Note from Madison: You’ll have to hurry, this offer expires this Friday… so we’re changing the schedule this week and running back-to-back free money offers early to make sure you get a chance to get in on them!

How to Get Your Statement Credit

1. Sign up for the AT&T Universal Card by August 27, 2010.
2. Make $50 in purchases in your first 3 months.
3. Receive a $50 statement credit within 8 weeks of the end of the promotion period.

Citi Terms and Conditions

• The credit can only be earned by new AT&T Universal Savings and Rewards cardmembers.
• Fees, cash advances, balance transfers and interest charges do not qualify as a purchase.
• The only eligible transactions for which you earn savings are AT&T consumer products and/or services purchased directly from AT&T, billed to your Card Account. AT&T consumer products and services must be purchased from www.att.com, www.telephones.att.com, AT&T owned stores or AT&T customer service centers.

More on AT&T Universal Card

AT&T Discounts. If you use AT&T for wireless service, Internet connection, or digital TV, for the first 12 months, save 10% with your card on the AT&T products & services up to $350 per calendar year. Just make sure you make at least the same amount in other, non-AT&T purchases.

ThankYou Points. The AT&T Universal card also earns you Citi ThankYou Points – 1 point per dollar spent.

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Why to Pay Mortgage with Credit Cards

You do not earn rewards. I still haven’t found one where you can earn cash rewards, although that would be fantastic!

However, you do get an extra month and a half of float to earn interest on your money. Even though interest rates are pathetic right now, it’s still free money. And when you get that float month after month, year after year, it does add up.

Pay Mortgage with Online Bill Payment

FIA Card Services offers an online bill payment called “Bill Pay Choice.” It was a an option that was originally grandfathered in for old MBNA cardholders. I use my Schwab credit card for the billpay.

If you don’t already have a card serviced by FIA, it appears that the Fidelity Credit Card also will get you access to bill pay choice.

In addition, you can also mix a rewards card with online bill payment. It’s not like balance transfers where you have to keep new purchases separate; you can mix bill payments and new purchases without any fees or problems.

Set Up Automatic Payments

Using the bill pay, you can set up automatic payments. I’ve mentioned before that I pay all of our bills with FIA bill pay.

FIA pays my mortgage on the 25th of every month. My credit card cycle closes on the 15th of the following month, and my payment is due on the 12th of the third month. You could stretch it out even further, but I always try to build in a buffer in case something goes wrong. It all gets paid automatically so I don’t have to think about it.

So my August 25 mortgage payment will come out of my checking account on October 12. Until then, it’ll earn some extra money! Do this with all of your bills and you’ll start to see the float add up.

Do you pay your mortgage with a credit card?

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How to Get Your $75 Sign Up Bonus

1. Apply for the Discover More Card.
2. Make $500 in purchases in the first 3 months.
3. Receive your $75 cash back bonus within 8 weeks.

Discover Terms and Conditions

• Offer valid for new cardmembers only.
• No annual fee.
• For 5% cash back categories (see below), you must sign up for each 5% program.

More on Discover

Cash back. Automatically earn 1% unlimited Cashback Bonus on purchases after your total annual purchases exceed $3000; purchases that are part of your first $3000 earn .25% Earn a Discover 5% Cashback Bonus on category purchases up to the total purchase dollar amount specified in each program.

Balance Transfer Offer. Here’s another great chance to leverage some money. Discover is offering a 0.00% introductory APR for 12 months after the first transaction posts to your account under this offer.

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Citi is offering another chance at some free money in the form of $200 to Restaurant.com.

How to Get Your $200 Gift Certificate

1. Sign up for the Citi Forward card and make at least $100 in purchases by 9/15/10.
2. A fulfillment package will arrive by mail in 6-8 weeks after you meet the minimum purchase requirement.
3. Redeem the gift certificate online at www.dine.restaurant.com before use.
4. Enjoy some nice dinners!

