Free 1 Year Membership to Entertainment Book Online

SBC is currently offering free access to the Entertainment Book online. If you don’t know, this is basically a big coupon book that people usually buy for $20-$40. I’m not a big Entertainment Book fan, as I rarely frequent the restaurants on their list. I also dislike how they advertise “Save 50% at Chili’s! and 2-for-1 at Baja Fresh!”, but it turns out to be good only at one specific location 20 miles away.

But hey, if it’s free why not take a look. I didn’t find anything special for my area, except maybe some slightly discounted movie tickets. Link via KR via SlickDeals.

$250 Bonus for American Express Business Card

The American Express Platinum Business Premium Cash Rebate Card is again offering a $250 statement credit (update: removed) after your first purchase, with no annual fee. If you got in on this last time like I did, you may not be able to get it again unless you have a 2nd business – “You may be permitted to have more than one American Express? Business Card account; however, you are eligible to receive only one promotional $250 statement credit per unique business.”

See other similar $100+ bonuses here.

Added: I just saw this if you click on “Special Offer” in the upper-left – “Note: Only business owners who received this offer via Inc. Magazine qualify to apply for a Card through this website.” I don’t remember seeing that last time, so watch out.

Free iPod Shuffle For Trading At HedgeStreet.com

(This offer expired at the end of 2006.)

Hedgestreet Logoaltext

Is it just me or are iPods quickly taking over the world? A new trading site, Hedgestreet.com, is offering a free 1 GB iPod Shuffle for opening an account, funding with at least $100, and making one trade. No trading fees for the first 30 days. You can start trading immediately when you open the account. However, this is because you cannot take out your money for 30 days after deposit.
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Get Your Free Credit and Insurance Reports Before Year’s End

Before we get really close to the end of the year and things start getting frantic, I just wanted to remind everyone to get all the free stuff that the government promised you via the FACT Act:

Free Credit Reports from all three bureaus at AnnualCreditReport.com. I’ve already gotten all of mine. I put in a request to fix a minor error my address, but I don’t think I ever got a reply. Grrr. I’ll have to try again.

Free CLUE Insurance Report at ChoiceTrust. This shows your previous auto and home insurance claim history. More details here. Mine was thankfully mistake-free.

New Costco ShareBuilder $90 Bonus Promotion

Sharebuilder is Costco’s “Service of the Month” for December, and they are running a promotion offering $90 Costco Cash for Executive Members ($70 for Gold or Business Members). There’s no reason not to go for the $90, since you can’t lose with Executive membership – They’ll pay you back any of the $50 extra you don’t gain in purchases. You do need to open an account and make one stock purchase.

Don’t have Costco? You can find a bunch of regular $50 Sharebuilder promotional codes here. Now, unless you really want to use Sharebuilder as your broker, there are two options to get your bonus, as selling stock there costs $15.

  1. Instant Gratification:Open with $5. Buy $1 of stock and pay $4 for commission. Wait for your bonus. Let the $1 in stock just rot there.
  2. Delayed Gratification: Open with $50. Buy $46 of a quality stock like Berkshire Hathaway and pay $4 for commission. Get the $50 (or more), and treat it like you just got free stock. Just sit back for a decade or two while it grows and grows. Details on this method here.

If you choose the latter and are going to open with at least $20, you can try to combine this with the $20 back from eBates. You can only get one eBate rebate, but myself and others have successfully gotten multiple Sharebuilder bonuses by applying again after getting the first bonus. Others simply opened up multiple accounts for others in their household: spouse, kids, parents, and so on.

Citi Credit Protector $100 Gas Rebate Update

As promised, this is a quick update to the Citi Credit Protector $100 Gas Rebate offer. If you signed up, don’t forget to cancel your 30-day trial. The number again is 1-888-592-7344. If you haven’t, the offer is still available.

