Bank of America Museums on Us - This Saturday and Sunday

Bank of America Museums on Us program gives Bank of America card holders free access to select museums on the first Saturday and Sunday of the month.   November 1st and 2nd are the dates for this month so that means this Saturday and Sunday are the free days this month.


You need to have a credit or debit card in the name of each person so you still have to pay for kids, unless you get a credit card for you child, like I did.

Sign up for email or text alerts to remind yourself of the dates here.

Here is a list of the museums in the New York/New Jersey area:

• NJ
• Liberty Science Center (Jersey City)
• Montclair Art Museum (Montclair)
• Morris Museum (Morristown)
• Newark Museum (Newark)
• NY
• Suffolk county Vanderbilt Museum (Centerport)
• Long Island Children's Museum (Garden City)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (Manhattan)
• Staten Island Children's Museum (Staten Island)
• New York Historical Society (NYC)
• Whitney Museum of American Art (Manhattan)
• Brooklyn's Children Museum (Brooklyn)
• Queen's Museum of Art (Queens)
• Guggenheim Museum (Manhattan)
• Old Westbury Gardens (Old Westbury)
• Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carraiges

Lots of Free $20 Amazon Gift Cards Available Through Adding Credit Cards to Softcard - Ends in 2 days

 

 

 

From now until the end of the month (2 days), Softcard will give you a $20 Amazon Gift Card for adding participating credit cards and making one purchase of any amount.  American Express, Chase and Wells Fargo cards are the only ones accepted right now.

Softcard is a mobile wallet payment system that uses NFC technology.

In order to add American Express cards to Softcard, you have to log in to your American Express account from the Softcard app.  This limits how many cards you can add because you are only allowed to add cards from one account.  However, there is a workaround.




Once you have made a purchase on your card, go to americanexpress.com/softcardremoval and remove each of your American Express cards from Softcard, now you will be able to log in to a new American Express account from Softcard and add those new cards for more free gift cards.


Hurry, this will only last until the end of the month.  I have already been emailed some Amazon Gift Cards for my first purchases.

Discover Credit Card 5% Possibilities

Update 11/23/2014 - Gift cards will likely not qualify for 5% cashback.


From now until the end of the year, Discover it is offering 5% cashback for Online Shopping and Department Stores, on up to $1,500 of purchases which is $75 cashback.  You must activate the 5% cashback before your purchases to qualify for the 5%.

In addition to your regular spending online, here are some possibilities of how to maximize your 5%. As usual, we are also on the look out for ways to Manufacture Spending.  Let's try to get $75, or at least some of it, without actually spending money.




Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) In Store Google Wallet NFC Payments

• Google Wallet is one of many companies that allow you to pay for purchases with your smartphone.  Doctor of Credit reports that in store purchases using Google Wallet might be coded as online purchases. 
• Many pharmacies, including CVS, allow for NFC payments and sell Visa Gift cards and Paypal Reload cards.

2) American Express Gift Cards - Update 11/6/2014 - I've seen reports of Discover considering Amex Gift Cards as Cash Advances, I would stay away.

• I haven't actually tried this, but it makes sense that it will work.  They don't sell $1,500 gift cards so you can buy 1 $1,000 gift card and another $500 gift card.  Purchase and shipping fees come out to $16.85 for the $1,500 of gift cards.

• Start you purchase from Top Cashback and you will get 1.5% cashback as well for $18.75 cashback, which more than covers your fees.
• You can either use this as a possibility to get 5.13% cashback wherever AMEX is accepted or you can cash out via Google Wallet for a $43.50 fee for a net $33.35 gain.

3) Online Simon Mall Visa Gift Cards

• I haven't tried this either, but once again there is no reason it shouldn't work.  You can buy $500 Visa gift cards for a $2.95 fee.  $1,500 of gift cards will cost $1,519.12 total with shipping
• Advantage of Visa Gift Cards is that they can be used as Debit Cards in some places to buy Money Orders for cheap, load onto Serve/Bluebird at Walmart or pay bills with Evolve.
• You are basically getting 4% cashback with slightly less work than with AMEX gift cards.

Bluebird - 10% Cashback on $150 - Targeted

If you still have a Bluebird Prepaid Account, check your email for an offer from them.  You are only eligible if you received an email.

A friend got an offer for $15 cashback if he spends $75 twice ($150 minimum in total) by November 22, 2014.  That's 10% cashback on the $150.


Exclusions:

Eligible purchase transactions do not include (1) purchase transactions at parking lots, garages and transit providers (e.g., ferries, railroads, subways, trolleys and buses), (2) attempted purchase transactions using your Account that are not completed for any reason (including as a result of an inoperable payment terminal), and (3) payment of fees that appear on Bluebird Account statement.

Thank you SW for the tip!

Hurry, Tonight Only - American Express Gift Cards - 4% Cashback Everywhere or Easy Manufactured Spending Opportunity

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Top Cashback 

Update 10/23/2014 - Cashback is back down to 1.5% and my cashback is already pending in my Top Cashback account.


Until the rest of 10/22, Top Cashback is offering 2.25% cashback for buying American Express Gift Cards.  This is a very good sign considering there was a time when American Express Gift Cards disappeared from all the shopping portals.


American Express Gift Cards have long been one of my best buds in the manufactured spending world.  Unfortunately, with the demise of Amazon Payments, they are far less useful, but they still can have their uses.

Why Can I Do With This Deal?

The maximum you can buy per person is $5,000 per 15 business days.  2.25% is $112.50 cashback from Top Cashback.  Purchase fees and shipping fees come out to $16.85.

