Archive for the 'Deals & Offers' Category
Friday, November 30th, 2012
Update: I’m surprised that this offer is still available, but don’t know if it will last past the end of the year. Details are below, but the Slate card is offering 0% interest for 15 months with no balance transfer fee, no application fee, and no annual fee. Keep in mind that you have 60 days from the date of account opening to request a balance transfer with no fee. If you have multiple Chase credit cards, the 60 day period may also give you some time to consolidate your credit lines together to make your Slate credit line bigger.
New, improved offer! The Slate® from Chase is now available with 0% APR on both balance transfers and purchases for 15 months, and the best part: NO balance transfer fee! There are different flavors of this card, but you should see it mentioned right at the top of this specific offer link. You can literally borrow money for free and pay it back in 15 months with no interest (keeping in mind you’ll still need to satisfy the minimum payment each month until then). No annual fee.
It is very rare these days to find a no balance transfer fee 0% APR offer that is available to all (as opposed to being targeted only to specific customers). You can verify in the Pricing & Terms section of the application, down in the Fees box:
None on transfers made within 60 days of account opening. All other transfers: Either $5 or 3% of the amount of each transfer, whichever is greater.
Make sure you initiate that balance transfer within the first 60 days.
Lower your interest on balances!
This is a great opportunity for those people with good to excellent credit but are still working hard to lower their debt payments with no fees at all, as now you can have all your money applied directly into cutting down your principal instead of having it go towards interest. That way, your balance owed will go down that much faster.
Chase Blueprint is a free feature on select cards that lets you break down your balances into things that you want to pay in full each month and bigger purchases that you wish to pay off over time.
Earn interest with the money?
It’s been a while since I did any sort of credit card arbitrage, but you can still get some pretty high rates with certain rewards checking accounts. Another good option is U.S. Savings Bonds.
If you wish to get cash from this balance transfer offer without it being classified as a “cash advance”, one idea is to ask for the balance transfer as a check or electronically transferred to your bank account. You may need to call them for this. Another option is to request money to be transferred to other non-Chase credit cards that you have, ideally already with a balance on them. This will create a negative balance, after which you request a refund check be sent to you. I know that Citibank had a feature on their site to request a credit balance refund, which only showed up when you have a negative balance.
“Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the issuer. This site may be compensated through the issuer’s Affiliate Program.”
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 29 Comments »
Sunday, November 25th, 2012
Update: Citi has another holiday promotion, offering 40,000 bonus American Airlines miles with their co-branded American Airlines Visa Signature Card and annual fee waived for the first year. That’s enough for a free first-class or two free economy domestic award tickets. Details below.
For those of you that fly American Airlines and/or already have similar Citi AA cards, the new Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® Visa Signature® Card (yikes what a long name) just announced a bunch of improvements and perks to make this card more attractive. The good news is that these perks are also extended to existing consumer cardholders of Citi AA cards of the same level.
New cardholder bonus:
- 40,000 American Airlines bonus miles: Earn 40,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles after $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of cardmembership*
- Annual fee is $95.00, waived for first 12 months.
American Airlines perks:
- Free checked bag. Your first eligible checked bag is free*
- Free Priority Boarding. Priority Boarding with Group 1 privileges* and 25% savings on eligible in-flight purchases*
- 10% rebate on award redemptions. Earn 10% of your redeemed AAdvantage miles back – up to 10,000 AAdvantage miles each calendar year*
- 25% savings on in-flight purchases (food, beverages, and headsets).
- Earn a $100 American Airlines Flight Discount every cardmembership year with qualifying purchases and cardmembership renewal*
- Double miles on American Airlines purchases. Double AAdvantage miles on eligible American Airlines purchases* like plane tickets
and 1 AAdvantage mile for every $1 spent on other purchases.
Also note that there are usually reduced mileage award prices for certain routes each quarter (17,500 miles for roundtrip economy instead of 25,000) if you have an Citi AA card.
Finally, there is a similar 50k offer for the business card. If you apply for both card on the same day at the same time using different web browsers, that will help you get approved for both cards and get you to 100,000 miles. Of course, you’ll have to satisfy two sets of spending requirements.
In summary, this card is now much better-targeted for those that fly American Airlines on a regular basis.
Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® Visa Signature® Card application link
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 8 Comments »
Sunday, November 25th, 2012
Citi has rolled out a limited-time promotion for its
Citi ThankYou® Preferred Rewards Card. Get 10,000 bonus ThankYou Points after you make $500 in purchases within the first 3 months after account opening—good for $100 in gift cards. There is no annual fee with this card to worry about.
