I’ve realized that I am in the minority when it comes to driving. I put on maybe 6,000 miles a year. Many people log over 20,000 miles on their car every year! If you are one of these road warriors, I just got e-mailed about the Citi Driver’s Edge Platinum Select MasterCard (Thanks JW). It looks great in multiple ways:

» You get rewards just for driving. You?ll earn $1 in Drive Rebates for every 100 miles you drive?up to $500 in Drive Rebates a year. Drive 20,000 miles a year? That’s $200 a year just for driving! To track miles and get rebates you just mail in your receipt whenever you get an oil change or other receipt.

» 6% cashback on gas for the first year. Obviously driving a lot = $$$ for gas. Assume you get 20 miles per gallon. Driving 20,000 miles, that’s 1,000 gallons. At $3 a gallon, that’s $3,000. Times 6%, that’s another $180 cashback on gas alone.

» You also get 6% back at supermarkets and drugstores for the first year (3% after that). That beats out the Citi Dividend Card (which I have) for the first year. You earn 1% on everything else. Here is Citi’s example chart of how this could add up:

» There is a cap of $1,000 per year, which is significantly higher than the $300 or the Dividend card as well and allows you to rack up more cash.

Come to think of it, this is not a bad card just to keep around. If you drive 10,000 miles in a year, that’s still $100 a year just for
driving. There is also no annual fee. What other card does that?

Rebates do expire if you don’t make a purchase in a year or if you don’t redeem within 5 years. Not too harsh. It’s all spelled out in the fine print on the application, so be sure to save a copy.

There is also a 0% APR balance transfer offer with this card, and as such is for people with good credit. But do not use it if you want to get these rebates. Remember, all payments go towards the balance at lowest interest rate.

What’s the catch?
The DriveRebates are redeemable as straight cash only towards car expenses. But that’s any car expenses – buying a car, leasing a car, oil changes, new tires, repairs, etc.

But, they can also be converted to ThankYou points. Each $1 in Driver?s Edge rebates is equivalent to 100 ThankYou Points, or put another way $100 in rebates can be converted to a $100 Gift Card at Target, Chevron, Gap, etc. Note: If you have student loans, you can still get straight cash towards those.

I think the easiest way to cash in on these points is just to get gas cards. Sure, you won’t be able to get 6% back anymore by buying with this credit card, but even after accounting for that you’re still getting 5.64% back which is still very good.

Hmmm…
As I write this, I’m convincing myself more and more to apply for this card. Even if I only drive 6,000 miles a year, that’s $60 – which will basically pay for all my oil changes and tires every year.

Update: I applied for this card myself, going to redeem for either gas or a set of tires.

Equifax and PayPal have teamed up to provide a basic credit monitoring service that is free to anyone. I say it’s free to anyone because after you click on the sign-up link, there is no verification that you actually use PayPal when signing up. In fact, I already had an Equifax login from my free government-mandated credit reports, so I just used that and it grabbed all my info automatically. Two types of alerts are included:

• Upon an Equifax credit inquiry, or a
• Balance change over a chosen percentage or dollar amount.

I signed up a few days ago, and got my first balance alert today. It doesn’t tell you which credit card triggered the alert, which is a bummer. Still, not bad for free and now I’ll know when my Equifax credit is pulled.

For some reason, I felt like I should check all of my credit reports today. I think it was because I knew my new landlord had run our credit, and I also haven’t checked them in a while. Remember, the government mandates that everyone gets 1 free credit report (but not score) every year from each of the 3 credit bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. You can get all three at once, or space it out. I requested all three so I could compare them all side-by-side.

Besides, if I want my credit report again I can always go to sites like Credit.com and get one free with a trial subscription. I’ll have to cancel within 30 days or get charged something, but you get the credit report instantly, so why wait 30 days? I usually cancel the same or very next day! Another bonus is that you can also get your credit score for free as well, which is usually $8 everywhere else.
[Read more…]

I guess Citibank doesn’t hate me as much as I thought they did. I just received my cashback check for $112.47, right on time:

You gotta love getting over $100 in free money just for pumping gas and buying groceries!

