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Citibank has just released a new promotion code to give $200 sign-up bonus for their new checking account customers. The promotion code is: CEMX. You can enter the code and apply for a new account online at offer.citibank.com. Once you enter the code, you will redirected to the application page. If you are not sure about the promotion, you can use the live chat service at the left of the application page to verify this offer. Or you can also call citibank at 800-374-9500 to apply for a new account. Or you can go to a local citi branch to open a new account with this new promotion code. Here are some requirements to get the $200 bonus:

• Open and fund a qualifying Citibank regular checking account with $1,000 or more by 6/30/2008
• Make a direct deposit to or two bill payments from your new account each month for three consecutive months

—first $100 bonus

• Continue making a direct deposit or at least two bill payments each month for the next three consecutive months

—second $100 bonus

The Citi EZ Checking account doesn’t qualify fot this offer. You must have to open a regular checking account or others. And you must be a new citibank customer. When you open a checking account, citibank will pull a “soft inquiry” to your credit report to verify your identity. This promotion is good until 06/30/2008. Don’t miss this $200!

Update: I’d like to thank Jim Semple for his effort on the issue of fees associated with the CitiBank banking account which I didn’t point out in my post.

I’ve applied for the Citibank Checking Account Bonus but when finished for pending approval (a few days), found this fine print which involves monthly fee unless $6000 in accts, so it’s not a full $200 bonus unless you tie up $5000 more Balance. To avoid monthly fees, you need to maintain a $6,000 combined average balance — an easy goal to reach. Why? Because so many accounts go toward it: Checking, Savings, CDs, Money Market, Lines, Loans, Mortgage and Brokerage (to qualify, accounts must be linked to your ATM/Debit Card.)

# Monthly Fee. None if you meet the required balance OR you have a stand-alone Ultimate Savings Account.
If not, in NY, NJ and CT, it’s $9.50 for Regular Checking and $12.50 for Interest Checking. In all other states, it’s $12.50 for Regular Checking and $15 for Interest Checking.
# Checks. Free if you meet the required balance. If not, $.50 per check.

Following is Jim’s opinion about this promotion:

If you don’t put up $6,000, then CS Bank Rep also told me that to allow (after qualifying) 120 days to pay Bonus, so if qualifying for 2nd Bonus, you wait up to a total of 10 months (3 months 1st Bonus, 3 months 2nd Bonus, up to 4 months on 2nd Bonus Payout) then at $9.50 Monthly Fee (some states higher), would be $95 so you would net (out of $200) $105.00 for 10 months (minus any interest you might have earned on that $1,000 for 10 months which at 3.00% could be around another $25 not including compounding). You still make about $80 for 10 months on $1000.

So best to put up $1000 in checking acct, $5000 in their Ultimate Money Market account (2.96% APY) for best return. You only need 2 BillPays monthly to qualify MM higher interest rate which qualifies eligibility for Bonuses. BillPay must use funds over the $6000 minimum total of accts to maintain. So direct deposit a small amount monthly into Checking and make 2 small BillPays monthly (like to your credit card).

I just want to point out another option here: If possible, you can apply for a Citi credit card with 0% APR on balance transfer and do a small balance transfer. In this way, you are also qualified for $200 bonus and you can still get some free money from balance transfer.

If you pay your balance off every month, choosing a credit card with rewards that match your spending profile and interests can pay. Following are a few credit cards with cool rewards programs.

Nowadays thousands of credit cards are competing for comsumers’ attention. On some occations, credit card issuers will issue some cool credit cards with cool rewards programs. In this way, that certain credit card will capture customers’ attention and become popular. Maybe they are not best, but they definitely are worthy of notice.

Free Credit Scores: WaMu Credit Card offers free credit scores to their credit card holders. The credit score is usually basedon your credit profile at TransUnion. Unlike to other credit scores (FAKO score), they offer you genuine FICO credit score which is widely used by credit grantors to judge your credit. The credit score is updated once every month. If you have a credit card from WaMu, this is the most convenient way to monitor your credit score. If you receive the invitations from WaMu, you can try to apply for it. As far as I know, over 80% people received the invitations can get approved.

Help Our Earth: Your purchase can make a difference! Every time you use your GE Earth Rewards Card from GE Money, part of your net purchase will go to climate projects (specificlly, emission reduction projects). Or you can choose to share the cash rewards between you and those climate projects. If you want to contribute to make our earth more clean and help reduce the CO2 emission, you can use this card.

