Perkstreet Checking: Best Bank If You Prefer Debit Cards Over Credit Cards

Regular readers will know that I like using credit cards for the cashback or travel rewards, even though I never carry a balance from month to month or pay any interest. However, I also accept that many people prefer debit cards as they suck money straight out of your checking account. If that sounds like like you, you’re not alone – when it comes to a charge card purchase, nationally it’s just as likely to be a debit card as a credit card. I get it – debit cards more psychologically similar to spending cash and there is no change of racking up a balance (although there are overdraft fees).

The best way to describe Perkstreet Financial is that it’s the best checking account if you don’t like using credit cards. They offer the best cashback rewards on debit cards by far:

• 2% cash back on all non-PIN debit card purchases when your checking account balance is $5,000 or more. For new accounts, you will earn 2% cash back no matter what your balance is for the first 3 months, starting on the day that your account is opened. If your balance that day is below $5k, you earn 1% cash back.
• 5% cash back at a rotating set of retailers. Up to $250 a year. For February 2012, they are H&R Block, Liberty Tax Service, Tax Slayer, Tax Hawk, TurboTax, Tax Club, Kohl’s.com and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

As long as you have some sort of activity each month (billpay, deposit, withdrawal, cleared check, debit card purchase) then there is no monthly fee. Some other improvements they’ve made are that you can deposit checks sent overnight for free at UPS Stores or Mailbox Etc. (or via free prepaid envelopes). They don’t offer ATM rebates like some other places like my account at Ally Checking, but they do offer 42,000 free ATMs across the country; use their ATM locator to see if there are convenient ones to you.

Right now, you can get an extra $25 bonus cash back when you apply for an account online by December 25th, fund with $25 or more, and use your card at least 3 times in the first month. (Ironically, last time I started an application they let me fund with with a credit card up to $500 and promised it would go through as a purchase and not a cash advance.)

Posted in Banking, Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »

Mastercard Savings Days $10 off $100 Amazon Purchase + $10 off $50 (12/20 Only)

Here’s another nice promotion via my Amazon Kindle w/ Special Offers, but it appears to be open to all. If you visit the offer page on 12/20, you will find a code that will take $10 off any $100 purchase of products sold by Amazon.com (no 3rd party sellers) when you use your Mastercard. In addition, you will later receive another coupon code code for $10 off $50. 12/20 only. Here is the text of the offer via e-mail:

To receive your $10 discount during the MasterCard Savings Days Promotion on December 20th:

1. Add $100 of eligible products as described on the promotion to your shopping cart.
2. At checkout, ensure MasterCard is selected as your method of payment.
3. Enter the promotion code found at the top of the landing page in step 1 and apply the code to your order. This group promotion code is only good for 24 hours (12:01AM PST to 11:59PM PST) or while discounts last. The discount will be reflected in your shopping cart total for orders over $100 on products sold by Amazon.com.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »

Groupon BuyLocal $10 Promotion

Here’s a quick Groupon promo for both new and existing users. You can get a $10 credit after registering on this page on 12/19 and buying a “local” Groupon worth $10+ by midnight 12/24. Valid for the first 150,000. Local means a physical business in your area – no online deals or getaways. More details in the FAQ.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 1 Comment »

BeFrugal.com: Another Cashback Shopping Portal – $10 Bonus

BeFrugal.com is yet another cashback shopping portal that gives a percentage back on online shopping purchases made through their links. Like most of the others, it’s also offering a $10 sign-up bonus for a limited-time to get you started. You’ll need to accrue $20 total (so an additional $10) to withdraw your rewards.

Other sites that I have successfully cashed out from are eBates ($10 new user bonus after any purchase of $25+), Mr. Rebates ($5 new user bonus – minimum cash-out balance is $10), or BigCrumbs (no bonus, but often offers the best payouts). The bonuses also help you reach the minimum cash-out requirements faster if you’re like me and don’t shop online all that much outside of Amazon.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 2 Comments »

Free $20 With New American Express Serve Account

American Express has a new money transfer and payment service – think PayPal – called Serve. To promote it, they are currently offering a $10 bonus just for signing up for a new account by 1/5/12. In addition, they have another promo site called PlayMoneyMover.com that will give you another $10 for playing their trivia game. You can’t actually lose, you either just get another question (google it!) or you can “phone a friend” (again, use your friend google!). Total: $20 for about 5 minutes of your time.

