Free Gogo Inflight Internet on Delta During August 2011

If you’re flying on Delta airlines in August over land, use the promo code DIETCOKEGOGO up checkout to get free WiFi inflight internet. Valid for Gogo Inflight plan of $12.95 or less (24 hour pass).

TradeKing $100 New Account Bonus: No Promo Code or Referral Required (August 2011)

Online discount broker TradeKing has brought back their $100 sign-up bonus for new accounts, no promotional code or referral required. You must open with $2,500 and make 3 trades within 6 months. Offer expires 8/31/11.

To qualify for this offer, new accounts must be opened and funded with $2,500 or more. Account funding must occur within 30 days of account opening, and three trades must be executed within 180 days of account opening, for account to qualify. […] The minimum funds of $2,500 must remain in the account (minus any trading losses) for a minimum of 6 months or the credit may be surrendered. Other restrictions may apply.

If you transfer an account of $2,500 value or greater over to TradeKing, they will also refund up to $150 in account transfer fees charged by your old broker.

TradeKing will credit your account transfer fees up to $150 charged by another brokerage firm when completing an account transfer for $2,500 or more. Offer applies to new non retirement accounts funding for the first time. Credit will be deposited to your account within 30 days of receipt of evidence of charge.

TradeKing offers $4.95 trades with no minimum balance requirement or inactivity fees. I’ve been using them for a while, they are a good basic broker for ETFs and dollar-cost-averaging. I am not an active trader or daytrader.

Top Credit Card Bonuses Roundup – July 2011

If you have a good credit score and the discipline not to get into consumer debt, you can profit from your responsibility by participating in various credit card sign-up incentives. The bonuses are not subject to tax, and by applying for only the best offers, you can add thousands of dollars to your income a year.

$500 in Gift Cards or $500 towards Student Loans, your Mortgage, Airfare or Hotel

The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is competing with a 50,000 ThankYou Point bonus. You get 50,000 bonus ThankYou Points after $2,500 in purchases within 3 months of account opening. 50,000 points is worth $500 in gift cards, airfare, or a check towards your student loan or mortgage. No annual fee. See this post for details.

$625 towards Airfare or Hotel

The Chase Sapphire Preferred is a rewards credit card offering new cardholders 40,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. 50,000 points can be redeemed for $625 in travel since they offer a 25% boost towards airfare and hotels. No annual fee for the first year, $95 in future years. They also offer 2 points per dollar spent on dining & 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases. Additional details here.

This is their new travel-oriented card, with no foreign transaction fee on purchases and you can also earn points based on the amount of miles you actually fly. The annual fee is free the first year, $95 in later years if you keep it. Alternatively, if you want a card with no annual fee period, the Citi ThankYouSM Preferred Card is offering 25,000 bonus points after $2,000 in purchases within 4 months.

“Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the issuer. This site may be compensated through the issuer’s Affiliate Program.  “The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.”

Free Popcorn with Facebook Like & Smartphone

More social media bribery! Yahoo Movies will give you a coupon for a free small popcorn if you “Like” them on Facebook. The coupon will be sent via text message. Good at Regal Cinemas, United Artists Theatres or Edwards Theatres locations. From the FAQ:

*Must be a browser enabled phone to get a coupon. Coupon will be sent as a link in an SMS message. Standard carrier message and data rates may apply. Coupon valid for 7 days from when sent.

Capital One 360 Financial Independence Day Promotions

Capital One 360 is running their usual “Financial” Independence Day promotion. Valid only July 1st & 2nd, 2011 (why not until the 4th? who knows).

  • New 360 checking account customers will receive an opening bonus of $50 when they make three purchases within 45 days of account opening. Those that then set up and make at least two direct deposits of $250 by August 31st will receive an additional $76 bonus for a total savings of $126.
  • Investors who open a new ShareBuilder account will receive a $76 account bonus after their first investment.

Top Credit Card Bonuses Roundup – June 2011

If you have a good credit score and the discipline not to get into consumer debt, you can profit from your responsibility by participating in various credit card promos where their ad dollars go into your pocket. There have been some exceptionally nice deals lately to choose from, one of which expires soon. Here’s a brief summary:

$500 in Gift Cards or $500 towards Student Loans, your Mortgage, Airfare or Hotel

The Citi ThankYou Premier Card is competing with a 50,000 ThankYou Point bonus. You get 50,000 bonus ThankYou Points after $2,500 in purchases within 3 months of account opening. 50,000 points is worth $500 in gift cards, airfare, or a check towards your student loan or mortgage. No annual fee. See this post for details.

$500 in Cash or $625 towards Airfare or Hotel

Chase Saphire Preferred Card BannerThe Chase Sapphire Preferred Card is a rewards credit card offering new cardholders 50,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months. 50,000 points can be redeemed for $500 cash or two airplane tickets worth up to $312.50 each since they offer a 25% boost towards airfare and hotels. No annual fee for the first year, $95 in future years. They also offer 2 points per dollar spent on dining & 1 point per dollar spent on all other purchases. Additional details here.

(This card is the “big brother” of the regular Chase Sapphire Card, where you can get 25,000 points ($250 cash) after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months, and there is no annual fee in the first year or subsequent years.

This is their new travel-oriented card, with no foreign transaction fee on purchases and you can also earn points based on the amount of miles you actually fly. The annual fee is free the first year, $125 in later years if you keep it. Alternatively, if you want a card with no annual fee period, the Citi ThankYouSM Preferred Card is offering 25,000 bonus points after $2,000 in purchases within 4 months.

