You can grab a quick 150 American Airlines AAdvantage miles by visiting this website and watching a quick video about a new $150 Bose bluetooth headset. Earn another 250 miles if you stop by a Bose store and do a live demo. Every miles counts, and this is also useful for delaying expiration of miles.

*Offer of 150 miles with online video valid 1/3/11 through 1/17/11 while supplies last. Offer of 250 miles with Bose store demonstration valid 1/3/11 through 1/17/11 while supplies last.

BP has a promotion starting today called Thank You Days where you can get a $10 BP gift card after your 5th fill-up of 8 gallons or more. At $3 a gallon and assuming you stop at 8 gallons per fill-up, this will save you 25 cents per gallon. Not bad, considering you can still use your credit card and get rewards. I already get 5% cash back on gas with the PenFed Platinum Cashback Rewards card.

The program begins on 12/1/10 and ends on 3/1/11. All qualifying purchases must be completed between 12/1/10 and 3/1/11, or when Loyalty Card supplies are exhausted, whichever occurs first. […] $10 BP REWARD CARDS EXPIRE ON 9/6/11. Offer not valid in New Jersey. […] Limit three (3) $10 BP Reward Cards per person and/or email address per household.

You do have to track some things online. Thanks to reader Drew for the tip.

If you have an American Express card, here are a couple more quick promos that takes only a minute and can save you some bucks. The 5% back is on top of your regular card rewards.

Earn 5% back on every dollar you spend when you use your registered American Express Card to fill up at any Exxon or Mobil station between December 20, 2010 and January 20, 2011. You must register here first.

Earn 5% back on every dollar you spend when you use your registered American Express Card to fill up at any Phillips 66, Conoco, or 76 station until March 6, 2011. You must register here first.

Amazon.com is offering $2 in free MP3 downloads with the code GIVEMP3S. No purchase required. See details at this link. It should increase your gift card balance by $2 for music purchases only. You must redeem the code soon – by December 26, 2010 11:59 PM PST. Limit one Amazon MP3 promotional credit per customer.

It may ask you to install the AmazonMP3 Downloader software, but you should be able to skip it for individual songs. Entire album purchases may require installation. I gave in and just installed it, it seems to work fine with iTunes.

Update: Bing is offering up another $1.29 in MP3 credit. Just enter your e-mail and enter the code you get in the same place as above.

First published in 2008, The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss is a book about “lifestyle design” and included many uncommon ideas about working and retirement. He describes how you can build a business and delegate/outsource nearly everything about it. He’s ruthless (in a good way), from hiring virtual assistants from India to teaching you to avoid answering 99% of your incoming e-mails. Once you do that, then ideally you’ll find yourself working mere hours a week. Who doesn’t like the sound of that? 😉

Although not exactly a how-to manual if you’re currently in a 9-5 job, it was definitely one of those inspiring reads that made you think. That was based on my reading of the original, but the 2009 “expanded and updated” edition supposedly has over 100 pages of new content. Perhaps time for another go.

If this interests you, you can currently download a digital PDF version for free. Supposedly to promote his new book The 4-Hour-Body (of which I know nothing about), he’s now offering free digital versions of The 4-Hour Workweek and The Slow-Carb Cookbook, a companion book to the 4-Hour Body. I’m still not sure if this is fully intentional, but Ferriss is both tech-savvy and a crafty marketer so I can only assume it is. Instructions via SD:

Click here: http://short.e-junkie.com/4hourworkweek
Hit the ‘Checkout’ button.
Fill out the form with your name and email address, then hit the ‘Complete Free Checkout’ button.
On the final page, you’ll have access to The 4HWW and Slow-Carb Cookbook.

Expires December 26, 2010. The e-mail doesn’t to have to be “real”, as the download links appear immediately on the next page. However, I did enter mine and received an alternative download link.

Borders has a printable coupon good for 50% off any one single item. Valid 12/14-12/16. The coupon says you need a Borders Rewards number, but it’s free to join. Maybe I’ll actually buy a book not from Amazon!

For some reason, I always thought the website eBillMe was a service that lets me pay over time (and also pay interest charges). I was confusing it with BillMeLater. Upon further review, it seems like eBillMe tries to do the opposite. The way their site works is that it lets you pay for things using your own bank’s online BillPay service. The advantage of this is that you are “pushing” your payment to vendors, and are thus not sharing any sensitive information like credit card numbers or even your checking account number from a personal check.

The disadvantage, in my view, is that you lose any potential credit card rewards you could otherwise get. You can still “live debt free” if you pay off your balances every month. 😛

In any case, I took a second look because they were promising some enticing things: 10% Off Home Depot Gift Cards and a $15 rebate on a $100 Amazon.com Gift Cards. However, you always have to read the fine print. One offer turns out a lot better than the other…

$15 Mail-in Rebate on $100 Amazon.com Gift Certificate

I’ll start with the better one. If you buy a $100 gift card from Amazon.com through eBillMe by 1/15/2011, they have a mail-in rebate for $15 cash. Here is the rebate form PDF. First-time eBillMe customers only.