You’ll need to provide your name, email, and last 4 digits of SSN. You can either request your money via check (7-10 business days) or via online transfer to a linked bank account. Alternatively, they’ll send you a Serve ATM debit card that you can use anywhere AmEx is accepted. The first ATM withdrawal per month is free, $2 after that.

Eagle-eyed readers may also notice that you can load your account via credit card, and the usual 2.9% + $0.30 fee is waived until January 1, 2012. Don’t get too excited though, as they have a hidden limit of $100 per day and $250 total per month. (Try it if you like.) At 2% cash back, that’s a $5 benefit.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 53 Comments »

Recent Smaller Offers Updates & Follow-Up

From time to time, I post smaller deals that offer some sort of bonus or discount. This has been a feature of the blog since the very beginning – my 5th post ever on was about getting 10,000 free Delta miles back in December 2004 (very expired). Even though credit card deals tend to be the most lucrative, and some people may scoff at getting $10 here and $10 there, I actually find it fun and if I grab them all then it adds up. I try to only include deals with national availability, minimal effort and/or driving, and that don’t require any spending that you wouldn’t do otherwise.

Here’s a quick follow-up just to all the deals that have been going on recently, unfortunately several are expired:

• $20 from American Express Serve – Live. No spending required, just money in the bank.
• Mastercard $20 gift card for $200 purchase – Looks live. Register any Mastercard and get a $20 gift card after any $200 online purchase. Readers have reported success paying $200 towards their Comcast bill and auto insurance bills online.
• American Express Gift Chain – Still live. Getting stuff worth $2 to $500 after buying a $25 Wal-mart gift card that would be spent anyway, or others did the 44-cent method of mailing in stamped requests.
• Vente-Privee $20 credit with first purchase – Live. Got a $9 gift for free, $6 went to shipping, $5 net cash.
• Blockbuster Express $1 off rental codes – Live. I paused my Netflix subscription for a while because I could just get these for free. Prices went up for new release recently, however.
• Foursquare $10 off $10 – Unknown if this is expired, but I got $10 off any local small business that accepted American Express.
• American Express Small Business Saturday – Expired for 2011. Got $25 for every American Express card I had, just for spending $25 or more at any small business that takes American Express, including for gift certificates.
• Free 1-Year ShopRunner Membership – Expired now, but it ran for two separate days. $79 retail value. Though the actual value to me is less, 2-day shipping and the pre-paid return shipping labels is nice. I’ve already used it at GNC.com.
• Target: Free $10 Gift Card with $50 Purchase – Expired now, but this also came up twice. I already shop at Target anyway.

That’s over $100 value in about a month. And remember, if you have a spouse or partner you can potentially double everything. Finally, don’t forget to enter my own $5,000 giveaway!

Posted in Deals & Offers | 3 Comments »

How Opening and Closing Credit Card Accounts Affects Your Credit Score

I’ve been taking advantage of credit card bonuses and rewards for over 10 years now, earning thousands of dollars in perks while paying zero interest. I can honestly say that sign-up bonuses have never been larger than today. My rule used to be that I would only apply in exchange for at least $100, but now cards with $500 bonuses like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and the Citi ThankYou Premier Card have been around for several months. I basically paid for all my holiday shopping with them!

A common reader question is – how does opening and closing all these cards affect your credit score? I’ve answered parts of this question here and here, but here’s the all-in-one answer.

Credit Score Basics

Credit scores come from proprietary mathematical formulas, the most popular one being Fair Isaac (FICO). The input is the history and data from our credit reports. The output is a numerical prediction of our creditworthiness. Since we have 3 different credit reports (Experian, Equifax, Transunion), we have 3 different credit scores. They’ll never reveal all the ingredients to the secret sauce, otherwise they’d have nothing to sell us. Thus, we must make do with what we have. FICO has released this breakdown for us, along with many other collected details over time:

Effect of Opening New Credit Cards and/or Closing Existing Accounts

35% On-Time Payments. Not surprisingly, the biggest chunk of the score is your record of timely payments. If you pay your bills, you’re likely to… keep paying your bills! Briefly, anything 30-days late or worse can show up here, although a 60-day late or 90-day late is even worse. If you just barely miss a due date and pay it off within 30 days, it shouldn’t show up here. This factor has nothing to do with opening or closing credit cards.

