Up to $100 For New Accounts at Bank of America and Chase Bank

Posted on March 7, 2008 // 12 Comments

Bank of America is offering a $75 bonus for new customers opening a personal checking account with them by April 30th. If you open online, you will probably get a hard credit check. If you open in a branch, you should be able to avoid this. Use offer code AOU26020.

Offer expires 04/30/2008 and is available through our online application or in any Bank of America banking center. Offer does not apply to second or multiple checking accounts and/or existing checking customers. This minimum deposit required to open a new, personal checking account and receive the $75 offer is $100.

BofA also has a $100 bonus for a business checking account.

Offer applies to any new business checking account opened with a Visa® Business Check Card before March 31, 2008. Limit one $100 incentive per business every 6 months. If opening the account online, you must enter the code BTB0100 to ensure you receive the bonus. If opening your account in a Bank of America banking center, you must provide the coupon to receive the bonus.

Chase Bank is offering a $100 bonus for opening a Free Checking Account with direct deposit by March 31st. You must actually go to a branch, I’m not sure if they check your credit there. I’d hope not.

To qualify for the $100 reward you must open a new checking account and initiate a repeating direct deposit such as payroll, pension or Social Security. The first direct deposit must be completed within 60 calendar days of account opening.

Chase is also offering a $200 bonus for opening a business checking account. (Thanks Susie)

Open a Chase BusinessClassicSM, BusinessPlus® or Chase Advanced Business CheckingSM Checking account and deposit a minimum of $500 or more within 30 days of account opening with funds not currently on deposit with Chase.

Filed Under: Banking, Deals & Offers //

GrandCentral Phone Service: No Invitation Code Needed

Posted on March 1, 2008 // 212 Comments

The virtual phone service GrandCentral has been invite-only beta for several months. But now the blog service Blogger (also owned by Google) is offering users free memberships. But hey, the special sign-up link works for everyone! 🙂 Not really a loophole, since Blogger accounts are also free, but it does mean that it is now effectively open to everyone to wants to try it out.

To quickly summarize, GrandCentral offers you a free local US phone number from 47 states which can forward to any other US number. You also get free voicemail along with several other nifty features. I tried to explore the many possible uses of GrandCentral in this post. Here are a few of them:

  1. Have one permanent, central number for everything.
  2. Create an extra number for your side business, for any other reason you might think of.
  3. Avoid long distance charges, by getting a new number in a new area code.
  4. Combine with T-Mobile MyFaves or AllTel Circle for more free calling.
  5. Use it to allow people to call you via your website, without revealing your phone number.

Again, details are here. I’ve still been using GrandCentral as a separate business line. Although it doesn’t get used heavily, it does give me the ability to pre-screen calls to my business, or simply forward to a professional voicemail recording.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Entrepreneurial //

Free eBook: Women & Money by Suze Orman

Posted on February 13, 2008 // 19 Comments

Oprah had Suze Orman on her show today, and as part of it they are giving out a free download of her latest book Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. You can find more information and the download link on this page, but it’s only available until 2/14 at 8pm EST [update: no longer available, sorry!]. So download it now, and read it later!

Hat tip to My Open Wallet.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Free Credit Score Monitoring With CreditKarma

Posted on January 28, 2008 // 78 Comments

Last week, I pointed out how to get a free Experian credit score via Prosper. You can already get free credit reports from AnnualCreditReport.com as well as in other special situations. But what about services like daily credit score monitoring?

Now, a new site called CreditKarma is offering free daily credit scores. For comparison, FICO’s own Score Watch program costs $89.95 per year. So what’s the catch?

  1. It’s not a real FICO score. This is another FICO-clone, with a score ranging from 300 to 900. (FICO is from 300 to 850.) It also doesn’t say from which bureau this score is based upon, as they say they can pull from any of the big three (Experian, Equifax, Transunion). My guess is that they’ll use whatever is available that is both cheaper than FICO and still reasonably accurate. That’s what I would do…
  2. You only get the score. The service is pretty barebones. You don’t get information about who’s pulling your credit, how often they are doing it, or information about your existing credit lines. So the “alerts” feature is missing. Instead, the primary attraction is the ability to see trends – is your score increasing or decreasing over time?
  3. They are advertiser-supported, so I guess they are counting on people to obsessively check their score every day. I’ve always been a bit mystified by such behavior, but I don’t check the stock market ticker all day long either. From their privacy policy it seems that they are using your personal information to target ads to you, but aren’t actually sharing your info with others unless you opt-in. I sure hope not!

