American Express $10 per Card Credits Posted - Works for Every Card and Even if You Don't Spend $10! Time to Buy Lots of Game Codes!

Miles to Memories has put out the results today from his experiments and the results are wonderful.

American Express Express Checkout was giving out $10 credits for the first time you used the card per account.  It turns out that it works the first time you use the express checkout for every card, even if they are linked to the same account.

In addition, you don't need to spend $10 for the credits post.  If you spend $0.99, you can keep the extra $9.01

Here is a list of cheap items you can buy from Newegg.  Enjoy the free money!

Chime Prepaid - Free $5 Amazon Gift Card - Targeted?

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Chime


If you signed up for a Chime prepaid card, check your email for an offer for a $5 credit when you spend $5 at Amazon by the end of tomorrow.  This includes Amazon Gift Cards.

Don't have a Chime account?  Sign up with my referral link and we will both get $10 added to our Chime accounts!

Learn more about Chime here.

The offer looks like this:



I got an email for my account and my wife's account:.  5 minutes after I bought a $5 Amazon Gift cards I got an email from Chime confirming that I will be getting $5 back.  $10 of Amazon Gift Cards at no fee?  Not too shabby!

Chime Prepaid Card

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Chime

I really didn't want to get a Chime prepaid card.

Between Serve, Paypal Debit, Visa Buxx, UFB Direct Airlines Debit, Visa and American Express Gift Cards, I already have too many things to keep track of before even discussing the ridiculous number of credit cards I have.

When Doctor of Credit's first post about Chime came out, I just plain ignored it.  When he started posting about easy promotions for free Amazon Gift Cards, I assumed it was a one time thing.  When another promotion came, I pretended I didn't want it anyway.  When the promotions kept coming, I couldn't ignore them any more.  As much as I hate having another card, I caved and got one for me and my wife so I'm in now.


Here is why you  might want to get a Chime card as well:

- $10 sign up bonus.  If you sign up with my referral link, or with Doctor of Credit's referral link, you will get $10 and the referrer will get $10 as well if you load $50 or more.  When I signed up for myself, I got $10.  When I signed up my wife we both got $10 so we got $30 right away for two accounts.

- Chime promotions.  Chime has rotating promotions where if you spend money on your Chime card at certain stores, you can get significant savings.  Some examples that impressed me for next month

1. Tomorrow - Free $5 store credit at Amazon
2. Tuesday - Free $2 Store credit at McDonalds
3. Wednesday - Free $3 store credit at Bath and Body Works
4. Sunday December 7th - Free $3 Store credit at Old Navy.
5. Wednesday December 10th - Free $2 Store Credit at Chipotle
6. Tuesday December 16th - Free $2 Store Credit at Subways
7. Tuesday December 23rd - Free $2 Store Credit at Wendy's
8. Thursday December 25th - Free $3 Store Credit at Starbucks

There are lots of other great deals, like $5 cashback on a $50 purchase at Walmart, Best Buy, Target and many other 10% cashback deals at places I want to shop, but these are the ones you don't even have to spend any money to get.

Loading

I loaded $200 the first time via my Paypal Debit Card for free, but after that there is a 3% fee for Paypal Debit card.  It is free to load from a checking account ($500 daily max) and some debit cards.  I recommend loading via a free method.

Fees

- $2.50 ATM withdrawal ($500 daily max)

- $5 monthly fee if you have 0 transactions in 180 days (about 6 months).  If you partake in any promotions over six months you will never pay this fee.  If you buy any item not involved in a promotion every 6 months you will again not pay any fee  That being said, this isn't a card you can forget about and never use, you need to somewhat actively manage the card.

$10 Free - Enroll Bank of America Card with New Visa Checkout

This only takes a few minutes and you will get a $10 Visa Gift card for your trouble.


Start a new Visa Checkout account through this link, add a Bank of America credit or debit card and you will get a $10 Visa Gift Card in approximately 2-4 weeks, but officially can take up to 60 days.  You don't need to actually make a purchase.




Visa Checkout is a paypal competitor.

Check out this Fat Wallet thread for more details

American Express Small Business Saturday is $30 This Year!

Amazingly, American Express has actually increased the amount of free money they are giving away for Small Business Saturday.  Every eligible American Express credit card can get up to $30 of statement credits for free.

The credits are in $10 increments so you need to spend $10 on each card 3 times to take full advantage.  If you spend $30 once you will only get $10.

I have always used my cards to get gift cards to one store.  The gift cards can then be combined later.