I noticed that I was over $100 in rebates for my Citi Dividend Platinum Card, so I just requested a nice fat check for $112.47. More free money!

I honestly think that, second to deadbeats, I may be the most unprofitable customer that Citibank has. I use their no-fee 0% balance transfer offers with glee, I take their $100 sign-up bonuses and run, and I only use their 5% cash back card for the stuff that gives me 5% cash back (gas, groceries, and some gift cards) and nothing else. I’m well over the $1,000 mark in free money from them, and I’m still going!

I’ve decided to continue my somewhat controversial practice of borrowing cash from credit cards and profiting by earning interest off of it. As I’ve already got my $100 gift card from my Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network, I’m going to use the no balance transfer fee 0% APR offer also included with it to take out $9,000 free for 9 months. I figure I can put it in a bank account earning at least 4.5% APR, so that would be about $300 profit pre-tax. This will join the $20,000 in borrowed money that I already have out.

For those interested, please see the following posts which detail how I go about doing this, see my very detailed series on How To Make Money From 0% APR Balance Transfers.
Please read through those posts and the comments before yelling at me! =) Your concerns are most likely already voiced, and my response already jotted down. I’ve been doing this for years and I’ve heard it all. Yes, there are some dangers. Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you’ve missed a credit card payment deadline within the last year, doing this may not be a good idea. The simple truth is that I have personally decided that it is worth the risk for me. Why do I bother? Moola. Dough. Bling. A quick and dirty example:

If you have good credit, you can borrow $30,000 for 12 months with no fees (use one of the offers listed above). $30,000 x 4.5% = $1,350. Even after taxes, I’m looking at over a grand of free money. As usual it took me way less time to request my check than it did to write this post.

I forgot about this card – The Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card is a credit cards for college students, that offers an interested array of perks. Like the Citi Professional Card, it is part of the Citi ThankYou Network. The card gives you 5 ThankYou Points for every dollar you spend at restaurants, bookstores, record stores, movie theaters and video rental stores. But guess what is considered a bookstore, no matter what you buy? Amazon.com! This is the same as 5% back in gift cards or 5% cash back towards your student loans.

The only problem is that there are reports that they verify if you are a student. Some get asked, many slip by. If you are a student, you also get some points for having good grades: “250 to 2,000 ThankYou Points? twice a year for a good GPA. 25 ThankYou Points? a month for paying your bill on time and not going over your credit limit.” So get a 4.0 and pay your bills and get $43 for free every year! There’s no annual fee and even no minimum income or cosigner requirement. I bet anyone under 25 gets approved for this automatically. I’m over but hey, I’m a student now 😉

I just got my check from Fidelity for cashing out my 529 plan, courtesy of my MBNA 529 College Rewards Mastercard which gives me 2% cashback on everything I buy into that 529 account. My first disbursement request was lost in the mail, but my check finally came:

Out of the $1,600 I received, I would estimate that $900 was from my own deposits, $600 was from earning 2% cashback, and $100 from the tax-free growth of my conservately-chosen 529 portfolio. Nice!
[Read more…]

My $10,000 balance transfer from my Discover Miles Card was safely converted to cash and is now sitting in HSBC earning 4.80% interest. I also made one purchase to get the free 5,000 Miles. I’m happy to say that it all went smoothly. No balance transfers fee were charged, and the 0% APR indeed covered both balance transfers and my purchases as promised, so no interest was charged. I even got my 5,000 bonus Miles immediately after the first statement cycle closed. It’s nice not to have to badger a company for a bonus.

I also received their rewards catalog for their ‘Miles’ redemptions. Ugh, the selection is bad. Converting back to cash-back, it was in the neighborhood of .6-1% back. I can do so much better with my current 2-5% cashback cards. Still, I’m not wasting these points!