30% Capacity Used. This refers to how much of your available credit you are using, also known as utilization ratio. The lower the better. Being maxed out on all your cards is obviously not a good sign. Utilization ratio is tracked both on an overall level and on a per card level. For example, having five different cards with a $1,000 balance each and $10,000 credit limit each (10% ratio x 5 cards) is better than having 4 cards with no balance and one card with the $5,000 balance (50% ratio on 1 card).

In the long run, having more credit cards would be a good thing as it should mean more available credit and a lower utilization ratio. For the same reason, you should never close a credit card unless not doing so would cost you money. You want to keep all the available credit you can.

15% Length of Credit History. The longer your credit history, the better. Both the age of your oldest account and the average age of all your accounts are tracked. Continuously opening new credit lines will thus hurt your credit score. At the same time, having a lot of old cards can “anchor” your average account age as well. If I already have 20 cards averaging 8 years old, adding another new credit card won’t make that average budge hardly at all. Recently, I learned that closing a credit card actually has no effect on your average age of accounts or credit history length. The closed account will stay on your credit report for 10 years.

If you have “young” credit history, you’ll need to balance the desire for new accounts (which will one day be old accounts) with how good your other factors currently are to keep a good credit score. Another strategy is to be added as an authorized user on someone else’s account with a long age. (They took this away for a while due to abuse, but brought it back. Just make sure it’s legit, for example with your spouse/partner or parents.)

10% Types of Credit Used. We’re getting to the lesser factors. How do I know? This factor refers to the mix of different credit accounts out there – revolving credit like credit cards, retail accounts (store cards), installment loans like auto loans, and home mortgages. Having a greater mix is better. However, I have never had a store card, auto loan, or a mortgage on my credit report, and my credit score has remained excellent. You definitely don’t need all of these types to have a good credit score.

Now, I do think it is a good idea to have at least some form of credit to show that you can handle the idea of borrowing something and paying it back. A credit card allows you to do this within the monthly grace period without paying any interest.

10% Past Credit Applications. This what everyone worries about, but it’s again we see it is only a 10% weighting. This factor makes sense though, as applying for a lot of credit in a short period of time is an indication of financial troubles. Therefore, you should be very careful with what are called “hard” credit inquiries. Hard credit inquiries (“pulls”) are usually from loan applications (asking for more credit). Soft credit inquiries occur when you are just checking your own credit score, or when other financial companies check your credit history as identity verification or for pre-approval offers (here, you didn’t ask for it).

Hard pulls affect your credit score negatively for a temporary period of time. For mortgage and auto loans, there are special accommodations by FICO for “rate-shopping”; All hard inquiries within a 14 day period for mortgages or auto loans will only count as one inquiry.

In regards to apply for new credit cards, it’s difficult to know the effect of a hard inquiry by itself, as a new credit card account will also affect the other factors above (average age of accounts, credit limits, utilization ratio). For someone with a longer credit history, a new credit card application will have little effect. For someone with zero credit cards, it will have a larger effect. The general consensus is that each hard pull knocks about 3-5 points off your credit score, and the effect decreases as time passes – after 6 months the effect is reduced, and after a year it is gone. The recording of inquiries does stay on your report for 2 years.

Takeaways

1. For a high credit score, the most important things to do are to pay your bills on time and not use all of your available credit limit. Don’t lose sight of this.
2. Applying for new credit cards will affect your score negatively for the short-term, with the effect going away over time and gone in a year. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t precious. Only apply if it’s worth it through lowering your existing interest rates, upfront bonuses, cash back, or travel rewards. Hard pulls are the same as cash for me!
3. Never close an existing credit card unless you are avoiding a fee or in exchange for something worthwhile (like a mortgage approval). Closing an account never helps your score, but only really hurts if it makes up a huge chunk of your existing credit limit.