This year, Small Business Saturday is November 29th 2014.  You can start to register your cards (you have to register every card separately if you the card to qualify) at 12am Pacific time on November 16th at shopsmall.com.  A limited number of cards can be registered so you don't want to wait too long after the 16th to register

Terms and Conditions:

• Every American Express credit card that has a separate 15 digit account number on the front can be registered separately.   
• Authorized users from credit card accounts that are processed by American Express and issued by American Express have a separate account number on the front and the authorized user card can be registered for a separate $30. Just look at the front of your Authorized user and you will see a different 15 digit number than the primary. 
• American Express Every Day is an example.
• Authorizes users from credit card accounts that are processed by American Express, but are issued by another company will have the same 15 digit account number as the primary and are not eligible for a separate promotion.
• Fidelity American Express is an example, which is processed by American Express, but issued by FIA Card Services.
• Prepaid and Gift cards do not work for these promotions, except Serve and Bluebird (Bluebird added this year)
• Serve allows for up to 4 subaccounts which should also be eligible.
• Personal business cards are eligible, but corporate cards are not.

Considering that I currently have 31 eligible American Express cards (includes all authorized users, my cards and my wife's cards) and I hope to get at least another 5 before the promotion, I'm pretty happy about this increase.  It may take me an hour to register all of my cards, but I'm pretty sure that's well worth the $900-$1000 of free merchandise.

$5 off a Paypal Purchase

Just follow the steps at this link until the end (about 2 minutes) and you will be given an offer via email within the next week for $5 off your next purchase through Paypal.  The purchase needs to be finished by 9/30/2014.

You should be able to sign up with each email that is connected to a PayPal account.


HT - Dansdeals

$150 for Citizens Bank Checking Account - No Direct Deposit Required

Update: As pointed out by a commentator, you will get a hard credit pull for opening this account.  This can affect your credit score and ability to open new credit cards in the short term.

There are often bonuses available for opening new checking accounts, but most of them require direct deposit.  I assume that most people are not interested in constantly going to HR to change where their Direct Deposit is going so I don't post them.  Here is one that doesn't require Direct Deposit.



$150 Bonus for opening a Citizen's Bank Checking Account.  Here are the requirements:

1. Register online
2. Open your first new One Deposit Checking account or other first new personal checking account by 3/31/14
3. Make an additional deposit (excluding the opening deposit) OR five qualifying debit card payments or purchases by 5/31/14
4. Get $150, which will be deposited in your account by 7/31/2014

A One Deposit Checking account requires a minimum of $25 to open.  In addition, there is no monthly fee as long as you make one deposit each month.  There is no minimum as to how much you must deposit.

The terms and conditions don't seem a mention any penalties for withdrawing the money after 7/31/2014 so I assume that's when you can close the account without penalies, but I don't know.

2013 Free Money Roundup - A Year In Review

Disclaimer: I do not receive a referral fee for any of the links below with the following exceptions: Top Cashback and Betterment

2013 has been a lucrative year for me and my wife in regards to getting extra Free Money (though she would rather not know how I accomplished it for plausible deniability - kidding of course).  The opportunities have been in great abundance and also very lucrative this year!

I am aware that this is not actually free money.  Time and work are involved and everyone has to make their own calculation whether a deal is worth it to them

I don't write this to gloat, rather to show everyone what I've done so that you can try and replicate the same thing yourself in the future.  Obviously, you can pick and choose which ones you think are worth it and which ones are not.  Some you can still do now and some are dead deals, but new ones are always popping up, but you usually need to jump on them to get full value.

Instructions in how to leverage each deal are found at the provided links.

January

$300 - Both Chase Freedom and Citi Dividend were offering 5% cashback at drugstores - $300

$300 in rewards and $47.40 in fees is a total haul of $252.60 over 3 months for the Citi Dividend

March

$240 - Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Card - $240 free every year between me and my wife

$10 to spend for free at Best Buy

April

$100 - Chase Gift cards - Chase started selling $500 gift cards with no fees, but you still got points for them. Unfortunately, this ended - 10,000 free points - approximately - which comes out to at least $100

$167 - There was one day recently where you could get 2.5% back on a purchase $3,000 of american express gift cards ($75).  The next week, I used the $3,000 to buy 3 Visa gift cards of $993 dollars each (accounts for the fees) and got another 2% back ($60).  Add 2% from Fidelity American Express ($60) and you get $195 in rewards and $27.95 of fees  for a net profit of $167.