Here is a scan of my rebate form. It’s for the $100 all at once, and it says nothing about having to remain a member to redeem. I called to confirm and they said that receipts before your sign-up date are not valid (makes sense). I did a lot of driving over Thanksgiving and easily spent $100 in gas, so I’ll be sending in my rebate form in tomorrow. Hopefully this will be another easy hundred bucks to fund my gifts… uhh, Roth IRA! 😉

Emigrant Direct Signup Bonus Update – October Payouts

Payouts for my Emigrant Direct Signup Bonus went out last week for verified Form #2 submissions in October. If you?re interested in opening an account with Emigrant Direct?s 5.05% APY with no minimums, why not get yourself an extra $20 out of it?

Free Online Foreign Language Courses

Here’s a great find – learn a new language for free (well, your taxes may have paid for it) at FSI Language Courses:

These courses were developed by the United States government and are in the public domain. This site is dedicated to making these language courses freely available in an electronic format. It is an independent effort to foster the learning of worldwide languages.

Included are Arabic, Cambodian, Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. If you have problems downloading like I did, try using Internet Explorer and Right Click > “Save File As…”. The audio should show up in mp3 format. Thanks to DumbLittleMan for the tip.

Discover’s Holiday Promotion Has A $100 Loophole

As part of the Discover Mall Holiday promotion, they are offering $20 for each $200 spent. However, there was no mention of what would happen if you returned the items after you “spent” the money. Since credit card companies are usually masters of the fine print, I figured they had some sort of mechanism in place to prevent this. Nope.
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Sunrocket VoIP – 2 Years for $199, No Code Required

Today (11/21) only, SunRocket is offering 2 years for $199. This “special” seems to come around every other month or so. I’ve been using SunRocket instead of a landline for over a year now now and I remain very satisfied for the price – check out my SunRocket Review for details. My faxing now works 95% of the time.

Added: You can also get two years for $199 from ViaTalk VoIP.

$100 and 5,000 Bonus Points Received From American Express

Update: The below promotion is now expired. The New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN now offers 3X points on airfare, 2X points on advertising, gas, and shipping and 1X point on everything else. The annual fee for this card is $175 but it is waived for all new cardholders. You can also get unlimited additional gold cards for an extra annual fee of $50 but this fee is waived for the first year as well.

I just got my first statement, and it looks like I have received all the free bonuses promised from the New Business Gold Rewards Card® from American Express OPEN. I am going to put this $100 and $50 gift card towards holiday gifts 🙂 For all the details, I have organized this and other free $100 bonuses into one central post.

Business Gold Amex Rewards Screenshot

 

Potential $100 in Gas Rebates For Citi Credit Protector Trial

I’ve written about those $15 checks that credit card issuers send you to try out their overpriced credit “protection” programs, so when I ran across this offer from Citibank for $100 in free gas rebate coupons for enrolling in a free 30-day trial, I was a bit suspicious.

I’ve gotten these before, but they were broken up into $10 rebates, one a month, and only valid if you stayed with the service. On top of that, they take months to fulfill, and if by the time they finally decide to stop stalling and process the rebate you’ve already cancelled, then oops! no money for you. In other words, it was a pain. Would this be similar?

Probably, but maybe not as bad – According to recent reports on Fatwallet, the rebate coupon they mail you is for $100 all at once. One catch is that you must submit gas receipts within 30 days of purchase. So if you can’t spend $100 on gas in 30 days, you may not get the full $100. Others suggested just picking up old receipts off the ground to satisfy the $100 requirement. I also asked if you still need to be enrolled for the rebate to process, and will update if I get an answer.

As will most of these credit protector trials, you are automatically enrolled after the initial period unless you call to cancel. For my own memory, the number to cancel is 1-888-592-7344. The program fee is 85 cents per $100 of your monthly balance. Thus, you should always try to sign up with an idle credit card with no balance. That way, even if you forget, you won’t be charged anything.

Thanks to Reader Paul who reminded me of this and also reports that you can’t use the Citi Professional Card, which a lot of people have from the $100 bonus, have to sign up. I tried too and it didn’t work. I did sign up successfully using another Citi card. I’ll try my best to remember to update here when I get the forms, and also post again in 30 days to remind people to cancel.