TradePub is a site with a big list of free subscriptions to trade magazines in various industries, from finance to IT/engineering to healthcare. It’s all advertiser-supported, so just pick out what you want. Here are a few financial mags that caught my eye:
Financial Planning – “Delivers in-depth features and articles that help advisers build their practices and enhance planning and investment.” This one would be interesting just to see what they talk about behind our backs.
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Free 250 Delta miles for telling them what you like to do while in-flight. Easy-Peasy. I can’t wait for free WiFi to hit airplanes.
Whether trying to get a fee waived, or calling in to check up a signup bonus, here are 3 quick tips for dealing with phone reps:
1) If you can’t get to a human within 30 seconds, try finding a better number at GetHuman.com.
2) If you ask nicely and don’t get what you want, don’t get mad. Just hang up and try again. You may have caught someone trying to reach a quota or simply on a bad day. If it doesn’t happen in three tries, it probably won’t happen.
3) When you do get what you want, try to have it credited immediately. If it is one of those “it should show up in 4-6 weeks” situations, have them type a note in your account. This can save a lot of research time later on, and helps make sure you get what was promised.
Why oh why did the Cardinals run the last two plays? Arrggh!
Anyhow, if you missed the last one, Bank of America is again offering an iPod Nano and $50 if you apply for their WorldPoints Platinum Plus card. You need to spend or make cash advances/balance transfers totaling at least $2,000 to get the Nano in 8-12 weeks. Thanks to Lina.
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Citibank is offering a $100 bonus for opening both a Regular Checking and a 4.75% APY e-Savings account online with at least $5,000. Note that you will get a hard credit inquiry. This bonus is bit time-intensive (you have to wait for an entire year), but it may be worth it if you have Citibank branches near you as this would also be a nice local checkings/savings combo. You must never have had a Citibank bank account to get this bonus. Here’s the fine print:
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Zecco.com has revealed more details about its promise of free stock trades, and is causing a lot of talk for us investors looking for cheap trades.
Details
» Stock Trades – Yes, it’s free and yes, it’s limited. You get up to 10 free market or limit online orders per day, up to 40 per month. After that, they cost $3.50 per trade.
» Mutual Fund Trades – $10 per online trade, no-load only.
» Options – $3.50 plus $.60 per online contract with no minimums
» No minimum to open! (was $2,500)
» No inactivity fees.
» Accounts are SIPC-insured, like most brokerages.
» ACAT fee is $50, not sure whether this means in, out, or both
» IRA accounts available. $30 IRA annual fee and no closing fee.
» Free trading applies only to one account type per person/company. For example, if you open one account for yourself, an IRA, and also a joint account, you can only get free trades one the first of the three accounts opened.
As for how they make money, here is an excerpt I found:
We make our money the old-fashioned way. We earn interest off your money. Hopefully we provide enough value to you as a investor that it’s worth your placing your account with us. This business model has worked for fianncial institutions for about 400 years, it will work for us. It works for most other onine brokerages, too. If you take a spin through Etrade latest 10-K filing, you’ll notice that they make 49% of their revenues from interest. We absorb the minimal clearing fees on a trade as the cost of doing business with you. We also make money on higher margin services like options trades and from advertising on the portal. When we don’t spend $5 of every trade on advertising to get the trade in the first place, we can offer this service at a much more attractive price: FREE. – Sabin Zecco.
Accounts and transactions are done through Penson, one of the largest clearing firms in the country.
By interest they are probably talking mainly about margin interest (which is currently at 10.5%), but I haven’t found any details on interest rates on cash. According to the forums you have the default cash option but can also sign up for a money market sweep account. Another concern that some people have is getting ‘bad fills’, basically not getting the best order routing and therefor the best share price, but it’s hard to find any place that objectively measures this.
As for advertising, they sure are going to get a lot of buzz for this! Only time will tell if it’s enough. My only question now is if they do a hard credit pull when applying. If not, I’m signing up!
Added: I signed up, and there was no hard credit pull for opening an account at Zecco.
