2013 Free Money Roundup - A Year In Review

Disclaimer: I do not receive a referral fee for any of the links below with the following exceptions: Top Cashback and Betterment

2013 has been a lucrative year for me and my wife in regards to getting extra Free Money (though she would rather not know how I accomplished it for plausible deniability - kidding of course).  The opportunities have been in great abundance and also very lucrative this year!

I am aware that this is not actually free money.  Time and work are involved and everyone has to make their own calculation whether a deal is worth it to them

I don't write this to gloat, rather to show everyone what I've done so that you can try and replicate the same thing yourself in the future.  Obviously, you can pick and choose which ones you think are worth it and which ones are not.  Some you can still do now and some are dead deals, but new ones are always popping up, but you usually need to jump on them to get full value.

Instructions in how to leverage each deal are found at the provided links.

January

$300 - Both Chase Freedom and Citi Dividend were offering 5% cashback at drugstores - $300

$300 in rewards and $47.40 in fees is a total haul of $252.60 over 3 months for the Citi Dividend

March

$240 - Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Card - $240 free every year between me and my wife

$10 to spend for free at Best Buy

April

$100 - Chase Gift cards - Chase started selling $500 gift cards with no fees, but you still got points for them. Unfortunately, this ended - 10,000 free points - approximately - which comes out to at least $100

$167 - There was one day recently where you could get 2.5% back on a purchase $3,000 of american express gift cards ($75).  The next week, I used the $3,000 to buy 3 Visa gift cards of $993 dollars each (accounts for the fees) and got another 2% back ($60).  Add 2% from Fidelity American Express ($60) and you get $195 in rewards and $27.95 of fees  for a net profit of $167.

$25 - Put $250 into a new Betterment account and you will get a $25 bonus.  Still Active

May

$15 - Staples coupon in the mail that worked on Visa gift cards.

June 

$100 - $10 off $200 visa gift cards at Office Max - I bought about $4,000 worth of them.  A haul of $60 and 4,000 points, together worth at least $100.

July

$135 - Vanilla Reloads at 7-11 - Vanilla Reloads were available for purchase via credit card and counted as gas purchases for Chase Freedom and Discover.  Together that was worth about $135.

September

$25 - A new Staples coupon arrives in the mail.

~$200 - $30 off $150 purchase at Shop Rite - I have a lot of American Express cards.

October

$18 - Staples just wants to give out money.

November

$70 - American Express and BP - $5 off $25 at the pump.  I did a lot of $25 refuels

$210 of free Merchandise - Small Business Saturday.

$400 - Signed up for checking and Savings account for my wife  ($200 each) - New bonus is now $75

December

$300 - Free Groceries from Pathmark

$250 - American Express Gift Cards with No Purchase Fees

Grand Total = $2565 of free money and free merchandise

This does not include any sign up bonuses for credit cards, of which there were many.

This is more of a sampling than anything else.  It doesn't include everything because I can't remember everything and I'm a little lazy too.  I will try to catalog as I go a little better this year.