Make-A-Wish: Every time you use your Bank of America Make-A-Wish Platinum Plus Card, Bank of America will make a contribution to Make-A-Wish Foundation. It’s another convenient way for you to help our society. If you are a suporter of Make-A-Wish Foundation, this card is your top choice.

Nature and Wild Life: Bank of America offers a couple of credit cards aimed to sponsor some Nature and Wild Life Organizations. For every purchase you made with Bank of America Nature Conservancy Platinum Card, BOA will donate part of your purchase (1%) to Nature Conservancy at no cost to you. If you prefer to Wild Life Foundations, you have other more choices there. Many options are available here.

Phone Discounts: The AT&T Universal Savings and Rewards Card offers 10% rewards for 12 months when you use AT&T products and you can continue to receive 5% after that. There no such a card to help you save money at AT&T. This card also offers 0% APR on balance transfer for up to 12 months. You can get 1 ThankYou Point for every dollar you spent at non-AT&T products.

Get Awarded for Being A Good Student: Citi mtvU card for college students offers bonus points for good GPA you get every semester! (2,000 bonus points if your GPA is 4.0.) If you pay your bills on time every month, you can also earn 25 bonus points for being a good customer! This card also features huge discount at Amazon.Com and restaurants. Amazon.Com is considered as a boostore, you can get 5 thankyou points for every dollars spent at Amazon.Com.

City Rewards: American Express issue a series of city rewards credit cards: IN Chicago Card, IN New York Card, IN Los Angles Card. Every time you use that card to make a purchase, you can accumulate a INSIDE rewards point which can then be redeemed to eat, drink, play in Chicago, New York, Los Angles as mentioned above. If you use that card at city essentials, your rewards will be doubled. So cool!

There are also many other opotions for you. If you are tired of getting cash back, accumulating airlime mileages, and hotel rewards points, you can try some new rewards program.

Thousands of victims buried or missing after China’s worst earthquake in three decades, where the death toll soared to more than 12,000 people in the hardest-hit province alone (12,000 is the latest figure released by Chinese government on May 13, 2008.). According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the death toll exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, and 18,645 were still buried in debris in the city of Mianyang, near the epicenter of Monday’s massive, 7.9-magnitude quake. However, we would expect the numbers of casualties to rise due to the remoteness of the areas affected by the quake and difficulty in finding buried victims.

The Red Cross Society of China is calling for donations for victims of the Sichuan earthquake. As the transportation in the disaster hitting area is not smooth, Red Cross Society of China is mainly collecting monetary donations right now. For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. The Red Cross Society of China has published a public hotline and bank account information to receive worldwide donations.

Account Name: Red Cross Society of China

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610)6513999

You can also donate online at the Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn.

More pictures about this earthquake can be found at usatoday.com.

I just received an email from discover card stating that they are going to offer $100 cash back bonus for the discover business card. It’s really great for them to offer sign-up bonus for their potential business card members. Because business cards usually offer better cash back rewards than consumer credit cards, business card issuers often don’t offer sign-up bonus for their customers.

This discover business card features:

• $100 Cashback Bonus when you apply now**
• 0% Intro APR* on Balance Transfers and Card Purchases for 12 months
• 5% Cashback Bonus® on office supplies, 2% on gas, up to 1% on all other purchases
• Earn 5 to 20% Cashback Bonus at top retailers through Discover’s exclusive online shopping site
• No Annual Fee
• Fee-free Purchasechecks that earn Cashback Bonus®. to pay merchants who don’t accept credit cards
• Free employee cards with customizable limits and monthly reporting on their spending

Apply Now!

If you are always buying office suppliers from Office Depot, Staples, Office Max etc, this card can really save you money. If you are short of money, the 0% APR on purchases and balance transfer is a good fit to you. Through ShopDiscover program, which offers minimum 5% cash back from many top online retailers, you can save huge amount of money. The $100 bonus will be credited to your account once you spend $1,000 with 3 months after account opening.

Other business cards offering sign-up bonus are: Citi Business Card with ThankYou Network ($150) and Starwood Preferred Guest Business Card from American Express ($100). If you are interested in applying for a business card, you can read this post.

I received an interesting complaint from one of my readers. He currently has Chase Freedom Visa Card, Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express, Citi Diamond Rewards Card and Citi PremierPass Card. I think we can learn a lesson from his story. Here is the story:

I went to XXXXX (deleted by me) Buffet with some of my friends on May 3rd to eat. After our meal I went to the counter to pay and used my Chase Freedom Visa Card as payment. The cashier asked me to show ID to her and I kindly declined this request. I was then told that they were not going to be able to finish this transaction without my official government issued ID. I insisted that they should not see my ID because I have already signed on the back of the card and they can just check my signature. However, the owner of that restaurant was getting angry when I argued with him. Then he called the police and asked the police to arrest me for not paying for the dinner! I was fully embarrassed! I has 2 credit cards in my wallet at that time. After a while, one of my friends paid the money with his credit card along with his ID.

