American Express Prepaid Card – $25 x 3 Bonus, No Promo Code Required

Update: In addition to reader reports, I just received my own multiple $25 bonus gift cards as shown below. $25 bonus on loading $200 per card is back for month of August!

AMEX now has their own reloadable prepaid card, creatively named the American Express® Prepaid Card. Features:

  • no credit check,
  • no monthly fees,
  • no upfront purchase fees,
  • no inactivity fees,
  • and no overdraft fees if you try to spend more than what is on the card

You can load the card for free via online bank transfer, and it ships fee via USPS 1st class mail. In fact, this card is likely better than most other prepaid cards on the market that are branded by Suze Orman, reality TV stars, or music moguls.

Right now, if you reach the 2nd page of the card application process (click on “Get your card now”) they will offer you a bonus $25 gift card for loading $200 onto the card, no promotional code required. (They may ask you to log in if you have an American Express account, or you can switch to Incognito/Private Browsing mode/clear cookies and they won’t ask you.) You should see this in the top right corner:

Offer is available to all, non-targeted. Expires 8/31/12. $50 or more must be loaded at the time of initial purchase. “Limit one $25 gift card per new Card user named on a Card.” You are allowed 3 prepaid cards per person, so that’s a potential bonus of $75 if you have 3 different names on each as these are designed to help manage spending for a family or household.

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Cozi Back-to-School Coupon Pack, Free Shoprunner

Cozi is an online/mobile organizer specifically made for families to help keep track of appointments, activities, shopping lists, etc. I downloaded the app to check out it; It’ll be interesting to see if this beats the huge calendar on the fridge.

Right now, they are offering a “back to school” promotion for those that sign up before August 31st that includes a bunch of family-related freebies and coupons. Included is a free 6-month ShopRunner membership (limited quantities), 10% off at Zulily, $10 off Brenthaven bags, and more. I’ve been using Shoprunner and the free 2-day shipping with no minimum order is definitely a nice perk.

UsingMiles.com Promo Codes – Free Lifetime Premier Membership

Usingmiles.com is a website that tracks your various frequent flyer miles and other loyalty points. Like other aggregation sites, you must trust them with your logins and passwords so that they can monitor things for you. I don’t know much about this company personally, although they have gotten nearly $3 million in venture capital according to TechCrunch and are endorsed by Flyertalk founder Randy Petersen.

There are a few competitors in this space such as Awardwallet.com, but most of them require some sort of annual payment in exchange for letting you know if your miles are about to expire. So it’s good news that right now you can get free lifetime Premier membership (otherwise $29.99 a year) via one of these links with a promotional code embedded:

  • LFLYER via LufthansaFlyer
  • MIL1CLICK via MilitaryOneClick

Premier membership includes the miles expiration alerts and also the ability to search for award seat and hotel room availability. I’d grab it now, as expiration date is unknown. Keep in mind that certain airlines like American Airlines and Southwest tend to block these tracking sites even if you provide them your login info. I’m trying it out right now and the user interface does provide a polished feel.

If you already have an account, you should be able to upgrade using one of the above links, or try using the promo code TBP.

Stretch Your Cell Phone Plan With Vonage Mobile App (Review)

Vonage Mobile is an Android/iPhone app that now allows you to make free outgoing phone calls over WiFi/3G/4G to landline and mobile telephone numbers in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Limited time offer with no stated end date, up to 3,000 minutes per month. You do not need to be a Vonage VoIP customer to use the app.

In addition, you can make free calls to anyone else in the world with the app. Think Skype, but it uses your phone’s existing contact list. You must link the app to an existing cell phone number, and when it makes calls it will show that number in the caller ID. I’ve used the app and the voice quality is good over WiFi. Should even work with iPod Touch or iPad if you have a Bluetooth headset. Hat tip to GudSpellur of FW.

Here are some ways that I can imagine the app saving people money as opposed to paying for an “unlimited everything” plan.

Cell Phone Only, Limited Minutes
If you’ve ditched the landline and are a cell-phone-only household with limited minutes, you can use this app over WiFi to make outgoing calls that won’t count against minutes. The people you call will never know the difference. If you do get your friends to install the Vonage app, both sides can make app-to-app calls for free using your existing address book (still uses data plan or WiFi).

Basic Prepaid Plans
If you have one of these plans that offer basic prepaid service for under $10 a month, then you can use this plan to make more calls without using minutes when in range of WiFi (home, work, cafe, Starbucks, McDonald’s, etc).

Unlimited Data, Limited Minutes
If have a plan like the $25/$30 Virgin Mobile Beyond Talk plan that offers unlimited data but only 300 mintues a month, you can use this app with the unlimited data to make additional voice calls.

Miser Mode 🙂
If you don’t want to pay for any recurring phone charges, you could link this up with a free Google Voice number and just make outgoing calls on an iPod Touch or cheap inactive smartphone. Incoming callers would just have to leave a message on Google Voice, and you’d call them back.