With 1 ThankYou Point for every $1 you spend on all purchases and 0% intro APR on Balance Transfers and Purchases for 12 months. After that, the variable APR will be 12.99%-22.99% based upon your creditworthiness. Enjoy global acceptance and enhanced security with your Citi Card with Chip at merchants that use chip terminals to accept payment and points don’t expire or have a cap on how many you can earn.
Also, there is a new Citi Price Rewind feature that protects you against future price drops. You must register your purchase, and then if the same item is found with a price at least $25 lower than what you paid within 30 calendar days of your purchase, you can be refunded the difference.
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 7 Comments »
Sunday, November 25th, 2012
Personal Capital is running a Cyber Monday promotion where the first 2,500 people who sign up on Monday, November 26th and link up a financial account will get a free $20 Amazon gift card. Fine print quoted below. The page appears live now, but I’d wait until the proper time noted – midnight to midnight Pacific time.
In a nutshell, Personal Capital is basically Mint.com for your portfolio (free online aggregation of your investment accounts) with the option of a fee-based financial advisor (how they make money). For the long version, see my Personal Capital review.
The Cyber Monday reward offer is valid only for the first 2,500 people who sign up for Personal Capital between 12:00am PT on Monday, November 26 and 12:00am PT Tuesday, November 27th. Those who choose to sign up on Cyber Monday must link one valid financial account. PayPal accounts do not count towards the giveaway. Limit one gift card per person.
Posted in Deals & Offers | 14 Comments »
Friday, November 23rd, 2012
Capital One 360 has a few Black Friday weekend deals for their 360 checking account and their Kids Savings Account, some easy bonus money that you can use to pay for those gifts. The checking account is designed to complement the savings account, and actually pays higher interest for large balances. Good for 3 days only, from now until Sunday at midnight Eastern.
$125 360 Checking account opening bonus
Open a 360 Checking account November 23rd – 25th and make a total of 10 purchases (either signature or PIN-based) using your 360 Checking Card or 10 CheckMate deposits (or any combination of the two) within 45 days. Your $125 bonus will be automatically deposited into your account on day 50. Bonus only available for new 360 checking accounts.
Open a Kids Savings Account and get a $10 bonus.
Open a Kids Savings Account November 23rd – 25th and we’ll put a $10 bonus into your new account. Only available when you open a new account with at least one new Customer (either you or the kiddo must be a new Customer to Capital One 360). $10 bonus starts earning interest upon account opening, and is available for withdrawal after 30 days. A kid-friendly 0.75% variable APY (effective 11/21/2012)
Posted in Banking, Deals & Offers | 9 Comments »
Thursday, November 22nd, 2012
Black Friday Weekend Promo: American Express is offering both no purchase fees and free standard shipping (no promo code required) on all American Express Gift cards from 11/22 to 11/26. Usually, you can only get one or the other even if you have the proper promo code. This is very handy for bulk gifts and meeting credit card spending hurdles and you can buy them with any major credit card (details below). 
New codes added. 
American Express Gift Cards are a flexible gift idea, as they have no inactivity fees, expiration dates, or other fees to the recipient. If they are ever lost or stolen, the remaining balance can be refunded or replaced.
In addition, they 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 $400 cash bonus from the Chase Sapphire Preferred(SM) Card or any of the other $500+ credit card bonuses out there right now. You can buy these gift cards with any AmEx, Visa, Mastercard, or Discover card. Satisfy the hurdle, earn your rewards/cashback/points, and then spend them at your own pace without changing your buying habits.
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Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 44 Comments »
Wednesday, November 21st, 2012
Updated with new $20 offer. American Express and Facebook have an ongoing promotion called Link, Like, Love. If you connect your Facebook account with your American Express card, you will gain access to exclusive offers. You can only link one AmEx card up per Facebook account, so you may need to use multiple accounts for multiple cards as the offers may differ. Some are more finely targeted than others, but currently available are:
- $20 back after $200+ in purchases at Best Buy or BestBuy.com. You can just buy a $200 Amazon Kindle gift card from a physical Best Buy store’s gift card section. Amazon Kindle gift card codes are actually valid towards any purchase at Amazon.com. This means another easy 20 bucks per card without changing my usual spending habits. If you don’t see the offer after linking your card, try visiting this link.