$25 - Put $250 into a new Betterment account and you will get a $25 bonus.  Still Active

May

$15 - Staples coupon in the mail that worked on Visa gift cards.

June 

$100 - $10 off $200 visa gift cards at Office Max - I bought about $4,000 worth of them.  A haul of $60 and 4,000 points, together worth at least $100.

July

$135 - Vanilla Reloads at 7-11 - Vanilla Reloads were available for purchase via credit card and counted as gas purchases for Chase Freedom and Discover.  Together that was worth about $135.

September

$25 - A new Staples coupon arrives in the mail.

~$200 - $30 off $150 purchase at Shop Rite - I have a lot of American Express cards.

October

$18 - Staples just wants to give out money.

November

$70 - American Express and BP - $5 off $25 at the pump.  I did a lot of $25 refuels

$210 of free Merchandise - Small Business Saturday.

$400 - Signed up for checking and Savings account for my wife  ($200 each) - New bonus is now $75

December

$300 - Free Groceries from Pathmark

$250 - American Express Gift Cards with No Purchase Fees

Grand Total = $2565 of free money and free merchandise

This does not include any sign up bonuses for credit cards, of which there were many.

This is more of a sampling than anything else.  It doesn't include everything because I can't remember everything and I'm a little lazy too.  I will try to catalog as I go a little better this year.

$75 Free From Capital One Per Person - Checking and Savings Accounts

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Capital One Checking and Savings Accounts


Sign up for Capital One Checking and Savings account and you can get $75 free.  $50 for checking and $25 for savings.  $150 total if you do it for yourself and your spouse.  All with no fees!



Here is the breakdown:


Capital One 360 Checking - $50

• Make 3 purchases within 45 days.  No minimum balance
• It's easy to make lots of small purchases without having to carry your card around
• Your bonus automatically posts on day 50

Capital One 360 Savings - $25

• You need an initial deposit of $250 to qualify
• Your bonus will be there right away, but you can't withdraw the bonus for 30 days.

You can also get $25 for adding a children's savings account and another $25 for adding a debit card and account for your teen.

There are no monthly fees associated with these accounts.



I did them for both myself and my wife and it took about 20 minutes total.  It is a pretty simple process.



Thank you MK for the tip!

$75 Bonus - Capital One Savings and Checking

Sign up for Capital One Checking and Savings account and you can get $75 free.  $50 for checking and $25 for savings.  $150 total if you do it for yourself and your spouse.



Here is the breakdown:


Capital One 360 Checking - $50




Capital One 360 Savings - $25


There are no monthly fees associated with these accounts



I did them for both myself and my wife and it took about 20 minutes total.  It is a pretty simple process.

Giftcard.com and Top CashBack - Free Money?

Update: This doesn't come as a surprise but giftcard.com cancelled all of these orders saying they are a mistake.  It was worth a shot!

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s): Top Cashback



It's hard to believe that this isn't a mistake but Top Cashback is currently offering 100% cashback for Visa Gift Card purchases through giftcard.com.  If this works you will get $256 back for a $250 gift card and $6 fee ($250 is the highest denomination they sell).

Most likely you won't get your money but if you do this is pretty amazing.


I have not been able to buy one.  Every time I try the transaction is cancelled, but give it a shot maybe you'll have better luck.  Whatever happens, leave a comment with your experience.


Thank you AS for the tip!

$500 Visa Gift Cards at Parthmark in Teaneck - Free Money

Free Money - Teaneck Style

Update 7/4 - Reader SW astutely pointed out that Pathmark is part of the company known as A&P.  They sell under the following labels:

Pathmark
A&P
Waldbaum's
Food Basics USA
Food Emporium
Super Fresh

Look out for the $500 visa gift cards in all of their stores.  Hey, you never know.

In addition, $500 visa gift cards have been found at Stop & Shop stores.


As part of my continual research for free money in Teaneck, NJ I have been looking for $500 gift cards at grocery stores.  Even before I moved I asked a couple people to look out for them.  Thanks IB for checking it out for me.

I went to Pathmark on 80 New Bridge Road in Bergenfield and found the Holy Grail.  Pathmark stocks  $500 Visa gift cards that can be bought with a credit card.  The most amazing part for me was that I saw veyr intelligent people walking right past them and not buying them.  There were a couple racks of them.  How could this be?

This is what you should look for.

As you can see from my online account, the purchase has been categorized as a grocery purchase

Who Cares?