After reading his story, I looked up some visa card agreements and found out that it’s a violation of their credit card merchant agreements to ask for ID in order to complete a transaction. As it’s cleared stated in an official VISA statement: Stores can’t deny a transaction unless the credit card itself is unsigned.

Merchants may not refuse to honor a Visa card simply because the cardholder refuses a request for supplementary information. The only exception is when a Visa card is unsigned when presented. However, “See ID” is not considered a valid signature. In these situations, a merchant must obtain authorization, review additional identification, and require the cardholder to sign the card before completing a transaction.

To report any merchant practices that you feel are inappropriate, please notify the disputes area at the financial institution that issued your card account. Your card issuing bank has access to the appropriate Visa rules and regulations as well as to the Notification of Customer Complaint forms which should be used by your bank to document and file merchant complaints.

As an alternative, you may contact the Global Customer Care Services to report merchant practices that you feel are inappropriate. Please contact the Global Customer Care Services at 1-800-VISA-911 (1-800-847-2911). Please advise them that you were referred to file a complaint. The staff will be able to initiate a complaint form over the phone.

Next time, when you was requested to present your photo ID with your visa card purchases, you can just deny it. You’re officially protected by the visa!

I received an email from American Express about offering 20% bonus starpoints until May 31, 2008 for using my Starwood Preferred Guest Card. It seems this is a targeted offer. You have to enroll at americanexpress.com/starpointspromo11 to qualify for this promotion. An RSVP code is required at the registration. If you haven’t received the promotion letter, you can still visit the above mentioned website and login your account to see whether you’re qualified for this offer. The maximum starpoints you can earn through this promotion are 5,000 points. The bonus points will be awarded to your account within 6~8 weeks after May 31.

Fine Print:

Enrollment is required by 5/31/2008. In addition to earning two Starpoints^® for each U.S. dollar of Eligible Spending charged on your Card account at Starwood-branded properties participating in the Starwood Preferred Guest^® loyalty program, and at standalone retail establishments and online stores that, in each case, are wholly owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. and one Starpoint for all other Eligible Spending, a 20% bonus will be posted to your Starwood Preferred Guest^® Credit Card account for a maximum of 5,000 Starpoints^®.”Eligible Spending” includes purchases of goods or services, which purchases have not been returned or otherwise rescinded, and are not subject to a credit; it does NOT include fees, Finance Charges, Cash Advances (including the use of checks, line activators, automated teller machines, or other means of accessing your account), Balance Transfers, or adjustments to your account. We reserve the right not to award any Starpoints^® for transactions we determine are not made with the good faith intention of consuming the item charged. To receive bonus Starpoints^®, your Card account must be open and in good standing at time of bonus fulfillment. Bonus Starpoints^® earned via this promotion will be posted to your Starwood Preferred Guest^® account 6–8 weeks after May 31, 2008. Promo Code: K641:0001.

After registration, you will receive the “Thank You” page as shown below. The Starwood Preferred Guest Card is really a good credit card. You can get the promotion offers from them now and then. If you don’t have one, you can apply for a new one and get 10,000 bonus points after first purchase. The minimum points required to redeem for a free night stay at Starwood Hotels are from 2,000 points.

Some financial service companies are really generous to give out some money to you for trying their financial services. If you decide to keep with their services, you can have the money. If you decide not to be a customer of them, you can still have the money. yes, those companies are willing to pay you to try their services. So we get the chances to make some free money by trying out some financial services.

Revolution Money Exchange-–$25 bonus: This promotion runs until May 15 ,2008. This is why I put this bonus at the first spot. If you haven’t signed up yet, you’d better hurry up. Revolution Money Exchange is a new money transfer tool which is similar to PayPal for online shoppers. This is by far the easiest money to get for me. All you have to do is to sign up and link your account at revolution money exchange to your bank account. You are not required to make a small deposit or use it to buy some merchandises. This promotion was covered by this post.

ING Direct—$25 bonus: This sign-up bonus has a small requirement which I think most of us can easily get qualified—make an initial deposit of $250. Your friend who referred you to open an account at ING Direct can get $10 bonus. I like this account very much. The current APY is around 3%. I have a briefly review about the orange savings account at ING.