American Express Twitter #hashtags Promotion

Update: There is now a $10 off $50 gift card at participating malls, $5 off $25+ at Shell Gas, $25 off $75 at Ticketmaster.com, and $50 off $250 at Travelocity. If you have more than one American Express card, you can link one per unique Twitter account.

American Express is definitely one of the more creative card issuers when it comes to using new social media and technology. This time around they want to you to use Twitter #hashtags to earn discounts at various merchants.

  1. Link your Twitter account at sync.americanexpress.com/twitter.
  2. Register your American Express card.
  3. Tweet specific #hashtags to sign up for specific offers. You’ll get a confirmation almost immediately that you are enrolled via an @reply back.
  4. See what’s available and easily enroll by retweeting the offers on this page.

AmEx also has similar promotions going on with Foursquare and Facebook.

Free Chapter: New Edition of The Undercover Economist

Writer Tim Harford recently published a newly revised edition of his book The Undercover Economist. I read the first edition in 2009 and definitely enjoyed how it explained economics using everyday occurrences. I wrote about two memorable examples: price targeting and coffee shops, and the efficient market hypothesis and supermarket lines.

According to Harford himself, the biggest change in the new edition is a new chapter about eggs, probabilities, and the financial crisis (naturally). As a favor to those of us who already have the first edition, he has kindly put the new chapter as a free PDF download. I’ve read it already and it was worth the time spent even though the subject has already been covered extensively.

Hat tip to MR. Harford also has a handy website that republishes the articles he writes for The Financial Times.

Credit Sesame Promotions – Free Android App

Credit Sesame offers free credit scores and feedback based on your Experian credit report. No credit card required, no trial required, and you can check once a month.

You can now track your credit score with their newly-released free Android app (also available on iPhone), which also shows your total outstanding debts and historical credit score movements. You can log in using your existing CreditSesame.com account info.

Credit Sesame is the first and only Android app that allows consumers to check and keep monthly tabs on their Experian credit score for free every month. Additionally, it provides an easy way to track consumers’ credit and debt line items such as mortgages, credit cards, student loans, etc., that are reported to the credit bureaus, and receive personalized savings recommendations based on their credit profile and financial goals. The consumer’s financial goals are collected as part of the sign up process. Homeowners are also able to keep monthly tabs on their home value estimate of their primary residence.

Related: More free credit scores with no trial required.

Chase Total Checking Account Promotion – $150 Bonus

Chase Bank is offering a $150 bonus for new customers when you open a Chase Total Checking account plus deposit $100 and set up direct deposit within 60 days of account opening. You can avoid monthly service fees if you make a $500+ direct deposit each month or maintain a $1,500 minimum daily balance. Must keep account open for 6 months to keep the bonus. Expires 8/15/12.

At least in the past, you could simulate direct deposit using an ACH transfer from an online savings bank. Fine print quoted below.
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Free Summer Bowling Promotions

In celebration of National Bowling Day, register and get a coupon for a free game of bowling at participating centers on August 11, 2012. You can also try the direct download link here. Valid for a free game up to $6 value. Limit one free game of bowling per person, per valid e-mail address, per coupon. (So bring multiple printouts in case.) Check participating locations here.

Also check out KidsBowlFree.com and the AMF Summer Unplugged Free Bowling for Kids summer promo for more free game time. Lanes are closing left and right around here, hopefully my kids will still get to bowl. I remember when games were 99 cents!

$15 Free Live Nation Credit With Starwood Preferred Guest

If you are a member of the Starwood Preferred Guest hotel program (good credit card), enter your SPG number at spgpromos.com/lncashcodes and get a free $15 promo code (limited quantities) redeemable towards merchandise or concert tickets. The easiest thing to buy if you don’t want to spend anything out-of-pocket is an MP3 album download (decent selection, go to Music/All MP3s not just Hot Downloads). I picked up the Glee movie soundtrack (~$12 value) for DW with no credit card required.

FNBO Direct Returning Customer Promo 1.35% APY

If you have a dormant FNBO Direct account, you may be interested to know that they are offering a promotional rate of 1.35% APY beginning July 1, 2012 on all the money above what your balance was on June 29th, 2012. (Only available to existing FNBO Direct customers as of June 29, 2012.) Even better, the rate is guaranteed until December 31, 2012, making it better than 6-month CDs from other banks. All rates above have expired and FNBO is now offering a standard rate of 0.85% APY.

I should probably move a little money over… see my June 2012 Emergency Fund update for where else I stash my cash. Also see my rate chaser calculator for some real-world estimates of how much extra interest you’d get.

FNBO Direct has become just another commodity online-savings account these days, so it’s good to see they’re trying to keep things at least a little interesting. I’d be a little annoyed if I kept a lot of money in there this whole time, though! The fine print from the e-mail I received is quoted below.

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Free 500 Delta Skymiles via Le Club Accorhotels

It would appear that you can get 500 bonus Delta Skymiles by signing up for a hotel rewards account with Le Club Accorhotels and choosing Skymiles as your preferred loyalty program. Reading the fine print, I’m not quite sure if you need to actually stay in a hotel for the miles to transfer over, but it’s worth a shot.