Bank of America Better Balance Rewards - $100-$120 Free Yearly

Update - 10/12/2014 - It is confirmed that you can spend only $1 every month and still qualify for the $25-$30 quarterly reward.  

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Here are the exact words from the Better Balance Program rules:

How do I earn Quarterly Cash Rewards? 

For every calendar quarter in which your account is open with active charging privileges and 

all of your monthly payments are Qualifying Payments, you’ll earn a $25 Quarterly Cash 

Reward. Plus, you’ll get a $5 Customer Bonus if you also have a Qualifying Customer 

Account — that means up to $30 per quarter, or $120 a year

The definition of a qualifying payment from the same rules is:

Qualifying Payment — A monthly payment 

received on or before the Due Date, which 

is more than the Minimum Payment due; 

a payment in full received on or before the 

Due Date is a Qualifying Payment

This means that you can spend $1 every month (or less) for 3 months and get back $30.  Not too shabby!

Thank you to anonymous who pointed this out! 

Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Credit Card

Bank of America has introduced a new credit card called the Better Balance Rewards Card with a new interesting rewards system.  The rewards are not tied to how much you spend.  Instead, you get $25 for every quarter that you have paid more than your minimum balance.  You get another $5 per quarter if you have a different account with BofA.

Sign up for an eBanking Online Checking Account with no monthly fees and qualify for the extra $5 a month.  You can qualify for a free checking account if you have a direct deposit of $250 monthly or have a $1,500 balance


Your yearly rewards come out to $100 without a checking account and another $20 with a checking account.

The best system is to autopay a monthly bill with the card and have the credit card bill paid on autopay.  Once you have set it up, everything is automatic.  All you need to do is collect your money.


You can sign up for the Bank of America Better Balance Rewards card here.

There is no annual fee.


Thanks JC for the tip!

Free $5 Starbucks Gift Card for ATT Customers

If you register your ATT phone number and sign up for AT&T alerts and confirm your geolocation, you will get a text message that you will need to respond to.

After that a text message will be sent that explains how to get your $5 code.  The whole process takes about 5 minutes.

Earning and Using Frequent Flyer Miles - Part 3

This is part 3 of a series on Frequent flyer miles, part 1 was an introduction and part 2 explained how to find more information from other sources.

Airline Alliances

Almost all major airlines in the united states that have international flights are part of an alliance of airlines that include other airlines from all over the world.  There 3 main airline alliances are: Star Alliance, OneWorld Alliance and Sky Team Alliance

• Star Alliance - This is the largest alliance with 27 members.  The most important members for most readers are United Airlines, Turkish Airlines and US Airlines (at least until it merges with American Airlines) because they all fly to Israel somewhat regularly.
• Sky Team Alliance - The second largest with 19 member airlines.  The most important are probably Delta, KLM and Air France.
• One World Alliance - The smallest with only 13 member airlines.  The most important are probably American and British Airlines

What is an Alliance?

An alliance allows individual airlines to expand their reach without having to expand their fleets. Airlines partner together and share some aspects of their business. 

• The major advantage for passengers is that frequent flyer miles from one airline can usually be used to fly on partner airlines of the same alliance.  Let's take an example:

• United Airlines and Turkish Airlines are both part of the Star Alliance.  This means that I can use United Mileage Plus miles to fly on United Airlines flights or Turkish Airlines flights or any other member of the Star Alliance.

• The second great benefit is that one can miles earned from one partner can be credited to your account from the other partner.  Once again, here is an example.  If I fly on Turkish Air and I provide my United Airlines Mileage Plus number, I will earn United miles for my Turkish Air flight even though I didn't take a United flight. 

Here is a picture from my United Airlines account: You can see that I earned United Mileage plus miles for my Turkish Air flight

The most important point to take away is that you only need to have a frequent flyer account with one member of an alliance and combine all of your miles into one account.  In fact, using multiple accounts can be detrimental as I will explain.

For instance, in our scenario let's say I had a United account and a Turkish Airlines Miles and Smiles account.  If go on a United flight direct to Israel and a Turkish Airlines flight to Israel with a stop in Istambul, I would get 11,320 miles in my United account and 11,410 miles in my Turkish Airlines account.  If, however, I gave my United number for the same Turkish Airlines flight, I would earn all 22,730 miles in my United account and I am now much closer to earning my next flight through miles.  I can then use my United miles to fly on any Star Alliance partner with those miles (Booking will be explained in a later post).