As with many credit cards with Points or pseudo-Miles programs, their rewards are supposed to entice you to redeem your points for something you like but don’t realize how poor the value is. Example: 20 GB iPod for 47,000 Miles. Even a 30 GB iPod is only $299 at Apple.com. Even with a simple 1% cashback card, you’d get $470 back – enough for the bigger iPod + $170 in your pocket. To top it off, their gift card selection is funky in that they only offer specific denominations for each store.

Stil, I have 5,028 points to burn. I made an Excel spreadsheet of the rewards I could actually see myself getting. (4,700 points for a football? No thanks.) I also computed the cents/Mile to measure value.

The $100 Airline Credit was my initial goal, but you have to use their travel agent and book 21 days in advance. If they book Southwest, maybe. $100 at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse would be neat since I’ve never eaten there, but I’d need to charge another $7,700 on this card to get there.

Hmmm… Should I just take the $25 cash even though the value sucks? Or get the movie tickets? Right now I’m leaning toward the $50 Old Navy card, even though I haven’t shopped there in years.

Cash back credit cards are all the rave now, especially the 5% ones. Citibank has had their Dividend card giving 5% cash back for groceries, gas, and drugstores for years now. Chase then copied Citi with their own version. American Express and Discover now have ones with 5% off gas. But are they really that awesome?

I was catching up on some old Carnival reading and found this post on NoCreditNeeded about how cashback credit cards are crap. Granted, from the title of the blog you wouldn’t expect to hear praise for them, but there are some good points made. Of course, I disagree with some of them as well. Let’s hit each one:

People spend more with credit cards than with cash.
Overall, this is true. When McDonald’s started to allow people to use credit cards instead of paying cash, the average sale went from $4.75 to $7. I don’t know why this is true, but it is. On average.

Would I spend less if I carried cash instead? I can’t prove it, but I can honestly say no. If 1% cash back is going to make you rationalize spending more, then (1) you are really bad at math (1% of a $300 item you don’t need is just 3 bucks), and (2) yes, please shred your credit cards. As for myself, I’ve been using credit cards so long I don’t even think about it anymore.

The ‘protection’ by credit card companies is useless.
This may be a hassle for chargebacks, I’ve actually never had to do one. But, I have gotten my wallet lost or stolen twice. Cash lost: $200+ Credit Card money lost: $0. I got my recent fraudulent charge credited back to me with no issues at all.

Credit card companies are not stupid. They are around to make money.
100% Agree. They are there to make money. My friends use this one too. My reply is two words: loss leader.

Grocery stores are also not stupid and around to make money. You see the 99 cent gallon of milk? Or the $1.50 a pound chicken? If you walked in and only bought those two things and walked out, grocery stores would go bankrupt. But no. On the way to the milk, you see that cheese you like. Oh, and you’re out of peanut butter – why not try the new organic one? They are counting on you to make it up in the end.

Banks are also not stupid and like to make money. Capital One 360 used to let you open with $1 and walk away with $26. If everyone did this they’d be broke. (So they raised the minimum to $250. I guess this weeded out the people who couldn’t save $250 in the first place?) No, they want you to get nice and comfortable, and keep all your money there at 3% interest while they’re lending it out at 6%. Clever, eh?

Does this mean you shouldn’t shop at the grocery store or use banks?

The sad truth
The sad truth is that I know that the only reason that I can get money at 0% APR and make thousands of dollars off of it, is because my neighbor is going also do the deal, spend the money, and then want a nicer car and put off paying the balance when the promo period ends. Oops, nows he’s paying 18% APR. He’s also got the new ’06 BMW 330Ci. With the nice rims. And parks it right in front of my house. Bastard.

Therefore, my advice is the same as NCN – Be honest with yourself. But instead of a blanket statement, I would add that everyone is not the same. Some people should not have credit cards. As for me, I will continue enjoy the occasional cashback checks and free $100 bonuses now and then.

What do I think? Pretty much what Caitlin of Clutter2Cash thinks. Pass.