Citi Terms and Conditions

• Limit of one (1) gift certificate per restaurant per visit.
• No annual fee.
• For Thank You Points (see below), purchases not eligible to receive the 5x points include, but are not limited to, those made at warehouse clubs, discount stores, department stores & convenience stores.

More on Citi

Thank You Points. The Citi Forward card is part of the ThankYou program. Earn 5x ThankYou® Points for every $1 spent at restaurants, on books, movies and music. Get 1 reward point for every $1 you spend on all other purchases. Plus, earn up to 2,500 when you sign up for Paperless Statements.

Balance Transfer. Citi is offering a 0% Intro APR on Balance Transfers for 12 months and 0% Intro APR on Purchases for 7 months.

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How to Get Your $50 Bonus

1. Apply for the Citi mtvU Platinum Select, Dividend Platinum Select or Forward card by September 30, 2010.
2. Make at least $50 in purchases that are not returned within the first 3 months of account opening.
3. A $50 statement credit will appear on your billing statement after the purchases have posted to your account (usually about 8 weeks after).

Citi Terms and Conditions

• The statement credit can only be earned by new cardmembers approved through this offer.
• No annual fee.
• No cosigner required.

More on Citi

Rewards. The Citi mtvU and the Citi Forward cards offer rewards points and bonuses on things like a strong GPA and going paperless. The Citi Platinum card offers some great opportunities for cash back.

Intro APR. If your credit approval qualifies you, you may get an 0% intro APR on purchases for 7 months.

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It’s a great offer to celebrate Free Money Friday before the holiday weekend!

How to Get Your $100 Bonus

1. Sign up for the Chase Freedom Visa.
2. Make $799 in purchases in your first three months. Qualifying transactions include purchases, balance transfers, and any checks that are used to access your account, and exclude cash advances.
3. 6-8 weeks after qualifying, bonus rebates which you can redeem for a $100 check, will post to your account.

Chase Freedom Terms and Conditions

• The Chase Freedom has no annual fee.
• For 5% cash back (see more below), you earn 1% on all purchases and 4% more in bonus categories for a total of 5%. 4% bonus earn is subject to a quarterly maximum.
• You do not earn cash back on balance transfers, cash advances, cash-like charges such as travelers checks, foreign currency, and money orders, any checks that are used to access your account, overdraft advances, interest, unauthorized or fraudulent charges, or fees of any kind.

More on Chase Freedom

Cash Back on Everyday Purchases. There is a 5% cash back offer in popular categories that rotate quarterly (i.e., gas, home improvement, department stores, etc.) and you always receive 1% cash back on everything else with no spending tiers. Plus, cash back rewards never expire.

Cash Back on Shopping. Earn up to 20% cash back when you shop at select merchants through Chase.

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Chase Sapphire Review

The Chase Sapphire card has been generating a lot of buzz since it first opened since it promises that customers will speak to a dedicated service advisor any time they call.

Or maybe it’s the $100 sign up bonus they are offering that is enticing everyone. Either way, the card is a popular one right now. Let’s take a closer look at what else the Chase Sapphire card has to offer.

Chase Sapphire Features

• Rewards: The Chase Sapphire card offers a points program, redeemable for gift cards, merchandise, cash back and more.
• 24/7 Dedicated Service Advisor: As mentioned above, Chase promises you will reach a live representative whenever you call Customer Service. Just call the number on the back of your card and you’ll be connected to a Chase Sapphire customer service advisor immediately—without pressing “#” or any of the other string of numbers you usually need to enter to get through the menu items. Guaranteed.
• No Annual Fee: The Chase Sapphire card has no annual fee.

Chase Sapphire Rewards Program

Rewards Program. The Chase Sapphire card uses a point system. Points never expire and there are no limits on how many points you can earn.

Earning Points. You earn one point per dollar on all purchases and two points per dollar on any airfare booked through Ultimate Rewards. You can also earn up to 10 bonus points per dollar when you shop online at the Ultimate Rewards Mall.

