1% back). The nice part is that redemptions are easy - you can even redeem in $1 increments as long as above $25, so you could cash out $27 or $113 without anything left over. There are no earning caps, or points expiration dates.
In addition, you can get double points on airfare booked through their Ultimate Rewards website. It also promotes a “premium, dedicated service line that gives you access to a live person anytime, 24/7.” Fine print:
10,000 bonus points
You will qualify for and receive your bonus after your first purchase/first use of the card. First purchase/first use includes purchases, balance transfers, or any checks that are used to access your account, and excludes cash advances. After qualifying, please allow 6 to 8 weeks for bonus points to post to your account. This one-time bonus offer is valid only for first-time cardmembers with new accounts.
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 10 Comments »
Friday, October 30th, 2009
This is a reminder that the Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 Plan is offering some excellent incentives for those looking to start putting some money aside for college. Open to residents of any state, the best part is that this is one of the nation’s best 529 plans for those looking for low-cost investment options and a good customer experience. Here’s an example of how a couple can earn a free $150 jumpstart on their college fund. While I use the term “parent”, this would work for any two people - grandparents, aunts, brothers, friends, etc.
- Parent #1 opens a new Ohio 529 account using a referral from an existing user (details below). They list the child’s name as beneficiary. Parent #1 earns $25 incentive.
- Parent #2 open a new Ohio 529 account as well, using a referral from Person #1. This account can also list the child’s name as beneficiary. Parent #1 earns $50, and Parent #2 earns $25.
- Both people also start a automatic savings plan with just a $25 minimum monthly deposit (details below). This earns another $25 each.
- Add them all up, and that amounts to $150 in free money towards college. All the applications and deposits are done electronically quickly and with minimal hassle. Keep up the automatic deposits, and make saving for college easy.
Refer-A-Friend Bonus
If you open a new account and enter the referral code of an existing member, the new member will get a $25 bonus into their account. The referring member will get $50. My referral code is 2439350. This current promotion expires December 15, 2009. Many more details here.
$25 Systematic Savings Bonus
If you start a new recurring electronic funds transfer (EFT) from your bank account into your 529 account of at least $25 per month for 3 months, you will receive a separate bonus of $25. This recurring transfer must be started by January 31, 2010. Many more details here.
Posted in College & Education, Deals & Offers | 11 Comments »
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
You can now add the voicemail features of Google Voice to your existing cell phone service for free. Check out the Google Blog post and Engadget.
More specifically, if you sign up for Google Voice with your existing number, you’ll get:
* Online, searchable voicemail
* Free automated voicemail transcription
* Custom voicemail greetings for different callers
* Email and SMS notifications
* Low-priced international calling
If you already have a Google Voice account, go to Settings and look for a link by your cell phone number. If you want one, people have been getting their invite requests filled within a few days. Don’t forget all the ways you can save money with Google Voice.
It would be convenient to have voicemail-to-text sent automatically via SMS. However, currently it appears that Sprint does not support free call forwarding and charges 20 cents per minute, so I’m left out for now. A short explanatory video from Google is below:
Read the rest of this entry…
Posted in Deals & Offers | 3 Comments »
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
American Express has a new card called the Premier Rewards Gold Card, which offers these primary perks:
* Earn 15,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $1,000 in your first 3 months of Card membership. MR points are very versatile, and can be converted to 15,000 frequent flier miles in a number of programs (or 10 Southwest credits), or you can simply get $150 in gift cards at several stores like Home Depot, Crate & Barrel, or Macy’s. I think you can also get cash equivalents at a reduced ratio.
* Offers 3X points on airfare, 2X points on gas and groceries, and 1X points on everything else.
* Earn 15,000 Membership Rewards bonus points when you spend $30,000 per calendar year.
* No annual fee for your first year. After that it is $175.
There are two ways to maximize this offer. The easy way is to simply sign-up, grab the 15,000 MR points bonus, and then cancel anytime within the first year, that’s a quick $150+ bonus which is rare these days.
The only other scenario is that you are a big spender and purchase a lot of airfare, because triple MR points is pretty rare and you’ll have to reach that $30,000 spending target to offset the $175 annual fee after the first year.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 11 Comments »