Other than the fact that you have to do a mail-in rebate, this offers seems otherwise pretty straightforward. Very worst case, you still have the Amazon.com gift certificate. Selected fine print:

Buy any Amazon.com Gift Card using eBillme before January 15th, 2011 and receive $15 by mail. Customer must fill out the rebate form and mail in. Offer applies only to Amazon.com Gift Card purchases using eBillme between September 15th, 2010 and January 15th, 2011. Your Amazon.com Gift Card must be a minimum of $100 and your bill must be paid in full to participate in the promotion. Rebate must be postmarked within 15 days of purchase date. There is a limit of one (1) rebate per person, household or address. Order must be paid in full.

10% Off Gift Cards at Home Depot, etc.

Gift cards for 10% off at retailers like Home Depot, JC Penney, and Zappos.com? Sounds nice. What’s the catch?

Well, to start off instead of getting the savings upfront, you accumulate “cash back” in an account. After you reach a minimum of $10, you can use the money as a coupon when shopping through stores that accept payments through eBillMe. These are rather limited, and include Sears.com, Kmart.com, and Tigerdirect.com along with a bunch of smaller stores. Once you accumulate $50, then you can request actual cash via a mailed check, but only in $50 increments.

There’s more. You can only earn up to a limit of $20 “cash back” per order, and $200 total per 12 month period. Your earnings expire after 24 months. Finally, the 10% cash back is only valid for first time use of eBillme. You’re probably back down to 1% back after that first purchase. So I couldn’t just buy $500 of Home Depot gift cards and get a $50 check mailed to me.

Honestly, that’s just too many hoops for too little reward. I’m staying away unless they greatly simplify the process in the future.

American Express Gift Cards are basically prepaid credit cards that work anywhere that accepts American Express. The good thing is that they have no inactivity fees, no maintenance fees, no balance check fees, and they never expire. Other than for gifts, they are especially useful whenever you need to accelerate or time-shift your credit card purchases to be earlier than they actually are.

Here’s what I mean by that. A common problem you might have is that your credit card that earns frequent flier miles, and need to earn a certain number of miles to reach your next award or qualification tier. However, you want to redeem now, so with these gift cards your miles can show up faster.

Also, recently there have been a lot of great credit card sign-up offers that require you to spend $XXXX within a certain amount of time. For example:

• Chase Sapphire Preferred offering $400 in cash or $500 credit towards any major airline purchase – requires $3,000 in spending within 3 months.
• Starwood Guest Credit Card from American Express offering 25,000 Starpoints worth several free hotel nights or other perks – requires $5,000 in spending within 6 months.
• Citi AAdvantage Visa offering 50,000 American Airlines miles – requires $3,000 in purchases within 3 months.

Whether you have a Visa, MasterCard, or AMEX, you can simply buy these gift cards and they’ll count as rewards-earning purchases now, and you can use them up later at any merchant that accepts American Express. All the grocery stores I frequent take AMEX now. This way, you can either make the deadline or simply meet it early without worrying.

Finally, they can provide some anonymity when shopping, while mostly preserving your flexibility.

There are two additional fees that you have to worry about. First is the purchase fee, which is usually $3.95 per card. There is usually a promotion code floating around to waive these. They send me a promo code via e-mail EMDECWEL that will waive any purchase fees until January 31, 2011.

Next, there is a shipping and handling charge. Right now, 2-day expedited 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. You must cancel before the 90 days is up, or get charged $99 per year. I actually opted just to pay the shipping fee this time.

During this promotion, customers who have enrolled in the Premium Shipping Plan may use the Plan at no cost for the first ninety (90) days after enrollment (“Trial Period”). The Premium Shipping Plan membership fee of $99 per year will be charged to customers ninety (90) days after initial enrollment if customer does not cancel membership through the Gift Card Account portal online prior to the expiration of the Trial Period.

By the way, for some reason, American Express does not ship gift cards to the states of HI, LA, and VT.

Here’s a little deal that won’t break the bank. Groupon has a national deal this weekend (Fri-Sun) that will get you three one-day rentals at RedBox kiosks for $1. Retail is $1 per day, so $3. If you don’t have a Groupon account already, please use my sign-up link, and I’ll get some Groupon credit for referring you. Then visit the deal link.

Expires Mar 10, 2011. Limit 1/person. Valid only at physical Kiosk US locations. Valid for 1st night rental only. Not valid for video game or Blu-ray. Code usage is subject to standard Redbox terms & conditions. Card will be charged if rental is not returned by 9pm next day.

If you’ve never used Redbox before, first-time users that register for a new account on their website also get a code for a free rental after their first paid rental. The unofficial site InsideRedbox is a good source for ongoing free coupon codes. Here is a kiosk locator.