Redeeming Points for Cash Back. Chase lowered the minimum to cash in your points to 2,000 points for $20. After that, you can redeem any additional points in increments of 100 points for $1. The conversion rate is equal to 1% cash back on all purchases, 2% cash back on travel, and 10% cash back at the rewards mall.

Redeeming Points. You can redeem the points for gift cards and merchandise. You’ll need 2,500 points for a $25 gift card. Some of the stores you can exchange your points for gift cards at are:

• Best Buy
• Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn
• Exxon, Mobil, or Shell
• Gap or Target
• The Home Depot or Lowe’s
• iTunes
• Macy’s, Norstrom, or Saks Fifth Avenue

Chase Sapphire Details

Blueprint. Chase Sapphire comes with Blueprint, a unique set of features that lets you manage your finances—on your terms. Design your plan and see progress on every statement. Essentially, the blueprint program allows you to set up payment plans to make sure you are paying off everyday purchases in full each month without interest and track your spending. It also allows you to pay off larger purchases over time, but that’s not something we’re going to endorse without a 0% APR.

Year-End Summary. Your year-end summary organizes all your previous year’s transactions into categories by purchase type. This is great for tracking spending and filing tax returns easily.

Choice of Payment Date. If your originally scheduled payment date is inconvenient, change it to a date that better suits you. You can align it with the same day your other payments are due, or the same day you get paid.

10,000 Points – $100 Sign Up Bonus

As an added bonus, don’t forget to check out the $100 Sign Up Bonus that Chase is offering right now for the Sapphire card!

Here are the highlights on how to get the 10,000 point bonus, which you can cash in for a $100 statement credit:

1. Open a new Chase Sapphire card and make your first purchase.
2. Get 10,000 bonus points.
3. Cash your points in for a $100 statement credit that you can apply to purchases made within 60 days of the redemption date.
4. Points may take 6-8 weeks to post to your account but statement credits will post within 5-7 business days of redemption.

Chase Sapphire Overall

If you’re in the market for a new credit card, check out the Chase Sapphire card. The points program is a nice perk and if customer service is important to you, you’ll love the “no voice recording” feature of its Customer Service!

Hope that helps Jake!

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Cash rewards credit cards are a fantastic way to get free money without much effort.

Chase Freedom, a card I’ve had forever, just sent me a new card in the mail with a copy of their 5% cash back calendar for 2010.

Of course they covered a lot of ground with cash back calendar that corresponds perfectly with our plans including working on the house and yard in spring, vacationing in the summer, and holiday shopping in the winter.

How to Get Your 5% Cash Back

1. Open a new Chase Freedom if you don’t already have one.
2. Enroll your card in the current offer.
3. You can enroll online once you get your card for the 5% cash back offer.
4. Earn 5% cash back rewards on the current category.

Chase Freedom 5% 2010 Cash Back Calendar

More on Chase Freedom Cash Back

Other Purchases. Other Chase Freedom purchases earn 1% cash back.

Sticky Notes. I usually write the current categories on a sticky note, and tape it to our cards. Then, when I can’t remember which categories are currently at 5%, I can glance at the list.

Zero Balance Transfers. Chase Freedom also has a Zero Balance Transfer Credit Card offer for 12 months.

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After I tallied our current balance transfer money at just over $172,000, The Rat made a comment that he loves the “articles on the successes you’ve attained by leveraging.” It reminded me we needed to revisit balance transfers.

0% Balance Transfers

Zero interest on balance transfers are a dirt cheap way to leverage other people’s money. When searching for 0% credit card balance transfers here are some of the criteria I currently watch for:

Long Intro Period. A six month 0% balance transfer doesn’t do me much good. By the time I implement a strategy, it’s almost time to pay it off. But a balance transfer like the Citi Platinum Select card currently has 0% balance transfer for 18 months. The longer the balance transfer, the more the offer is worth.