Based on my own experiences, my personal choice is to limit myself to about 3-5 credit cards per rolling 6-month period (more when there are good offers and less when there isn’t). My primary concern is not really the credit score, but more the fact that individual issuers might not approve me just due to the inquiries even though my score is fine. I’ve scored over $2,000 in bonuses the last year alone, and that’s not even including my wife.

p.s. It’s not FICO, but now you can get your free credit scores with no trial periods from all 3 major credit bureaus. Tracking them regularly can alert you to significant changes in your reports.

Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 25 Comments »

Navy Federal Credit Union No Balance Transfer Fee Promotion

NavyFed Credit Union has a limited-time promotion going on until Sunday, December 11th where if you do a balance transfer from an external financial institutions to your existing Navy Federal card, you’ll get a fixed 0% promo APR for 12 months with no balance transfer fee.

Membership eligibility for NavyFed is primarily restricted to military personnel including Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force – including retirees and family members – but also include some civilian employees in Department of Defense. From the “existing” wording, it doesn’t appear that this applies to new card applications.

December 11th is Balance Transfer Day. It’s also your opportunity to save big! When you consolidate credit card balances from other financial institutions onto your existing Navy Federal card, the savings really add up. Get a 0% fixed promo APR* on balance transfers for 12 months. After that, your current standard variable purchase rate applies. And you’ll save even more because we don’t charge a balance transfer fee. You pay absolutely nothing—unheard of anywhere else!

Well, although it is indeed hard to find a no balance transfer fee 0% APR offer these days, it’s not “unheard of anywhere else”. Last month, the Slate Card from Chase also came out with 0% APR on both balance transfers and purchases for 15 months with no balance transfer fee and no annual fee. All you have to do is initiate your balance transfer within 30 days of opening the account.

Either way, both are a good opportunities to lower the interest rate on your existing balances and accelerate that debt-free payoff.

Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 8 Comments »

Citi ThankYou Preferred Card 50,000 Point Bonus = $500 in Gift Cards

(Update 2: I’ve been notified that 12/22 may be the last day to apply for this $500 gift card offer from the Citi ThankYou Preferred card. The promo details remain as noted below, but I should point out that the Citi ThankYou Premier Card is also offering a bonus worth 50,000 points = $500 in gift cards. Learn more about the Premier card offer here.

Briefly, the Premier card allows you to get a 33% bonus when redeeming towards airfare. And it’s easy to use! Prices are the same as Expedia, and you can mix cash and points when redeeming. That makes 50k points with a Premier card worth $665 in airfare. The spending requirement for the Premier is lower as well. However, while the Premier has no annual fee the first year it is $125 for subsequent years, while for the Preferred card there is no annual fee period. Decisions, decisions.)

The Citi ThankYou Preferred Card has upped their game with a 50,000 ThankYou Point bonus broken down into two parts: You get 25,000 bonus ThankYou Points after $5,000 in purchases within 6 months of account opening, and you get an additional 25,000 bonus points after another $5,000 in purchases are made within the next 6 months after that. You do not need to qualify for the first 25,000 points to be eligible to earn the second 25,000 points. See below for details on how this is worth $500 in gift cards, airfare, or a check towards your student loan or mortgage. No annual fee.

This offer is both better and worse from their last 50,000 point promo back in June. The required spending is higher, although spread out over a much longer period. You basically have to spend $5k within 6 months twice, for an average of $833 a month. However, the last offer was for the Premier card with a $125 annual fee. This Preferred version has no annual fee.

ThankYou Point Redemption Options

Here’s a summary of your best values for ThankYou points, in case you don’t want to slog through all the many redemption options at ThankYou.com. In general, it takes 10,000 ThankYou (TY) points to redeem for a $100 gift card to retailers like Gap, Banana Republic, Barnes & Noble, Bath and Body Works, Bed Bath & Beyond, Cabelas, CVS Pharmacy, Kohl’s, Land’s End, LL Bean, Sears, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Staples, and Walmart. Bolded are my favorites. So with 50,000 TY points, you could get five $100 gift cards from different stores.