I'm making quite a fuss about this, but why do I care and more importantly why should you care?  The answer is simple, this is an easy opportunity to have a free lunch.

There are credit cards that have special cashback rates for grocery stores.  The two big ones are American Express Blue Preferred and American Express Blue Everyday.

The Blue Everyday card gets you 3% cashback at grocery stores up to $6,000 a year.  If you buy one single $500 gift card there is a $6 fee.  You will get $15 in cashback so a net of $9 or 1.8% cashback.  A nice haul, but not incredible.

The Math for the year.  3% of $6,000 is $180.  $72 of fees brings it down to $108.  Probably not worth your time unless you go to Pathmark and Walmart anyways.

The Blue Preferred gets you 6% cashback on groceries up to $6,000 a year but with a $75 annual fee.  One $500 gift card gets you $30, a net of $24 or 4.8% cashback.  That is very exciting!

The math for the year.  6% of $6,000 is $360.  Annual brings it down to $285 (I got the sign up bonus so annual fee doesn't bother me).  $72 of fees for buying the gift cards and your total haul is $213 per card for not much work.  I have 2 cards so that will be $426 a year extra.  Not too shabby!

Using the Gift cards

What should you do with the gift cards once you buy them?

• Use them like a credit card.  
• You are now getting 4.8% cashback everywhere up to $6000 a year!
• Gift cards can be annoying to keep track of as they start to get in the $20 or less range.  You also want to hold on to them in case you return anything because it usually will go right back on that card.

• Cash them out with Bluebird at Walmart
• These cards are issued by Metabank so you can add a pin to the gift card by calling up (the last 4 digits of the account number should also work but I haven't tried it yet).
• Once you have a pin you can bring it to Walmart and add to your Bluebird account and pay your credit card bill with it. If you bring two cards at a time you have just made $48

Maximizing The Deal - Easy There Cowboy

There are natural limits to this.  You get 6% back on up to $6,000 at grocery stores, after that you only get 1%.  

I have two Blue Preferred cards, one for me and one for my wife.  I now buy one $500 gift card every month.  Once I max out the $6000, I will begin to use my Blue Everyday card for my grocery purchases and get 3% on groceries + over $400 a year!

If that gets maxed out too (life is expensive but unlikely) I will switch my grocery purchases to the Bank of America Cash Rewards, which I normally only use for gas, but gives you back 2.2% at groceries if you have a Bank of America Checking Account.

Don't be an idiot - don't buy $6,000 worth of gift cards in one month.  You have the same $6,000 max for the year whether you buy $500 at a time or $3,000.  If you don't live in Teaneck, I would feel comfortable buying $1,000-$1,500 at a time to avoid extra trips and to minimize the chances that I've already cleared their shelves, jk.

Credit Card Retention Bonus

It is well known in the credit card blogosphere that most credit card companies will offer you a retention bonus for threatening to cancel your card.

The annual fee for my Citi Bank American Airlines was coming up this month.   I got 50,000 miles for spending about $1,500 so I have about 51,000 American Airlines miles.  That being said, I don't really use the card at all anymore so I was ready to cancel.

I called up Citibank and told them "I would like to cancel my card because I don't want to pay an annual fee."  I was put on the line with someone from the retention department.

The Offer

I was immediately offered a $50 statement credit (the price of the annual fee) and  750 bonus miles every month for the next 16 months if I spend $750 in that month.  If I spend right around $750 every month for the next 16 months, I'll get 12,000 total bonus miles on top of the regular 12,000 miles for spending $12,000 miles for a total of 24,000 miles.

Analysis

This is not an overwhelming bonus by any stretch.  American Airlines miles are nice, but they aren't quite as valuable as United miles in my book.  It costs 90,000 miles to fly from JFK to Tel Aviv on American instead of 80,000 on United.  

That being said, I will probably spend the $750 every month that I would have normally put on my Fidelity American Express.  Instead of $240, I'll have 24,000 miles, more than a quarter of the way to a free round trip ticket.

I'll probably end up going to CVS every month, buying $750 of gift cards and cashing them out through Bluebird.

$25 American Express Gift Card for $15 with Twitter

Update: Sold out!

Buy a $25 American Express Gift Card for $15 with American Express and Twiiter


Here's how to do it:

1. Sync your American Express card with your twitter account (no need to do it twice).
2. Tweet #BuyAmexGiftCard25
3. Wait for your confirmation tweet from @AmexSync with the confirmation #hashtag
4. Tweet this #hashtag within 15 minutes of the confirmation tweet from American Express and you will automatically buy a $25 Amex gift card for $15 and it will arrive within 2 businness days

Here are the terms

You can have multiple twitter accounts and sync different American Express Cards to each account.  