Free $2 Credit for Amazon MP3 Downloads

Amazon.com is offering $2 of free credit towards MP3 downloads with the code CLOUDMP3. No purchase required. Enter code at this link. It should increase your gift card balance by $2 for music purchases only. You must redeem the code by June 30, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Limit one Amazon MP3 promotional credit per customer.

Free 500 Hawaiian Airlines Miles

Hawaiian Airlines is offering up 500 free miles if you link your Twitter and HawaiianMiles accounts. This will bring you a bit closer to the islands and also resets your miles expiration date (after 18-months of inactivity). While you’re at it, you can follow my highly sporadic Twitter account @mymoneyblog. 🙂 Found via InACents.

Free Weekend Day Car Rental From Hertz

Rental car agency Hertz is revamping their frequent renter program, and is offering 500 bonus points (enough for a free rental day on a weekend) plus 100 bonus points per day on rentals from 7/1 to 9/30/2011 when you register online. You must be Hertz #1 Club Gold member first, but you can also join that for free until 9/30/11.

To be specific, I looked online and 500 points is worth “1 Free Weekend Day – Non Peak”. I’ve gotten Hertz #1 Club whatever for free for a few years now, so it doesn’t seem to be very special, but two nice perks are (1) “skip the counter” eligibility and (2) free additional driver. Still, they’re usually too expensive unless someone else is paying for it. I’ll take the free rental though. Does anyone else find the new mascot kind of creepy?

Prosper New Lender Promotion: iPod Nano, Bose, iPad 2

Peer-to-peer lending site Prosper recently received another round of VC money and it appears that they are offering a new iPad 2 promotion to attract enough lenders to match their borrower demand. If you open a new lender account by June 30, 2011 and have a certain amount of funded notes by July 21, 2011, you can earn one of the following bonuses:

  • $5,000 minimum (to $9,999) for an iPod Nano, 8 GB ($149 value)
  • $10,000 minimum (to $19,999) for a set of Bose QuietComfort 15 Noise-Cancelling Headphones ($299 value)
  • $20,000+ for an iPad 2 32 GB WiFi model ($599 value)

These are all pretty high investment amounts, and unless you have a lot of money you’re looking to deploy, I’d recommend wading in gradually and spreading your investments across as many different borrowers as possible. P2P lending has a longer track record now, but you are still basically lending money to people who are looking for a cheaper alternative to credit cards. I’m not surprised there are more borrowers than lenders; rates start at 7.4%. You can see overall performance data at LendStats.com.

If you do become a lender, be on the lookout for their “featured listings”, which currently offer a 4% upfront rebate on investments. Rebates are paid within 60 days of the date that your bid is placed. On $5,000 of investments, that would be $200. The fine print specifically states that you can double dip in this way:

Invested funds may also be used to qualify for Featured Listings promotions, but otherwise such funds cannot be applied to other promotional offers.

Two Movie Tickets for $12: Fandango + BuyWithMe

Daily deal site BuyWithMe is offering 2 movie tickets from Fandango for $12 this week. The city is Houston but you can use them nationwide. This isn’t as good as previous deals, but if you’re going to watch those summer blockbusters at non-matinee times, these can still save some bucks. Selected fine print:

Limit 1 voucher per person; limited quantity available. Valid for 2 tickets with a value of up to $13 each; all Fandango fees are included in the price of your voucher. If two tickets exceed $26 prior to entering your promo code (for IMAX and 3D), you will be responsible for paying the difference in price. Promotional value expires 09/22/2011

Follow-up: Chase Sapphire Preferred 100,000 Points = $1,000 Bonus Possible?

Chase Sapphire Preferred ImageThis is a follow-up on the previously mentioned 50,000 bonus points offer (converts to $625 in travel) for the getting the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card. Thanks to readers Paolo and AT, they shared a way to get double those points, even if you’ve already applied.

Apparently, some people were recently mailed targeted offers for the same card, but with 100,000 points (converts to $1,000) instead. The problem was, you needed a special invitation code so there was no public application link. However, some clever folks who already applied for the 50k offer asked nicely for Chase to match with the offer code S6V, and many success stories have been reported on FW.

I was just able to successfully get 50K applied to mine and my wife’s accounts (just applied this past Sat. night in fact) and it was really painless, took 5 minutes. 200,000 total!

So the plan of attack would be:

1) Apply for the 50k offer. That’s the best available offer, and even by itself is a great offer worth $625 in travel. If you’ve already applied, skip ahead to:

2) Ask politely for a match of the new 100k offer. After getting your card, use the Chase website to send an online secure message requesting a match of the new, improved offer. There are no guarantees on this – you should be prepared to be happy with the $625 bonus – but it’s definitely worth a shot and I’d do it sooner than later. Use this helpful script from Paolo:

Dear Chase Representative,

I just this past weekend applied for my new Chase Sapphire Preferred card with a 50,000 sign up bonus of 50,000 points after spending $4,000.

Today, I learned of a new offer S6V which promises 100,000 bonus points. I would be very grateful if you would extend the 100,000 bonus point offer S6V to me as well since I just applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card.

I have been a long time customer of Chase, and have had my primary checking and credit card accounts with Chase for many years and hope to maintain them for many more years to come!

Kind Regards,

[Your Name]

I would customize this to your personal situation, mentioning your length or size of relationship with Chase if applicable. Update: Some people are reported that this window of opportunity has been closed.

“Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by the issuer. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of the issuer, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the issuer. This site may be compensated through the issuer’s Affiliate Program.  “The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser’s responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.”