Capped Fees. While the 0% balance transfer no fee offers are harder to find for new cards, looking for offers with max fees are still available. Barclays currently has a $75 max fee for 0% on balance transfers for new applications.

Offers by mail. Right now the majority of our 0% balance transfer credit cards come from offers in the mail for cards we already have. We just did a fantastic $35,000 0% balance transfer from an old version of the Fidelity Credit Card. They still let you reallocate credit limits, so it’s a great reason to keep cards open, even with small credit limits.

Leveraging our Balance Transfers

While I don’t use our 0% credit card balance transfers strictly to sit in savings accounts anymore (since bank rates are low right now), I still use balance transfers for other opportunities.

Right now most of our 0% balance transfer money is temporarily lowering our mortgage and heloc rates and securing lower rates than the commercial financing for our real estate investments.

I routinely calculate the cheapest way to fund an investment, whether it’s using our own money, financing it with conventional loans, or utilizing a credit card offer. Most of the time, for obvious mathematical reasons, the 0% on balance transfers are the way to go!

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With a constant changing landscape of cash rewards credit cards you always have to be on your toes to make sure you’re earning the most cash back on your purchases.

Current Cash Rewards Credit Card Plan

Here’s what our current strategy looks like based on our purchases.

American Express TrueEarnings Costco. We use our Costco card for 3% cash rewards on gas and restaurants, besides using it at Costco. If you don’t have one, you can get the costco sign up bonus for opening a new account.

Discover More Card. I’ll be dusting off our Discover More card for 5% cash rewards on gas starting in July. The cash rewards rotate, so we have to stay on top of the quarterly schedule. If you don’t have one, it’s a great time to sign up since they give you a $50 Sign Up Bonus, and you should be able to get it before July.

Chase Freedom. We’ve had a Chase Freedom for as long as I can remember. Chase also switched to a 5% cash back on quarterly categories that you have to remember to enroll in. They’re currently offering 5% on drugstore purchases through June.

2% Cash Rewards Credit Card

For the rest of our purchases, we use our Schwab credit card. Since they stopped accepting new applications for their 2% cash back credit card, if you didn’t get one, you’ll have to get the Fidelity Credit Card instead for 2% cash back.

Other Cards

We also have some old credit cards that pay 4% cash rewards for wireless service and groceries, but they’re long gone. Getting grandfathered into old programs is one of the best reasons we’ve kept so many of our credit cards open (of course the other reason is for the 0% balance transfer deals!)

Which are your favorite cash rewards credit cards right now?

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American Express comes through for us this week with a great opportunity to score some points worth the equivalent of about $250!

It’s Free Money Friday, but you’ll have to hurry, this offer is only good for four days!

How to Get Your 25,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points

1. Sign up for the American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card by April 27, 2010.
2. Enroll in the Membership Rewards program and charge $1,000 of eligible purchases in your first three months of Card membership.
3. Redeem the points for anything offered through the American Express Membership Rewards program, including airfare and gift cards. The 25,000 points easily convert into $250 in gift cards.

American Express Terms and Conditions

• Pay no annual fee the first year but $175 thereafter.
• Eligible purchases do not include cash and cash equivalent transactions (including balance transfers, convenience checks, and cash advances), finance charges, fees, and purchase credit adjustments.
• Offer not available to existing consumer American Express Charge Cardmembers.

More on American Express Membership Rewards

Earning Points. You always earn 3x points on airfare, 2x points on gas and groceries, and 1 point on everything else.

Redeeming Points. You can redeem your points through the American Express Membership Rewards program, which offers a wide selection of travel, shopping and dining rewards and they have no expiration date.

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How to Get Your $25 Sign Up Bonus

1. Open a new Upromise Credit Card.
2. Earn a $25 bonus after you use your new Upromise credit card to make your first purchase, balance transfer, or cash advance transaction within 90 days of opening your account.
3. Your bonus will be reported as pending on your Upromise account by the 30th day of the calendar month following the credit card statement containing the initial transaction. It should be posted to your account within 90 of the pending contribution as long as you are still a cardmember.

