MyCardBlog

Upromise.com is offering free one year Identity Theft Protection plan for us. However, you can’t see the credit report in this plan. They will notify you whenever there is a change in your credit report. It’s really nice for them to do this. Nowadays, we have to pay to enroll in the credit monitoring plans at least fot $100 per year. To join this protection, you can join the Upromise program (here) or you don’t have to join it. (here) Most of us may not be familiar with Upromise. Upromise is a college service provider that helps families earn, save and pay for higher educations. Joining their program is free—sounds like non-profit organization. You can get lots of benefits from them.

By the way, Citi is providing Citi Upromise Platinum Select Mastercard which will give you 1% cash back on everyday purchase and 10% cahs back on 7000+ grocery and drug stores. It also provides 0% APR on balance transfer without a transaction fee. For those who wants to take advantage of the 0 APR on balance transfer offer it’s a good choice.

Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards Card is offering $50 credit after first purchase. This card features a 1% cash rewards on everything plus 25% annual bonus on the cash you earned during the year. SO the average cash rewards is about 1.25% on everything. If you don’t have a 2% on everything card, this is a good choice. (You’d better have other specific cards which will give you more rewards—-like gas card.) You can redeem the rewards at anytime! There is no minimum amount required. If you’d like to get $1, then go ahead. They will send you a check! You can earn cash back as much as you can. There is no limit! To receive the $50 credit, you have to use the card before Dec 31, 2007.

Another feature is they won’t charge foreign transaction fees. Don’t like Citi, Chase and BOA which will charge about 3% transaction fees for transactions made in a foreign currency. (See http://www.capitalone.com/tv/)

My experience tells me that they will pull credit report from 3 credit bureaus.

Today I got a mail from Fidelity which is offerring me AA miles for openning an account there. SO I rememebr that Fidelity is offering $100 bonus as well as AA/UA mileage bonus for opening a nonretirement brokerage account. Here I’m summarizing the Fidelity banking deal.

I think you can get the AA/UA mileage bonus first. Their offer is: $50,000-25,000 AA/UA miles, $10,000-15,000 AA/UA miles, $2,500-5,000 AA/UA miles. You can choose here for AA miles and here for UA miles. Please choose the right account type. The bnous miles will show up in you AA/UA mileage account very soon. Then if you have extra money, please go ahead and take the $100 bonus. If you don’t have $10,000 available in your other bank accounts, please transfer the money back to your bank account.

You should sing up here. After filling all of the information, click “An eligible fidelity account”—You should click this to qualify for the $100 bonus. And then click “Confirm”—make sure the information is right. The bonus should be show up very soon.

So within two weeks, you can get 15,000 AA/UA miles and extra $100 bonus. The requirement is you have $10,000. I believe it’s very safe to put money there because millions of Americans put their retirement savings there.

The bank of America is currently leading in bank loan market. Their target market for no fax payday loan is the people, who need to pay their unexpected expenses with such emergency loans. Their consolidated loan is getting more popular owing to its ability to combine other debts into single monthly payment. The nature of these loans can be both unsecured and secured. The secured loan requires some sort of collaterals against their issuance. Bank of America is offering cheap secured loans and car finance of varying degrees.

HSBC is still offerring their sign-up bonus for new customers. The deal is ending on Sep 30, 2007. So I put it here for those who want to take the last chance.

You have two choices. Open an HSBC Interest Checking Account and receive a $75 bonus. Or open a Free Checking Account with an HSBC Debit MasterCard with PayPass, you’ll receive $25 bonus. In order to qualify for $75 offer, you must open an Interest Checking Account with an initial deposit of $3,000 of new money. While you can get $25 for free, no direct deposit required! No minimum balance required! No monthly maintenance fees applied! See here.

Although most banks are willing to give $50~$100 bonus for their new customers, there are also some banks offer other kinds of bonus. Here I summarize some banking deals which are offering ipod as sign-up bonus.

1). MyEsayRewards.com is offering an iPod shuffle for those who submit their application for Discover Card through their website. To get this offer, you should register and submit your contact information to MyEasyRewards.com. Then apply for a Discover Card through the link provided by them. You must get approved to get the iPod shuffle. If your application is denied, you can’t get the bonus. See here.

2). ViewPoint Bank is offering an iPod nano when you open a new Beyond Free Checking Account. You need to make at least $600 direct deposit to the new account twice before Dec 31, 2007. The direct deposit should be set up in 60 days. The initial deposit requirement is $100. See promotion page here.

3). Evergreen Private Bank is introducing their Cornerstone Deposit Program which will provide their customers primate rate on checking, money market and CD accounts. If you open a cornerstone checking account with direct deposit, you will receive a fee iPod nano or $200 credit to your account. Furthermore, EPB will reimburse yout ATM surcharges on all ATMs for up to $20 a month. See promotion page here. Bad news: only available at ME, VT, NY, OH, IN, KY, MI, UT, ID, WA and OR.

4). BestBank is offering Saving PayBack program. You can earn up to $100 for making monthly automatic transfers of minimum $10 from checking to saving account. (See here)At the same time, if you open a personal checking account with direct deposit, you can get a free iPod shuffle. In order to qualify, you should make 3 consecutive direct deposits with minimum amount of $75 from your payroll, social security or retirement account. (See local branches for details.) Furthermore, you can get $10 for using online banking and registering e-statements. Then you can also get $10 for referring a friend. If you use their check card, you can get 10% cash back on the first $250 purchase made at grocery stores.

5). Compass Bank is offering their first-time customers a free iPod 1GB shuffle for opening a new Build-to-Order Free Checking account. (See here) Offer is only available to residents at AL, AZ, CO, FL, NM, and TX. See promotion page here. $50 minimum initial deposit required.
Please read the terms and conditions carefully before you file an application.

We have known many banking bonuses from Chase Bank in the past month. I also put some posts about Chase Banking deals. Today is Sunday, I think it would be useful to summarize the deals from Chase and put them together.

1). $100 or $75 for opening a Chase Free Checking account with direct deposit. Although some claimed that they could open the account online, it seems you can only open the account in branch. Here are some links I got from the Internet: Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, and Link 4. Also see here. Update:the link to $100 bonus is dead. However, you can still get $75 by applying online through link 4 or here.

2). $25 bonus for referring a friend to open a Chase Free Checking account. Usually you can get the coupon from your friends. When you open an account, you can ask for 5 coupons with your name on it. And then give the coupons to your friends……

3). $10 extra bonus for setting up online bill pay. You should get a coupon code from your banker, and use it to set up bill pay online. You have to make 3 unique bill pays to 3 different payees.

4). Forget about the $10 bonus. You can get $50 bonus for setting up bill pay online using code: BTRVE. Remember to pay before Nov 6, 2007. Also see here.

5). $50 credit for spending $500 with Chase Debit Card before Oct 15, 2007. Maybe your debit card will not qualify the bonus. Try to enroll first. Also see here.

6). $200 for opening a Chase business checking account. This deal expires Nov 30, 2007. See the promotion page for details.

7). NY/Tri-state area friends can get $10 for simply use chase blink debit card 10 times. See here.
Chase is FDIC insured under JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. I like Chase!

It’s weekend now. WE need some laughs!