The cheap, hungry student inside me couldn’t help but mention a new site called BuffetGo. In an effort to reduce wasted food, both mom-and-pop and hotel buffet restaurants work with BuffetGo to offer a special deal. You show up at their restaurant within a 15 or 30-minute window before closing, and you can fill a take-out box with whatever is available for $2 to $5.

The number of participating restaurants is still quite limited, but locations include Chicago, New York, and Southern California. Your first meal is also free (may expire on October 31st):

FIRST MEAL FREE FOR NEW CUSTOMERS
We’re committed to an excellent cause, and we want you to be too. To get you on board we’re offering you your first meal completely free. Just place your order via the website and we’ll refund the full amount of your first meal back onto your payment card within 72 hours – it’s as simple as that. See you at the buffet cart!

This won’t work for most people, but it does seem like a clever win-win for the parties involved and indirectly helps the environment. My cheapskate side would hope that I could grab enough food for two meals in one box.

More: Vice, Business Insider

Get another 500 free Virgin America Elevate points when you sign up for the new Virgin America Produced e-mail newsletter.

* Offer valid until October 26, 2016. Only one email address is allowed and only one set of 500 points will be awarded per Elevate account number. Bonus reward points earned in this offer do not qualify towards Elevate Gold or Elevate Silver status. Please allow 10 days for your points to post from the promotion end date.

You’ll also extend the expiration of your points balance. Virgin America points expire after 18 months of inactivity. Virgin America is also merging with Alaska Airlines, so these should eventually become Alaska miles.

Following the news of the Yahoo hack of half a billion users (noted as the biggest data breach in history), you may be interested in some more tips regarding online security.

In their latest issue, Consumer Reports has a 10-minute digital privacy tune-up. Here are highlights and direct links for your convenience:

• Turn on automatic software updates wherever available.
• Use screen locks wherever available.
• Check where else you’ve been hacked at haveibeenpwned.com. You’ve probably been pwned. Adobe and Dropbox for me.
• Use temporary e-mail addresses. I tested their recommendation 10minutemail.com and I will definitely use it in the future for those “Give me your e-mail and get XXX” offers.
• Cover up your laptop webcam.
• Use the HTTPS Everywhere Browser Extension (available on Chrome, Firefox, Firefox for Android, and Opera). Help you use encrypted https whenever possible.
• Turn off location tracking in apps.

I would also add a reminder about free and/or cheap password managers. All of my accounts now have their own unique, complex passwords. I can’t imagine not using one anymore. I still use 1Password mostly because it was the first one I tried, but if they force me into a monthly subscription I will likely bail. I’ve heard positive things about LastPass, KeePass, Dashlane, and RoboForm.

I replaced my landline with Ooma VoIP home phone service over 6 years ago and and haven’t had a monthly bill since. This ended up being one of those deals where early adoption was rewarded. First there was no monthly fees, then it was about $1 a month, then about $3 a month. Today, buyers of the newest Ooma Telo are subject to the upfront equipment cost plus monthly taxes and fees of roughly $4.23 a month (varies by location). I’ve resisted upgrading to Telo as it would have forced me to give up my grandfathered monthly fee waiver.

If you are also a grandfathered Ooma Hub owner, you should check your e-mail for the following message titled “Important Service Update for Ooma Hub Owners”. (Thanks to the readers who asked me about this offer, as I would have probably deleted the e-mail.)

As a valued Ooma Hub owner and one of our earliest customers, we’d like to thank you for your support over the years.

As you may know, we discontinued technical enhancements and customer support for the first generation Ooma Hub product over three years ago. Recently, we made several network infrastructure upgrades for our Ooma Telo product, which unfortunately could cause Hub users to experience reduced service reliability due to the firmware limitations of the Hub.