Security and Privacy Concerns
Okay, it’s free, so price isn’t a barrier to using this service. But it’s definitely wise to think twice before giving out personal information like my Social Security number to a start-up company. I read through their site, and didn’t see any glaring security holes. They use common third-party systems like ScanAlert Hacker Safe, TRUSTe, and Verisign. If you do notice something fishy, please share in the comments. The CEO will be reading, given that he’s the one that told me about this site.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Free Sample: Schick Quattro Titanium Razor

Posted on January 18, 2008 // 41 Comments

It was in stock, then out of stock, now back in stock! Free Schick Quattro Titanium Razor sample, while supplies last. If successful, you should get the message “Thank you for signing up! Your free razor is on its way!”.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Get A Free Month of Amazon Prime Membership

Posted on January 13, 2008 // 6 Comments

Amazon Prime, in case you don’t know, is a premium service where you get free 2nd-day shipping on most items with no minimum, even if you’re just spending $5. Very convenient. The normal cost for turning Amazon into your impulse-buying superstore is $79 per year (not available to Alaska, Hawaii, P.O. boxes, APO/FPO and U.S. territories).

This might be old, but it appears that if you are signing up for a new account with a new e-mail address, you will be offered a 1 month free trial right now. You’ll need to supply a credit card number, but you can set it so you don’t have to remember to cancel if you take the following steps:

  1. Click on Your Account.
  2. If you’re not there yet, scroll down and click on Subscriptions Management > Manage Your Amazon Prime Membership.
  3. Look for green text. Click on the Do Not Upgrade button and you won’t automatically be charged $79 anymore. You’ll still get the entire 1st month of free Amazon Prime shipping.
Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Brokerage Promotions: $100 Bonuses at Tradeking and OptionsXpress

Posted on January 10, 2008 // 5 Comments

TradeKing is offering a $100 bonus (expired) for new households opening an account with at least $2,500, and making one trade. You must keep $1,000 in the account for the first 6 months. I could not find a related TradeKing promotional code for this offer, but it appears to be valid. Check out my TradeKing review for some of my experiences and account tips.

OptionsXpress is also offering a $100 bonus if you open an account and fund with at least $500 by 3/31/08. They will also cover any transfer fees up to $100 if you move your entire account (of at least $2,000 value) to them. They have some cheap options contract prices if you are a very active trader. For equity trades, their commissions start at $10 which isn’t too special. $100 might convince me to check them out, though. :)

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Investing //

WeddingWire: Review Wedding Vendors, Get $5 Gift Card

Posted on January 4, 2008 // 4 Comments

Another startup website, WeddingWire, is offering a $5 gift card to Amazon.com for newlyweds and married folks who provide reviews of 5 wedding vendors. Thanks to reader Susie for the tip.

Although this may not be the most efficient use of time, I kind of like the idea of sharing feedback in this area. You’re usually talking about a large amount of money on a one-time event. Reviews would have definitely been welcome. In our case, we actually got food poisoning from one (rather expensive) hotel meal we had, we didn’t feel they handled it very well. On the flip side, our photographer was awesome and exceeded our expectations. Not a bad deal overall – One horrible night after the wedding, but a permanent set of beautiful pictures. 🙂

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Lending Club: $50 Bonus + 5% Of Loan Amount If You Lend $5,000+

Posted on January 2, 2008 // 19 Comments

Wow, here’s an interesting promotion from person-to-person lender Lending Club. They are currently offering a 5% cash bonus if you lend $5,000 or more by February 3, 2008 for both new and existing lenders on top of their $25/$50 sign-up bonus. Here are the details from their announcement:

You will qualify for the bonus by lending $5,000 or more to borrowers between December 14th, 2007 and February 3rd, 2008 (at 11:59PM Pacific time). Your bonus will be 5% of the amount you lend.

For example, if you lend $7,500 Lending Club will credit your Lending Club account with $7,500 * 5% or $375. Funds count as lent once a portfolio (or portfolios) is submitted during the aforementioned eligibility period. The loans do not have to be issued by February 3rd to qualify.

We will notify you of the amount of your bonus by the end of day, Friday, February 8th, 2008, and your account will be credited with your lending bonus by Friday, February 15th, 2008. No special sign-up or tracking is required ? we will run reports on the system to determine bonuses. Feel free to email us at lender.offer@lendingclub.com to ask about your bonus.

[…] Lenders can each earn a maximum payout of $20,000 (if they lend $400,000).