The nice FedEx lady just dropped off my own brand new 2nd Generation 2GB Silver iPod Nano – free (of course) courtesy of KeyBank. Thanks KeyBank! Unfortunately, it looks like the promotion is now over. Hopefully everyone who participated gets their’s soon too.
It’s stuff like this that help me make an extra few thousand dollars a year from various offers. Won’t you subscribe and join me? Here’s a nice picture of my new Nano:
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Update: The below promotion is now expired. The New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN now offers 3X points on airfare, 2X points on advertising, gas, and shipping and 1X point on everything else. The annual fee for this card is $175 but it is waived for all new cardholders. You can also get unlimited additional gold cards for an extra annual fee of $50 but this fee is waived for the first year as well.
Thanks to Aruna for pointing out in my Two $100 Business Credit Card Bonuses post that on top the $100 statement credit for the New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN, you can also get a boatload of Membership Rewards points during the first year. It starts at 5,000 free points for doing nothing, and goes all the way up to 100,000 points with enough spending. That’s 100,000 not just 10,000!
It’s a bit hidden – if you click on the ‘Learn More’ link on the application page, you’ll see the bonus points offer, which works out to:
5,000 free points for doing nothing.
10,000 free points total for spending $20,000 in the first year
30,000 free points total for spending $50,000
90,000 free points total for spending $60,000 ($5,000 avg x 12 mo)
(The last 10,000 points for the one-year card renewal, which you’ll be charged $125 for, so you’ll have to decide if it’s worth it. The first year’s annual fee is already waived.)
Membership Rewards points are similar to Citi ThankYou points, but you can also transfer them into frequent flyer miles with many programs like Delta and Southwest Airlines. You get 1 point per dollar spent on your AmEx card, although there are occasional ‘Double Mile’ promotions. Overall, I would value them at about 1 cent per point, as you can either go for airline miles or things like gift cards (10,000 points = $100 gift card at stores like Banana Republic or Home Depot). In the past, I used to transfer my points into Southwest Airlines credits, and then sell the flight vouchers on eBay to get more like 1.5 cents/mile.
At 1 cent/point x 5,000 points, you are getting $50 for doing nothing. So in essence with one purchase you get the $100 statement credit and $50 in points for $150 total.
If you can spend $60,000 in one year, things get interesting. You get 60,000 points directly for the spending, and then you get 90,000 bonus points, for a total of 150,000 points on $60,000 of spending. That works out to a healthy 2.5% cashback, again at 1 cent per point. On top of that you also still get the $100 statement credit.
Remember, anyone can apply for a business credit card!
TradeKing, a newish online brokerage that offers $4.95 trades and no maintenance or minimum fees, is again offering $100 for opening an account with $1,000 and executing one trade using the promotional code TRADE expired!.
I already received my $100 bonus the last time they offered it with little problem.You must maintain a balance of $100 for the first six months. Buy a small amount of something stable if all you want is the $100 minus the commissions, or see my previous post for what I did. Here’s the fine print:
* To qualify for this offer, new accounts must be opened and funded with a $1,000 minimum and one trade executed. Offer excludes retirement and custodian accounts. 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. A minimum balance of $100 is required in the account for the first six months. Other restrictions may apply.
I couldn’t find any specific expiration date, but since they can ‘discontinue it at any time’ I’d act sooner rather than later.
The offer actually worked for me, as I’m keeping my account open even after the six months is up. I think it’s a pretty decent brokerage, although some have complained about bad fills. If Scottrade doesn’t start offering online funds transfers soon like they promised in ‘Summer 2006’ (umm… is October still Summer?), then I might switch over completely. I already plan to close my now-liquidated Ameritrade I-Zone account with $5 trades.
I almost feel like it’s the dot-com era again. This time, a new website called Zecco.com is saying that it will offer free online stock trades starting on October 9th, and instead make its revenue from advertising. Possible? I guess we’ll see.
