My first statement for my Citi Professional Card closed recently, and I just checked my rewards balance for the promised free $100 gift card. To my delight, my 10,000 free ThankYou Points have already been deposited! I swiftly went to the ThankYou Rewards site and traded them in for two $50 Target Gift Cards. I shop regularly at Target, so it’s basically the same as cash for me.

It seems that once you get to the $50 range, 1 point = 1 cent in gift cards. It was hard to find the Target reward option, but the search function saved me. Other good rewards options I found were Shell and Exxon/Mobil Gas Cards or Gap/Banana Republic/Old Navy Gift Cards. For those with student loans, you can even get a $100 loan payment for the 10,000 points. Here’s a screenshot of my points:
[Read more…]

I just finished setting up my free money from my recent Discover Miles Card application. As mentioned in my best 0% APR offers list, it offers 0% APR for 12 months on both purchases and balance transfers, no balance transfer fee, and 5,000 (now they offer 12,000!) free miles after the first purchase. Here is a real-life example of my post on how to do these deals.

1) Applied online, and requested a $7,500 balance transfer (BT) to a Citi card, and a $7,500 BT to an American Express card on the third page after the 7 steps. (It’s there, you can put in junk to test if you want) I always ask for more than I think they’ll give me. They ended up giving me a $11,000 credit limit, with a $5,000 BT to each card ($10k total). Not bad as I already have balances elsewhere. It took some time for the application to go through, but it went through smoothly.

(Note: I would usually just send it to one card, but I wanted to make sure American Express still worked for negative balances.)

(Note 2: Per the Terms and Conditions, you need to request the balance transfer with the application in order to have no balance transfer fee. If you wait until you already have the card, there may be fees.)

2) I got the card, and activated it. One day after getting my card, the two $5,000 balance transfers showed up in both of my Citi and AmEx accounts.

3) I secure messaged Discover to make triple-sure that I had no balance transfer fee to pay, and that I could make both purchases and balance transfers at 0% APR for a year. I got a message back in 24 hours that confirmed it. Gonna keep a copy of that message just in case, but I’m just paranoid like that.

4) I went online to Citibank and requested a credit balance refund as shown in this post. They had to “verify the payment was legit”, but approved my check in a couple days. No humans, easy as pie.

5) I called American Express and said I had an overpayment and asked for a check be sent to me for the overpayment amount. They approved it over the phone without any trouble at all. Two $5,000 checks coming my way in about 5 business days!

6) I paid my cell phone bill with the Discover, so I’d get the 5,000 miles for the 1st purchase. These are Discover-specific “miles”, so I’ll need to figure out the best way to cash these out. It seems 10,000 miles give you a $100 credit on a plane ticket, but there are other non-travel rewards too. Therefore, I estimate the bonus 5,000 miles to be worth $30-$50. I can do this without worrying about interest because the purchases are also at 0% APR for this offer.

7) Once the first statement closes, I’ll set up my automatic online billpay as described here, and I’ll be pretty much set. Even though Discover uses two-cycle billing, as long as I pay it all off before the 0% period ends I’ll be safe.

(Although two-cycle billing is less desirable than other billing methods, it shouldn’t matter here as long as I pay off the balance within the correct deadline. What two-cycle billing does is eliminate your grace period, but balance transfers have no grace period anyways.)

Total time spent: About 20 minutes
Total potential money earned before taxes: ~$490

~4.5% interest x $10,000 x ~12 months = ~$450
5,000 bonus miles = ~$40

This is a rough estimate, but interest rates will also rise as the year goes on, so it should balance out. Typing this post took longer than it took to do the deal, so I hope it helps some people out 😉

I still track all of my accounts in Yodlee, which is somewhat controversial because if someone found my password for Yodlee, they would have access to all my accounts. The flip side is that I can see almost immediately if something funky is up with one of my dormant accounts. Just now, I noticed that my old US Bank card (which I never use) had a charge for $80 on it, which ended up to be some random charge from a Spanish soccer team?

[Read more…]

Even though I participate in a lot of bonus offers, I always read the fine print, as credit card companies can be very tricky in their wordings. Here’s a pop quiz – What’s wrong with this offer?

[Read more…]

As noted in my net worth updates, I have 529 account as part of my Fidelity 2% Cash Back card. The 2% is nice, but the only way to get your contributions and earnings out of the 529 tax-free is to have real college expenses.