Upromise Bonus Terms and Conditions

• You must be a Upromise member and your Upromise credit card must be registered with Upromise to earn and receive all eligible college savings.
• A Upromise membership is required for the college savings to be appropriately posted to your Upromise account.
• To verify that your Upromise credit card is registered with Upromise, visit upromise.com/cardregistration. If you are not already a Upromise member, sign up for a Upromise account.

More on Upromise Credit Card

No Annual Fee. The card does not charge any annual fee for its college savings program.

Savings on Everyday Purchases. You can get money back for college just for doing the things you do every day. The card offers 1% back on everyday purchases, as well as 2% back on Exxon/Mobil purchases and 10% on select drugstore and grocery purchases.

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Here is the new $50 Cash Back Bonus from Discover More for those of you who missed it a couple years ago.

How to Get Your $50 Sign Up Bonus

1. Sign up for the Discover More card.
2. Make $599 in purchases within three months.
3. Receive your $50 cash back bonus within 8 weeks.

Discover Terms and Conditions

• Earn a $50 Cash Back Bonus when you make $599 in purchases within 3 months after your account is opened.
• Offer valid for new accounts only.
• Limit one per account.

Earn Even More Cashback

Each quarter you can login to your Discover account and sign up for the Discover Get More programs to get 5% bonus cash back on certain categories. The categories change each quarter. Here are the categories coming up for April through June 2010:

• Home Improvement Stores
• Department Stores
• Clothing Stores

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How to Get Your $100 Sign Up Bonus

1. Apply for the card and make your first purchase.
2. Earn 10,000 bonus points.
3. Cash your points in for a $100 statement credit that you can apply to purchases made within 60 days of the redemption date.
4. Points may take 6-8 weeks to post to your account but statement credits will post within 5-7 business days of redemption.

Chase Terms and Conditions

• First purchase/first use includes purchases, balance transfers, or any checks that are used to access your account, and excludes cash advances.
• This one-time bonus offer is valid only for first-time cardmembers with new accounts. Existing cardmembers/accounts are not eligible.

More on Chase Sapphire

Statement Credits. Cashing in your points for statement credits starts at 2,500 points but after that, you can redeem any additional points in increments of 100 points for $1.

More Points. There is no maximum number of points you can earn with this card and you can even shop through Chase‘s Ultimate Rewards Mall to earn more points.

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This week the popular Chase Freedom credit card is offering another great reason to become a cardholder: a $50 sign-up bonus. It’s our Free Money Friday offer this week!

How to Get Your Sign Up Bonus

1. Register for the Chase Freedom card. Keep in mind that only first-time card members with new accounts are eligible for the sign-up bonus.
2. Use your card. This can mean making a purchase, making a balance transfer or checks that are used to access your account but it does not include cash advances.
3. 6-8 weeks after you first use your card, you will receive bonus points worth $50. You can then redeem them for a check.

Chase Terms and Conditions

• 0% Intro APR – The length of your introductory period will be either 12 billing cycles from account opening for purchases or 6 billing cycles from account opening for purchases.
• Quarterly Cash Back Bonus – You will be eligible for quarterly bonus rewards offers as long as your account is in good standing and your statements are sent to a US address.

Perks

Zero Liability Protection. For US-issued cards, Chase reimburses users for any unauthorized card transactions made at stores, ATMs, on the phone or online when reported promptly.

Cash Back. The Chase Freedom card offers 1% cash back on all purchases as well as the opportunity to earn 3% cash back in rotating categories on a quarterly basis. If you time some of your purchases right, this can be a great addition to a cash back strategy. Also, you can earn additional points/cash through a travel booking system that Chase has. And, there is no maximum number of rebates that you can accumulate in the program.

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