A 5% bonus definitely grabbed my interest again after making a few initial test loans. If you haven’t already, check out my LendingClub review to learn more about their setup for person-to-person lending.

At first I got all excited since banks are only paying 5% interest themselves, but then I remembered that LendingClub loans are spread out over 3 years, so it’s not like you are getting a 5% interest bonus each year (that would be sweet!). Instead, 5% spread out over 3 years is like adding roughly an additional 1.65% annual interest to the existing rate set by LendingClub. (Actually, since the 5% is given upfront, it would actually boost your returns even more.) But remember, these are unsecured loans similar to credit cards, and there is a risk of principal loss. Is that cushion worth putting in $5,000 in?

So far all of my existing loans with LendingClub are rated a safe A3-A4 (7.75 to 8.07%). Given that their minimum allowable credit score is 640, and their credit grades run all the way from A1, A2, A3 to G3, G4, G5, I would estimate that such people have credit scores well over 700 as well as other positive criteria like a reasonable debt-to-income ratio. Therefore, I would love so see my return increase to a 9.4 to 10.72% return on high-quality loans. With $5,000 available to spread across 200 loans ($25 each), that would also smooth out the default risk from a few bad loans.

Lending $5,000 for 3 years is a lot of money, but this is the best person-to-person lending deal I’ve found. Hmm… very tempting!

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Investing //

Lending Club Review: Free $25 To Start, P2P Borrowing

Posted on December 7, 2007 // 69 Comments

Next up in the person-to-person lending showcase is Lending Club. I recently joined up because they were offering the carrot of $25 sign-on bonus, and I was curious to see how they differentiate themselves from Prosper Lending (review, $25 bonus). As usual, this overview will primarily be from the perspective of a potential lender/investor in these unsecured consumer loans.

Lending Standards
LendingClub only allows borrowers with a minimum credit score of 640. Prosper initially had no bottom, but later raised it’s floor to a 520 credit score, which by itself eliminated 45% of their loan listings! So lots of subprime action over at Prosper, but very little over at LendingClub. Some people may disagree on whether this a plus or a minus.

Setting Interest Rates For Loans
With Prosper, prospective lenders bid on loans in an eBay format. Essentially, all the lenders as a whole set their own market rate. But with LendingClub, they do all of it for you.

The mechanism for setting a fair interest rate is complex: it involves a proper assessment of the risk associated with each loan (based on the borrower’s credit history, current situation, income, debt and other factors), an understanding of the volatility associated with each level of risk, and a proper reward for that volatility. We have access to large amounts of information and historical data from the credit bureaus, which puts us in a unique situation to set attractive, fair and equitable interest rates. Rates also depend on the amount of the loan (with larger loans bearing higher rates).

Each loan request made by a borrower is attributed a Lending Club grade ranging from A1 to G5. Here are some sample corresponding loan rates:
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Deals & Offers, Investing //

Free Domain Name, Free 1GB SD card, $25 Billpay Bonus

Posted on December 1, 2007 // 24 Comments

Here are some quick freebies and bonuses. Enjoy!

  • Register.com is offering a free domain name (1 year) for small businesses. I couldn’t think of a good name just now, but I went pretty far and didn’t find any catches.
  • Buy.com is offering a 1gb Secure Digital memory card for free + free shipping if you are a new Google Checkout customer. Via reader TM.
  • HSBC Direct is offering a $25 bonus for paying 3 bills online via their Online Payment account by January 31, 2008.
Filed Under: Deals & Offers //

Google Checkout Promotion: Free Frequent Flier Miles

Posted on November 29, 2007 // 5 Comments

Google Checkout is running a few holiday promotions for their purchase system. The first two tabs are for Savings and Free Shipping, with various coupons and free shipping on purchases over $50 at the stores listed.

In addition, you can earn 2 frequent flier miles per $1 spent:

Earn up to 10,000 frequent flyer miles when you shop with Google Checkout this holiday season.

* Once you register, you’ll start earning 2 frequent flyer miles for each $1 you spend with Google Checkout through December 31, 2007.
* You can earn up to 10,000 frequent flyer miles through this promotion.
* We’ll credit your mileage account and send you a summary of miles earned by January 31, 2008..

So if you’re going to shop at one of the listed stores anyways, use Google Checkout instead of the other options and get some free airline miles on top of your usual credit card cashback rewards. Be sure to register first at the site before making your purchase.

Filed Under: Deals & Offers //
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