Now that I’m in college, no problem right? But then I read that the same college expenses cannot be both reimbursed by a 529 account and be used in claiming my Lifetime Learning Credit. I don’t have more than $10,000 in tuition, and getting 20% back is much better than cashing out my 529 tax-free. So I was bummed, until I read that 529 plans are also allowed to cover room and board, which the Lifetime Learning Credit does not. Yes!
[Read more…]

So you’ve gotten yourself a nice credit card or two, and have already started or are thinking about playing the 0% APR balance transfer game. Now, there are two simple but very important things that you need to remember to do: pay the minimum balance every month on time, and pay off the entire balance when the 0% APR period is over on time. Here’s one tip/tool for each:

Pay the minimum each month automatically with Online Bill Pay – I love Online Bill Pay, I don’t know how I lived without it. Say I have a $20,000 balance at 0%. When you get the first statement, you’ll see the minimum payment is usually something like 2% of the balance, for example $400. As long as they don’t change this, then every single payment after that will be less than $400 as your remaining balance decreases. So, just set your Online Bill Payment to automatically pay that account $400 every month, and you’re set!
[Read more…]

So I asked if I could transfer my credit limit from my other Citi credit cards to my new Citibank Professional Card, as discussed previously. I got the same answer that other readers got – No, because it is considered a professional/business card. So I can’t increase my current $9,000 limit. But then I recalled that most business cards are not reported on your consumer credit report, but on a separate business credit report. I asked a Citi Rep about this but she obviously didn’t know the difference. I’ll have to check my credit report after 30 days to see.

The reason why this is good is because if I it is not on my credit report, then I can take out the whole amount and it won’t affect my regular credit score! Which means I can apply for more cards with bonuses later 😉

So I asked if I could transfer my credit limit from my other Citi credit cards to my new Citibank Professional Card, as discussed previously. I got the same answer that other readers got – No, because it is considered a professional/business card. So I can’t increase my current $9,000 limit. But then I recalled that most business cards are not reported on your consumer credit report, but on a seperate business credit report. I asked a Citi Rep about this but she obviously didn’t know the difference. I’ll have to check my credit report after 30 days to see.

The reason why this is good is because if I it is not on my credit report, then I can take out the whole amount and it won’t affect my regular credit score! Which means I can apply for more cards with bonuses later 😉

When you do one of these 0% balance transfer deals, you want the biggest limit you can get for a couple of reasons.

1) More free money. More borrowed money = more interest earned = more free money.

2) Keep your credit score high. Say you already have a $9,000 balance. A $9,000 balance on a card with a $10,000 limit hurts your credit more than the same balance with a $20,000 limit.

3) Feed your ego. Knowing I could buy that Mini Cooper right now on my credit card gives me the warm fuzzies. 😉

For example, now that I have a new Citi Professional card with a $9,000 limit and a 0% balance transfer that I can take advantage of at any time within the next year, I am going to shift all the limits on my other Citi cards onto this one.
[Read more…]

Recently I gave into temptation and applied for two new credit cards with nice perks and no-fee balance transfers: the Citi Professional Card and the Discover Miles Card. I got approved for the Citi card right away and got a $9,000 credit limit. I’m going to make a purchase right away and get my $100 gift card. I’ll also call Citi and move my credit limits from my dormant Citibank cards to this one increase the limit to close to $20,000, making it nice and ripe for a future 0% APR balance transfer.

I haven’t heard from Discover yet, the online application said it might take up to four weeks for a decision? Sounds like a long time to me. I did request $15,000 in balance transfers, so maybe they’re pondering if I’m worthy 😉 I also moved recently (less than a year).

For those of you that have the Citi Dividend Platinum Card that gives you 5% cash back for supermarkets, drugstores, and gas stations – be sure to use them to their fullest.

1) Gift Cards – Don’t buy at the retail store, try to buy them at the supermarket and earn yourself 5% cash back! (They can’t tell the difference, a purchase is a purchase) Safeway is my favorite, they have a great selection which includes AMC Theatres, REI, Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath and Beyond, Blockbuster, Chili?s, SpaWish, Circuit City, Starbucks, CompUSA, Home Depot, Toy’s R Us, Old Navy, and more! [Full list]

2) Super Targets – Reportedly, people have had Super Targets treat all purchases as a grocery purchase! That means even if you buy a $500 LCD TV or other toys, they’ll give you 5% cash back! If you have a Super Target nearby, that is an awesome deal. I would try it out for a month first and see if it shows up as 5% back on your next statement.

(Typing quietly while the parents are still asleep, shh…) I’ve decided to take advantage of two recent credit card offers:

1) The Citi Professional Card for it’s 3% back on restaurants, $100 bonus, and save-able 0% balance transfer, and

2) The Discover Miles Card for it’s no-fee 0% balance transfer for 12 months.

I was going to apply for another Citi Card, but I decided that would be redundant since you can move credit limits around with Citi and simply put all your credit limit onto the one card you are using for 0%. I am going to apply for both at the same today, hopefully today. I’ll post more on why later, but it’s basically so the credit agencies won’t be able to see I applied for the other card, maximizing my credit limit and chance at acceptance for both cards. Now to figure out exactly how to cook a turkey.