- $10 back on $50 gift cards at PREIT malls, Premium Outlets, and Simon Malls.
- $50 back on $250+ spent on hotels in single purchase at Travelocity.com.
- $10 back on $25 spent at California Pizza Kitchen.
- …and other offers based on your Likes and such.
See other AmEx promotions involving Twitter, Foursquare, Xbox, and their iPhone app. Here’s a screenshot of Best Buy offer with details:
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Posted in Deals & Offers | 14 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
The Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN is an upscale-oriented charge card for small businesses where you must pay off the balance each month, but you get the famous AMEX perks like purchase price protection, extended product return protection, and AMEX extended warranty. Here are the highlights:
- The annual fee is $0 for the first year of card membership, and $175 thereafter. This way you can try out the card for a year for free. Get unlimited Additional Gold Cards for an additional annual fee of $50 but this fee is also waived for the first year.
- Triple points on airfare. What makes this card different is that you can now earn triple points on airfare as well as double points on advertising, shipping, and gas purchases on the first $100,000 of eligible purchases in each category each calendar year. Everything else earns 1 point per dollar spent.
- OPEN small business network gives you access to savings at partners like Fedex shipping and OfficeMax supplies.
- Terms and restrictions apply
Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have had a Business Gold Rewards or any other Business Gold, Green or Platinum Card® account within the last 12 months.
Business Credit Card Eligibility
Many people aren’t aware of the fact that they can apply for business credit cards, even if they are not a corporation or LLC. Why? Because any individual can be a small business as well. The business type is called a sole proprietorship. Perhaps you sell items on eBay, Craiglist, or Etsy. Maybe you do some freelancing and/or consulting. If you earned more than $600 from a single client, you probably got a 1099-MISC tax form and filled out a Schedule C. Boom! You have business income, you’re paying self-employment taxes (meaning you’re an employer), and you’re a sole proprietorship. This is the simplest business entity, but it is fully legit and recognized by the IRS. On a business credit card application, you should use your own legal name as the business name, and your Social Security Number as the Tax ID.
Specifically, this card will require you to personally guarantee that you’ll pay them back what you charge on the card, which means they’ll check your personal credit score like any other consumer card. However, the card itself is a business card so it won’t show up on your personal credit report, so it won’t change things like your credit limits, average account age, or credit utilization ratio.
Meeting Minimum Spend Requirements
I acknowledge that the spending requirement amounts to a little over $1.500 per month, which can be tough. Here are some tips readers have suggested. You can try to buy AMEX gift cards to help spread out the purchases over time, buy gas or grocery or Costco gift cards, prepay utility bills or insurance premiums, use the personal version of Amazon Webpay to pay others or send money to family/spouse/friends with no fee ($1,000 per month max), load money on American Express Serve with no fee ($25 bonus, $100 max load per day, $250/500 month max), and I’ve even bought some Forever postage stamps to put me over the top.
As usual, compare this card with other current $500+ credit card bonuses that you can also apply for.
- Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN application link
Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
Here is another American Express Sync promotion if you sync your AmEx card with your Xbox LIVE Gamertag on Xbox 360. Visit AmeXbox.com to register. At the very minimum, you’ll get $10 for registering your card at AmeXbox.com, with more lucrative opportunities if you have Halo 4. As with other American Express promotions like Small Business Saturday, I assume you can get $10 for each card you own including authorized user cards, if you have multiple Gamertags. I don’t have an Xbox, but reader Nic helpfully sent me the e-mail text below.
American Express and Xbox are bringing you a new way to save. From now until December 31st, Cardmembers can sync an eligible American Express® Card with their Xbox LIVE Gamertag to unlock exclusive content, offers, and more.
• Spend $10 at AMC Theatres®, get $5 back
• Spend $50 at PacSun®, get $25 back
• Get a $10 statement credit from American Express
Cardmembers who sync their Cards with Xbox LIVE and play the newly released “Halo 4″ will also be able to unlock additional offers by reaching specified in-game achievements. These include:
• Spend $100 at Best Buy®, get $50 back
• Get a $25 statement credit from American Express
Posted in Deals & Offers | No Comments »
Monday, November 19th, 2012
Price drop! Virgin Mobile, which uses Sprint cell towers, offers the Apple iPhone as of June 2012. The plans start at only $30 a month – as outlined below – but you must buy a phone from them. The prices have recently dropped- 8GB iPhone 4 is $349 (from $549) and the 16GB iPhone 4S is now $449 (down from $649). Even though this is a higher upfront cost, your monthly bill can be much, much lower with Virgin which will save you hundreds over the course of a 2-year contract.