Want something closer to cash? For a check mailed to you, it costs 8,000 points for $50. For a statement credit, it’s 7,500 points for $50. A check mailed towards your mortgage payment or student loan (made out to your lender) costs 2,500 points for $25. This works out to 1 cents per point. Otherwise, it may be better to redeem your points for a Walmart gift card and then sell it for cash at a site like PlasticJungle.com that offers you 90 cents+ on the dollar. I just checked, and a $500 Walmart gift card would net you $455 in cash or $477.75 in Amazon gift certificates.

Now let’s look at the advertised airplane ticket option. A good question is whether a flight booked through the ThankYou Travel Center costs the same as through any other travel site like Expedia, Orbitz, etc. I have some old ThankYou points lying around, so I went to the redemption site and found that the prices are very closely aligned to what is offered at sites like Expedia.com. I did a few quick searches for random flights, and the cost of the flight matched up with the cost in points in a 100:1 ratio. For example, the exact same flight below that cost $360 including taxes and fees on Expedia would cost 36,000 TY points. ThankYou Travel Center screenshot:

Expedia.com screenshot:

Citi couldn’t stay way, given all the other $500 value offers still hanging around. I love that this is the new standard for a simple credit inquiry, and that basically my wife and I can score at least $2,000 in free money a year, exempt from taxes, with as little as two credit applications per year. (We actually do much better than this…) We just refinanced a mortgage and got a new homeowner’s insurance policy, so I know it’s not hurting us in other areas either.

Quick recap. 50,000 ThankYou Points = $500 in gift cards, ($500 Walmart Gift can be easily sold for $450+ online), $500 to pay down your student loan, $500 to pay down your mortgage balance, or $500 in airfare at the same rates as available at Expedia.com.

Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 55 Comments »

Free 1-Year ShopRunner Membership

(Update 4: Gone again. Was open on 12/2 and 12/9.)

Shoprunner is similar to Amazon Prime in that it offers unlimited free 2-day shipping with no minimum order amount from a variety of online merchants. Today only, they are offering a 1-year free membership to the first 10,000 people who sign up. You do not need to enter a credit card number, it is optional.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 2 Comments »

American Express Gift Card Fee Waiver Promo Code (Updated in 2012)

In addition to being a flexible gift idea, American Express Gift Cards are useful for time-shifting your purchases forward, in case you’re still working on satisfying spending requirements for juicy credit card offers like the $500 cash bonus from the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card or any of the other $500+ credit card bonuses out there right now.

Here are updated, active promotion codes that will waive the $3.95 purchase fee for American Express gift cards:

EMOCTWL, valid through 12/31/11
EMSVCA, valid through 1/31/12

There are also fees for shipping; 2-day shipping is $5.95. However, if you sign up for their “Premium Shipping Plan”, you can get free next-day air shipping trial for 90 days. Canceling is easy and can be done online; Thanks to reader Albrecht for these detailed instructions:

-Log in to Amex
-Gift Cards at the bottom of the page
-Manage your orders
-Shipping Addresses section
-Your Premium Shipping Plan free trial will end in xx days.
-View
-Cancel

Finally, you can use certain cashback shopping portals like eBates ($5 bonus, 1% back) or BigCrumbs (1.6% back) to earn even more back.

Expired Codes:
EMDADWL, valid through 9/30/11

Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 32 Comments »

Target: Free $10 Gift Card with $50 Purchase

(Update: This coupon is back again, now with an expiration date of 12/10/11. A new tip that I read about is to buy Amazon Kindle gift cards as part of your purchase if you wish, as they work on anything at Amazon.com. I have confirmed that the coupon works, but not the Amazon part.)

Target has a new “Facebook Friends and Fans” promotion offering a printable coupon for a free $10 Target Gift card with $50 Target purchase. Not a bad deal for regular shoppers. Did you know that using the Target REDcard credit card gives you 5% back on all Target purchases? There is also a debit card version that sucks money out of your existing checking account.

You must allow a Java applet to run that makes sure you only print the coupon once per computer. I’m happy to report it even worked on my Mac, which often has problems with these coupon printing plugins.

Posted in Deals & Offers | 12 Comments »