HSBC Direct—$25 or $50 bonus: This sign-up bonus requires you to open a savings account and make an initial deposit with a certain amount. HSBC Direct was rated as the “Best Online Savings Account” in 2006 by Kiplinger. Actually, instead of using PayPal or ING Direct to do direct deposit, you can also use HSBC Direct to make direct deposit to qualify for certain sign-up bonuses which require you to make direct deposits to your account there. HSBC sign-up bonus expires on May 31, 2008.

ShareBuilder—$50 bonus: If you open an account with this brokerage through their partner websites and make one qualified trade, you can get $50 bonus. The link to get the sign-up bonus can be found here. Costco members can use this link to get $55 bonus.

Prosper—$25 bonus: This is a famous as well as popular person-to-person lending club. You can get much higher interest rate than putting money in your savings accounts or money market accounts. Plus you can get $25 bonus once you make a loan with $50. You can visit www.prosper.com for more details.

eBates—$10 gift card bonus: eBates is a popular cash back website, you can earn extra cash rewards using the links provided by eBates. At the same time, you can still earn cash back from your credit cards. In order to get the $10 bonus, you have to make a qualified purchase through eBates within a certain time period. To minimize you spending, you can purchase a song from iTunes or Amazon.Com which will only cost you $1.0.

The above mentioned sign-up bonuses are quite easy to get. However, you can get much more money by applying for credit cards which offer huge sign-up bonuses. The comprehensive list of sign-up bonus in this May is here.

Tax-free period is coming soon! Yep, it’s a wonderful opportunity that we can take advantage of to save a huge amount of money. I think it would be helpful if I can summarize all the tax sales across the nation. Then I “google” on the internet about all the states and collect the information on any sales tax holidays they are having. This year many states have changed their sales tax holiday plans. You should double check the sales tax holiday event in your state before you place the orders.

Below is a comprehensive list that I could manage and I hope you find it useful. Please note that not all states have a sales tax holiday. And if you are a resident at Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire or Oregon, you’re already tax-free!

Alabama

Time: August 1~3, 2008

clothing – less than $100 per item

computers, software, and computer supplies – less than $750

school supplies – less than $50 per item

books – less than $30 per item

Louisiana

Time: May 24~25, 2008

hurricane preparedness sale exempting purchases up to $1,500 for emergency items

Connecticut

Time: August 17~23, 2008

clothing and footwear – less than $300

Iowa

Time: August 1~2, 2008

clothing and footwear – less than $100 per item

Tennessee

Time: April 25~27, 2008

Clothing – less than $100 per item
school and art supplies - less than $100 per item
computers - $1,500

Texas

Time: August 15~17, 2008

clothing and footwear – less than $100 per item

backpacks – less than $100

Energy Star Sales Tax Holiday May 24 – 26, 2008

Eligible tax-free items can be found here.

Virginia

Time 1: May 25~27, 2008

designated hurricane preparedness equipment priced – less than $60 per item

portable generators priced – less than $1,000 per item

Time 2: August 1~3, 2008

Back-to-School sales tax holiday on school supplies – less than $20 per item

clothing and footwear – less than $100 per item

Time 3: October 10~13, 2008

Energy Star Qualified products including appliances purchased for noncommercial home or personal use – less than $2,500 each

Missouri

Time: August 1~2, 2008

clothing – less than $100 each

school supplies – less than $50 each

computer and equipment – less than $3500

Georgia

Time: July 31 – August 3, 2008

clothing – less than $100 per item

computer and equipment – less than $1500

school supplies – less than $20 per item

energy efficient appliances – $1500 or less

North Carolina

Time: August 1~3, 2008

clothing – less than $100 per item

school instructional materials – less than $300 per item

sports equipment – less than $50 per item

computers, software, computer supplies – less than $250 per item

Washington D.C.

Time: No official announcement yet. (a week in August and November)

clothing, accessories and shoes – less than $100

school supplies – less than $100

Oklahoma

Time: No announcement yet. (a weekend in August)

clothing and footwear – less than $100 per item

New Mexico

Time: No announcement yet. (first weekend in August)

clothing and footwear – less than $100 each

school supplies – less than $15 each

computers – less than $1000

Massachusetts

Time: usually the second weekend in August

anything with a sale price less than $2,500 (some exceptions)

Florida

Time: August 2~8, 2008

clothing, shoes and backpacks – less than $50 per item

school supplies – less than $10 per item