As one of our earliest customers, we’d like to offer a special opportunity to upgrade to our latest Ooma Telo device for just $79.99 with free shipping. Plus, we’ll continue to waive the taxes and fees for the lifetime of your Telo device!1

When you upgrade to the Ooma Telo, you’ll enjoy better reliability and voice quality with PureVoice. Ooma Telo also supports HD Voice, integration with Amazon Echo, additional connectivity options like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and support for our whole family of accessories such as the Linx and HD2 Handset.

Okay, so $80 will get you a new Ooma Telo box and continued no monthly fees for the lifetime of the new box. Is it worth the upgrade? Some considerations…

Pros

• My Ooma Hub is now 6 years old, and the fee waiver is only for the lifetime of the device. This offer would get a a new device and thus a new “lifetime”, which ideally would extend my fee waiver.
• The Telo-exclusive features may interest you (better voice quality, Amazon Echo and Nest integration, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, Linx and HD2 accessories). Some folks seem to love their Amazon Echo, and using a wireless Bluetooth headset may offer valuable convenience.

Cons

• It costs 80 bucks.
• The warning of “reduced service reliability” is rather vague. I’m still satisfied with the current voice quality, although I am not a heavy user.
• Is it possible that my old Ooma unit is more reliable than the new Telo? Or am I just pushing my luck? Running for over 6.5 years x 24/7 is pretty great. I have a Macbook from 2006 that still runs fine.
• Telo Basic users have to pay extra for certain services that are included for free with Ooma Core/Hub including caller ID name (not just number) and e-mail alerts of new voicemails. It is unclear if this upgrade will cause us to lose these free features.

Bottom line. If you are a heavy Ooma user, it may be worth taking advantage of this offer to “future-proof” yourself for perhaps another 5 years or more. If like me you are a light Ooma user thanks to unlimited cellular minutes and/or robo-calling politicians, then a potential loss would not be as severe. The original Ooma Hub advertised “free monthly home phone service for life” (of the equipment), so I suppose I’ll see how long that ends up being.

Here’s an offer for 1,000 free Air Canada Aeroplan miles if you sign up for the Fairmont Hotels President’s Club loyalty program and use the enrollment code FED16 (embedded in link). Be sure to enter your Aeroplan number (join free here) under the expandable section labeled “FREQUENT FLYER PROGRAMS (OPTIONAL)” and select that plan as your earnings preference. You must join by November 15, 2016. Found via FFB.

These bonus miles can be handy as Air Canada requires activity every 12 months to prevent Aeroplan miles expiration. The basic free tier of Fairmont’s loyalty program still gets your free room Wi-FI during your hotel stay.

Uber and Android Pay are running a promotion offering 50% off 10 rides (up to $5 per ride) now through 10/15. No promo code required. The instructions they provide are pretty straightforward:

• Download and set up Android Pay on the Play store
• Open your Uber app
• Add Android Pay as a payment option in the Uber app
• Make sure to select Android Pay in the confirmation screen when requesting a ride and you will get 50% off 10 rides* (up to $5 per ride) now through 10/15
• No need to apply any additional codes

* Supplies limited. Offer good for 10 rides. 50% off up to $5.00 off a trip requested using the Uber App and Android Pay. Only one offer per Uber account. Offer expires October 15th, 2016, or earlier at Uber’s sole discretion. No cash value. Valid in the US only.

Not a bad deal for regular Uber users. Thanks to reader Tom for the heads up.

Related: Through March 2017, Capital One and Uber also have a partnership that gets you every 10th Uber ride free up to $15 with the Capital One Quicksilver credit card (review).

Citibank has a $400 bonus offer for new checking account customers. Here are the highlights:

• To qualify for a $400 cash bonus, open a new consumer checking account in The Citibank Account Package by 10/31/16.
• Within 30 days from the date you opened your new checking account, deposit $15,000 or more in new-to-Citibank funds into your new checking account or new or existing Citibank Savings Plus account.
• A minimum balance of $15,000 is required to be maintained in the new checking account or new or existing Citibank Savings Plus Account, for 30 consecutive calendar days following the date you made your qualifying deposit.
• The cash bonus will be credited to your new checking account within 90 calendar days from the date when you completed all offer requirements.
• To be eligible for this offer, you must not currently have a Consumer checking account with Citibank or have been a signer on or owner of a Citibank consumer checking account within the last 60 days.
• Limit of one of each offer per customer and one offer per account.