Does it matter which Airline I choose within an Alliance?

We have now established that it is important to have at least one airline in each alliance that is your miles currency for that alliance.  Does it matter which airline I choose?  Big-time, and here's why.

Even though each airline is partners with the others in the alliance, they do not treat their miles equally.  Each airline has a different calculation of how many miles it "costs" to go to the destination of your choice.  

I will take flying to Israel as an example again.  (All of the following information can be found from milez.biz). Flying Economy with United miles usually costs 80,000 miles for a roundtrip ticket, while using Turkish Air miles usually costs 105,000 miles for the exact same flight.  If you goal is a free flight to Israel, you will get there 20% faster by collecting United miles than by collecting Turkish air miles.

In addition, many programs charge fuel surcharges for redeeming frequent flyer miles that can cost a few hundred extra dollars.  For example, within the One World Alliance, British Airways charges a major fuel surcharge for flying international on their Frequent flyer program, but doesn't charge a fuel surcharge for using their miles to fly within the US on American Airlines flights.  Their miles are not too valuable flying internationally, but can be quite valuable flying domestically.  American Airlines does not have a fuel surcharge for flying internationally, unless it is on a British Airlines flight.  Therefore, if you are collecting One World Alliance points and are interested in international flights, you are better off with American Airlines miles and if you are interested in domestic flights, you are better off with British Airways points.

For an example of how confusing surcharges can be and for much more detailed information, look at this dansdeals forums post.

Next week in part 4, I hope to talk about booking frequent flyer miles and to find available flights.

My Chase Freedom is not Looking Forward to Next Year

One of the best parts of my Chase Freedom card is that I have a Chase checking account connected to it which gives me Chase Exclusives.  The gist is that I always get at least 10 points on every purchase with no minimum.  They also give a 10% bonus on your points every month which effectively raises the rate to 1.1% instead of 1%.  The 10 extra points make it my card of choice for smaller purchases because % back can be very high  ($1 purchase will get you 11% back).

Today, I walked into a store in Queens to buy a coffee.  The store belongs to a certain ethnic minority that I belong to as well.  I tried to pay for it with my Chase Freedom card and I was rebuffed.  "$10 minimum for credit cards".  Epic fail.

This is a going to be a serious problem next year when I move to the New York area.

Unfortunately, you can't sign up for the extra 10 points anymore even though those who signed up are grandfathered in, but there have been reports that you still can get the 10% bonus, though it is now once a year instead of every month.

I would sign up now if you haven't already, who knows how long this will last.

Office 365 Free for 6 Months with .edu Email Address

Office 365 allows you to collaborate on projects with other users in the cloud and comes with Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher.

Now, you can get 3 months free with this link and another 3 months free when you share the offer on Facebook

Office 365 normally comes with 7GB of storage on Skydrive.  With this offer, you will get another 20GB of storage for free.  After the 6 months your storage limit will go back down to 7GB and you won't be able to add anything until you pay the regular fee or remove files to get under the 7GB limit.


Thank you YP for the tip!

Dunkin Donuts Half Price Coffee 3pm-7pm?

I bought Dunkin' Donuts coffee in Buffalo a couple days ago and it was about $0.85 instead of the regular $1.70 or so and I asked why and the lady told me that coffee is half price from 3pm to 7pm.  I asked if it was just this store or all Dunkin' Donuts and she said all of them until the end of March.

A quick google search doesn't come up with anybody mentioning this so either the information is mistaken, it is only this one store or I am breaking this news.  While that is nice to think about yourself, I highly doubt the third alternative.


Don't expect to go in and get the discount, but don't be shocked if you do.

Starbucks Espresso at Barnes and Noble - BOGO

Buy one Starbucks Espresso at Barnes and Noble and get a second one free with this printable coupon. Expires 3/31

Valid only until Noon

NY Times for Free - Getting Past the Paywall

The NY Times only allows you to read 10 articles a month.  Once you get past the 10 articles, you have to start paying to read anymore, but there is a way to get around that.  Here is what I do:


You can go to nytimes.com as many times as you want and the different categories (i.e. world, politics) as much as you want.  The clock only starts ticking when you click on an individual article.

When I find an article title that tickles my interest, I google nytimes and the title of the article and when you get to the article through google it doesn't count to your 10.  For example, you can google "nytimes ryan budget plan aims to roll back obama agenda" and it will come up as the first hit on google.  You can copy and paste directly from the times website so you don't have to type the whole title yourself.

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