Their Beyond Talk plans at just $30 a month will get you 300 voice minutes, unlimited text messages, and unlimited data (throttled after 2.5 GB each month). For $50 a month, you can get unlimited minutes. To get the $5 discount, you must sign up for automatic monthly payment with a credit card, debit card or PayPal account. No contract. Here are all the plans:
The site also suggests that you don’t have to pay those government taxes and fees that amount to ~$5 a month on most postpaid plans, although you may be subject to sales tax:
All of the Beyond Talk Plans are inclusive of taxes and surcharges. However, we collect sales taxes on all Top-Up transactions for all services that we process directly and, in certain states, we collect regulatory fees. Retailers are responsible for collecting sales taxes and, in some states, regulatory fees for Top-Up transactions that they process.
Is this a good deal? Since we’re using the Sprint network, let’s run some numbers:
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Posted in Budgeting, Deals & Offers, Frugal Living | 39 Comments »
Sunday, November 18th, 2012
Registration is live for 2012. American Express has confirmed that they will bring back Small Business Saturday (SBS) on November 24th, 2012, where you can get a $25 statement credit per card for shopping at any small business and spending $25 or more in a single, in-store transaction. You must link up your American Express card first, and registration starts on November 18th at 12 AM Mountain Standard Time (2 AM Eastern). The number of participants is limited and this promo is getting quite popular, so I would plan on enrolling some time during the first day to be safe.
This year, in an apparent attempt to avoid confusion as to what qualifies as a “small business”, AmEx is stating that you must visit a business located on their Shop Small® Map at ShopSmall.com or one of these Square merchants that take AmEx. I tried it out and the directory is pretty thorough, although I’d avoid the map and look carefully instead at the text listings on the left. Many, many places to choose from. If you don’t have anything specific in mind, even gift cards to a local restaurant, grocer, hardware store, or clothing boutique count.
I think this is a very creative way for American Express to tell the public that they’ve greatly increased acceptance of their cards at small businesses, which has always been their relative weak spot due to their slightly higher fees for the merchant. (It also makes small business that aren’t accepting AmEx to think twice…) A small business owner yourself? This year AmEx is offering some free geo-target online advertising for you.
I’ve already mentioned that the only annual fee card I voluntarily pay for is the Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express which has an annual fee of $65 (first year is free). But I love that promotions like this effectively cancel out the annual fee. My wife gets her own card as an authorized user with no additional annual fee. As each American Express card has its own unique number, each one can be enrolled separately for a $25 credit. Multiply that by the multiple AmEx cards that my wife and I have, and we’re getting over $100 with SBS.
You can also get the same perks from no annual fee AmEx’s like the Blue Cash Everyday® Card from American Express with 3% back at supermarkets (now first $6,000 a year) all year round. Prepaid and Corporate cards will not work.
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Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 105 Comments »
Thursday, November 8th, 2012
I’ve already written about the Chase Ink Bold® card (review) and the Chase Ink Plus business cards (review) previously – they both have great 50,000 point bonuses worth $625 towards any travel, good Ultimate Rewards structure and redemption options, and the first year annual fee is waived. If you have a Chase Sapphire Preferred that’s nearing the end of the first year and you don’t want to renew, you can just open up an Ink card and transfer your Ultimate Rewards points balance over instantly for free. You can even transfer points between spousal (or anyone’s) accounts for free, so it’s easy to keep the balance alive.
An added Ink card benefit on top of all that, buried in the benefits details, is a mention of “complimentary airport lounge access”:
Complimentary airport lounge access to over 350 VIP lounges worldwide. Lounge amenities include internet access, complimentary snacks and beverages, phone, fax, conference rooms and more. ($150 comparable value)*
How exactly do I get this free lounge access? Once you get your Chase Ink Bold or Ink Plus card, you must go to loungeclub.com/inkcard and enter an invitation code which should be mailed to you with your card details. Otherwise, simply call the number on the back of your card and they’ll tell you. (It’s not very creative.) You’ll sign up with your personal info and card number.
Next, Lounge Club will send you a package with your personalized membership card, welcome letter, and informational brochure. You’ll need to present the physical card at the airport lounges to gain access, but you can find a directory of all the available lounges at either LoungeClub.com or via their iPhone/Android smartphone app.
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Posted in Credit Cards, Deals & Offers | 6 Comments »