They’ve been telling me about their blogger revenue-sharing program recently, and I wasn’t sure if I should join since frankly I get a lot of similar emails about new financial sites. But it seems like these guys have some serious backing, so I’ll have to look more into it. Check out the press release. Some excerpts:
Our model is different. We run a lean operation, use the latest technology and rely entirely on word of mouth, guerilla marketing, viral campaigns and public relations to get the message out. As a result we can look at the $2 per trade as the cost of doing business ? and still turn a tidy profit.
This approach will force the major brokerages to respond quickly – but in a sense they are caught between a rock and a hard place. Take E*Trade as an example. They will be looking at an annual loss of several hundred million of they decide to do away with commissions. Not a pleasant thought for a publicly traded company.
Thanks to Buddino for the heads up on the free stock trades announcement.
As a follow-up to my post on Earning More Bonuses Using Business Credit Cards, here are two additional non-airlines cards with nice bonuses:
CitiBusiness Card with ThankYou Network – 10,000 ThankYou Points after first purchase, redeemable for either $100 cash towards student loans, or a $100 Gift Card at Home Depot, Target, gas stations, Gap, etc. There is also a 0% balance transfer intro offer with this card.
The New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN – Now offers 3X points on airfare, 2X points on advertising, gas, and shipping and 1X point on everything else. The annual fee for this card is $175 but it is waived for all new cardholders. You can also get unlimited additional gold cards for an extra annual fee of $50 but this fee is waived for the first year as well.
Many people aren’t aware of the fact that anyone can apply for business credit cards, even if they are not part of a corporation or LLC. Just use your own name as the business name, and your Social Security Number as the Tax ID.
Why? Because any individual can be a business as well. The business type is called a sole proprietorship. Maybe you sell garage sale items or crafts on eBay. Boom! You’re a sole proprietorship. Done any freelance work for a friend? You’re a sole proprietorship. This is the most simple business entity, but it is fully legit and recognized by the IRS. Unless you apply for another one, the name of your business is your legal name, eg. John Doe.
When you apply for a business credit card, you will have to put down both your Social Security number and the Tax ID number for the business. If you are a Sole Proprietorship, you Tax ID is your Social Security Number. (Unless you filed for a EIN). For the vast majority of business credit cards, if even you are a corporation or LLC, you will still be personally liable for business debts. That’s why they’ll usually ask you for your SSN anyways.
Remember, if you are a sole proprietorship there is no legal distinction between you and your business anyhow. Business debts are personal debts. Personal debts are business debts.
(Also, unless you want to deduct your purchases as qualified business expenses on your tax return, you really don’t need to worry about any tax issues or filing anything special with the IRS. You can simply buy things with the card and pay off the balance as you would your other credit cards. If you do want to take deductions, please consult your tax advisor.)
Because of this liability, you will get a hard credit inquiry to your personal credit report just like apply for a consumer card so that the issuer can make a decision whether to offer you credit. (Now, businesses can also have their own credit scores, but that’s another post for another time.) However, for most business credit cards the card itself won’t show up on your personal credit report. This means that you can open and close accounts, have a bunch of new accounts, and max out the credit lines without affecting your personal credit card score. This also means you can make thousands from playing the 0% Balance Transfer game without worrying about your credit score!
In addition, I use this fact to get more credit card bonuses. I was reminded of this recently by my mom, actually. My parents live in a smaller city which is basically only served by Delta Airlines, so they love SkyMiles. When you are in a small city, tickets are expensive since you can’t get a nonstop flight. So they always get over 2 cents to the mile when redeeming for free tickets.
Anyways, my mom applied for the Gold Delta SkyMiles American Express Card for the 17,500 free bonus miles (Even though now new card owners can earn 30,000 miles), and then my dad applied for the SkyMiles card for the free miles. My mom asked me if she could cancel the card and apply again to get more free miles. Not so quickly, I don’t think, but while don’t you apply for the Delta Business SkyMiles AmEx card for another 20,000 free miles? First year is even free too. She applied and got accepted, now next Thanksgiving is at my place 😉
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