Here are details for The Citibank Account Package:

• $25 monthly service fee waived if you have $10,000 in combined average monthly balances.
• Interest rate is a tiny 0.01% APY.
• Free withdrawals from all Citibanks ATMs.
• Citibank will waive their $2.50 fee for using non-Citibank ATMs, if combined average monthly balances in eligible linked accounts are met. However, you may still be charged a fee by the ATM owner itself.
• No early account closure fee.

Let’s see… To start, you must not have had a Citibank consumer checking account within the last 60 days. Next, you’ll need to bring in $15,000 of money from a non-Citibank account, and keep it there for 30 days. You’ll need to keep $10,000 in your account to avoid the $25 monthly service fee. You’ll need to keep the account open for up to another 90 days (up to 120 days total) until the $400 bonus arrives.

It is not clear if you need to keep you account at the “Citibank Account” package level past the first 30 days. To be safe, you may want to keep it at that level ($10,000 minimum balance) until the bonus shows up. After that, you may downgrade to their Basic or Access levels with much lower minimum balance requirements, or you may choose to eventually close out the account after that if it doesn’t work for you.

Worth the effort? If you had $15,000 sitting in a 1% APY savings account, you’d earn $50 of interest over 4 months. So you could view this as $350 in extra interest over 4 months. Alternatively, if you earn $400 of interest on a $15,000 balance over 120 days (also ~4 months), that works out to roughly a 8% annualized interest rate. If you take out $5,000 after 30 days and keep $10,000 in there, your effective interest rate will be even higher, closer to 10% annualized interest rate for those 4 months. If the bonus arrives earlier, you could do better. At these assumed balance levels, you will avoid all monthly account fees. Note that the $400 will be reported on a 1099-INT form. Thus your interest is taxable as ordinary income, but any monthly fees you pay are not tax-deductible.

If you are an American Express cardholder, they have a promotion with BJ’s Wholesale Clubs that will essentially net you a free 1-year membership if you are a new BJ’s customer. The membership is discounted 50% down to $25, and then you also get a $25 gift card. Here are details taken from this PDF with promotion terms (backup copy).

Here’s how to redeem the new membership offer from BJ’s by September 30, 2016:

1. Show your American Express Card and photo identification at a BJ’s Club Member Services Desk and present this confirmation (or show the saved coupon on your phone).
2. Purchase a new 12-month BJ’s Inner Circle® or InnerCircle® Business Membership to get 50% off the regular price ($25 off the $50 membership fee, plus state and local taxes, where applicable or required by law) and receive a $25 BJ’s Gift Card.

Some customers have reported being able to use the $25 gift card itself to pay for the $25 membership, but either way it is essentially a free year membership.

Offer valid in-Club only; not valid on BJs.com. Market code AMEX25 expires 9/30/16. This offer may not be combined with other BJ’s membership offers, is not redeemable for cash and is good for new Members only. Market code AMEX25 may not be copied or transferred. Limit one offer per household. Photo identification required when applying for Membership.

Hertz has a Summer Bonus promotion with bonus points on your summer car rentals through 9/5/2016. Not much time left, but you can still get 25 free Hertz points just for registering with your Hertz Gold membership number.

Register to earn up to two Free Weekend Days on your summer rentals with Hertz Gold Plus Rewards® from August 9, 2016 through September 5, 2016. You can earn:

275 bonus points on your first qualifying rental
275 points on your second
550 points on your third
That’s 1,100 Gold Plus Rewards points—enough for two Free Weekend Days!

These points won’t extend your expiration date (you need rental activity every 24 months), but they may get you closer to that next free rental (starts at 550 points for a free weekend day).