Best Buy and Mastercard $50 off a $100 In Store Purchase at Best Buy with Mastercard

Update: I went to the store and they said it was fake and doesn't take any money off, but other sites are reporting in the comments that it does in fact work.  Hopefully everyone else has better luck

Until 1/27, if you use a mastercard at Best Buy you will get a $50 credit for a $100+ in store with this printable coupon.  Read the exclusions to see what doesn't count.


This means lots of free money!

You can take advantage of this in a couple of ways.  The coupon does not explicitely exclude gift cards! 

You should be able to buy:

1) Visa Gift Cards - Best Buy sells Visa gift cards that have $4.95 fees.  You can buy a $95.05 gift card (this will cost $100 after fees) and you will get $95 for the price of $50!  That's $45 Free!

2) Amazon Gift Cards - Best Buy also sells Amazon gift cards with no fees so you can get a $100 Amazon gift card for $50!

3) Best Buy Gift Card - To use later. 



Make sure to use your reward zone (or sign up) and you will get another $5 in Best Buy gift cards for every $250 you spend.  The reward zone gift cards can be used to buy amazon gift cards.


I will try to go today and report back on whether this works!

Office Max - $10 off Two $50 Mastercard Gift Card

This is from the Office Max weekly ad on pages 6-7


Buy any 2 $50 mastercard gift card and you will get $10 off.   This is the equivalent of them giving you free money.  The fees are about $5 each so you will make about $5 off each $50 and you will stil get your regular cashback from your credit card.

Serve - Spend $20 Get $10 Back

Serve Credit - Spend $20 and get $10 Back

I got an email (at least four others got the same email ) from Serve that if I spend $20 on my serve account by the end of November, I will get a $10 credit.  No sign up necessary, but only for those who got an email so check your inboxes and your spam if you are a serve member and didn't get an email.

I honestly don't know how American Express makes money, but here's hoping that they keep throwing more free money our way!

Once you get the $10 credit, you can immediately withdraw the money back into your checking account.

If you don't have a serve account, you can sign up between now and December 31st and get a $25 credit (without spending anything).  Serve is a prepaid card so there is no credit check or income verification required.


Thank you YP and MW for the tip.

Best Buy and American Express - $20 off a $200 Purchase

Best Buy, American Express and Twitter - $20 off a $200 Purchase

Update - Alive again but with tweet #AmexBestBuyOffer.  I have done this a few times and every time I add the money to my serve account.  I haven't spent much money outside of prepaid cards in a little while.  
Twitter allows pseduonyms so feel free to start multiple twitter accounts and sync one Amex card per account to get $14 for ever Amex card you have! 

In addition, this will work with your synced American Express on Facebook.  I don't know what happens when the same card is synced for both deals, but I assume you won't get the credit twice.
Edit: Dead - maximum number of people have signed up

Spend $200 at Best Buy with an American Express card and get a $20 credit!  This can mean more free money!  If you want more free money ;) make sure you get your $25 serve promotion.

Here's how to do it:

1. Sync your American Express card with your twitter account (no need to do it twice).
2. Tweet #AmexBestBuy20
3. Wait for your confirmation tweet from American Express that you will be getting the credit
4. Spend $200 at Best Buy (In store or online) and you will immediately get an email from American Express confirming the credit

-   Gift cards count for this!  I bought two $200 Best Buy Visa gift cards (I have two twitter accounts).  Each has a $6 activation fee and I got my confirmation email.  I ended up spending $186 for $200 for each of the visa gift cards for a return of 7% on each card or $14 for free on each card.  Did I mention that I love free money ;)

-   Alternatively, you can buy Amazon gift cards at cost if you use Amazon a lot for a return of 10% on each card.

Join Best Buy Rewards and get a $5 gift card for every $250 you spend at Best Buy (2% back). This purchase will qualify and get you $200 closer to your next rewards card!

Expires 9/16

If you actually want something from the store and you are buying online, start your purchase from Ebates and get up to 3.6% cashback as well.  You will still get your normal cashback from your credit card as well.   Ebates says it won't work on gift cards, but try it, sometimes it works anyway.  If someone tries it, please leave a comment on whether it worked.

Don't have ebates?  Sign up here for free.  You also get a $10 gift card to Target, Barnes and Noble, Home Depot or Magazines.com after your first $25 purchase