Before I get into any heavy math, I will give you a preview of what you will get:

1. 3.9% cashback everywhere or $55 with a Fidelity American Express.
2. Meet a spending threshold and break even on a 1% cashback card
3. "Buy" your favorite miles for under a penny per point.

1) Fidelity American Express

• 2% cashback everywhere.  For a $5,016.85 order, this comes out to  $100.33 from Fidelity and $112.50 from Top Cashback.   After fees, this comes out to about $196, which is 3.9% cashback to spend anywhere.  Not too shabby!

2) Meet a Spending Threshold 

• Recently signed up for a credit card and need to spend money to get the bonus (I'm giving you the stink-eye JF)?  Me too!  You can buy these gift cards to put money on your credit card now and use these gift cards over time.
• Assuming your credit card gets 1% cashback on every purchase, you will get $50 cashback from your credit card and $112.50 from Top Cashback for a total of $145.65 after fees or 2.9% cashback while meeting a spending threshold at the same time.

3) Buy Miles Cheaply

• You can take this as an opportunity to buy 5,000 miles on your favorite credit card for a very cheap price.  You would want to cash out the gift cards to make it worthwhile.  That comes next.

Using American Express Gift Cards

What should you do with these gift cards once you buy them?

1. Spend them like an American Express credit card.  You can buy one $3,000 and one $2,000 card so it isn't too much of a hassle.  I recommend not using them on any purchase that you might want to return.
2. Cash out.  I don't know of any way to do this cheaply.  You can use Google Wallet to send money to a friend (read: my wife) who can then withdraw to a bank account.  This costs a whopping 2.9% or $140.  You will keep about $4,860 of the $5,000.

• With Fidelity American Express you will end up keeping about $55 for about half an hour of work.
• If you are meeting a spending threshold, you will just about break even and still be $5,000 closer to your target
• If you are buying miles, you will be getting 5,000 miles at a fee of $0.0088 per mile.  
• You are "buying" 5000 miles for $44 after fees

No promo codes!  Your cashback from Top Cashback will be invalidated.

You Can Sign Up for Bank of America Preferred Rewards Now

 

You can now sign up for Bank of America Preferred Rewards nationwide.


This is a great program if you have some serious dough with Bank of America. The top tier ($100,000+) gets a 75% bonus on all of their credit card rewards.  This means that with a Bank of America Cash Rewards card you will get 5.25% cashback on all of your gas purchases!

There are other tiers as well which give smaller bonuses.

You need to have the average balance be over the minimum for three months in order to sign up.


Check out this post for more details

Serve Cash Advance Fees

As I pointed out about 10 days ago, some credit cards seemed to recode Serve loads as cash advances.  It seemed like no one was getting charged a cash advance fee, but since then more information and data points have been gathered for people who are getting actual cash advance fee.

To be fair to the credit card companies, it would seem that Serve loads are your quintesential cash advance and Serve even warns you that it may be treated as a cash advance, but that doesn't mean it has to be treated that way.

Which cards are safe and which aren't?

This chart is from Frequent Miler

Safe List

Here are cards that were reported by readers to be safe, along with the most recent date of purchase:

• BarclayCard Arrival Plus, October 9

• Chase Southwest Premier, October 11

• Chase Sapphire Preferred, October 9

• Fidelity Amex, October 9

• Nasa FCU Rewards Visa, October 11

Unsafe List
The following cards were reported to charge a cash advance fee for Serve reloads.  Most recent reported date is listed:

• Citibank, October 9

• Bank of America, October 11

• Emigrant Direct Visa, October 8

• US Bank Club Carlson, October 9

What Should I Do Now?

• If you have been using a card from the Unsafe List, you should switch it to one of the cards from the safe list.  

• Call your credit card company and ask for the cash advance limit to be reduced to $0.  If you do that, any cash advance transaction will be declined instead of going through with a fee.  Even if you are using a safe card, it may turn into an unsafe card at any moment.

• Ask for a refund.  A reliable source (that's right AL, I called you reliable) confirmed that he had a cash advance fee on a Bank of America card and called to ask for a refund of the fee since he didn't know it was a cash advance transaction.  His fee was then refunded.

• It may be time to consider the Target REDcard.  I won't be considering it until at least after Small Business Saturday since I have 4 subaccounts on both of my Serve accounts, but if the Fidelity American Express becomes unsafe I will have to consider it then.

If you have any more data points, please leave a comment or email me.

Thanks AL for the tip!

Multiple Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Credit Cards!

Edit: 1/1/2015 - Bank of America seems to be disallowing multiple Better Balance Rewards, but there might be a workaround.

I was just approved for my second Bank of America Better Balance Rewards Credit Card!


Every Better Balance Rewards credit card is equal to $100-$125 a year of almost free money.  All you need to do is charge one purchase per month and pay the bill in full and you will get $25-$30 every quarter for free. 

If you have a bill that you can pay automatically with the card, you can sign up for autopay and the entire process will be automated.  Automatic is my favorite, high reward and low time involvement.


The extra $5 depends on whether you have a Checking account with Bank of America as well.


I don't know how many cards each person can have, but I will try my best to find out ;)
If I can get 4 cards for myself and 4 for my wife, we will get $1,000 yearly automatically.  Not too shabby!





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The subscription button is available in the top right corner of the site on the Desktop version.

American Express Promotions - Add Subaccounts to Serve Easily for Extra Free Money

Outside of adding Authorized Users to your existing American Express accounts, signing up for Serve and adding up to 4 subacccounts for each account you have is the easiest way to take advantage of American Express promotions.

A couple of issues that make it tougher

• Subaccounts require a new phone number for each one
• Subaccounts require a new email address for each one
• Subaccounts require a name on the front of the card

Serve subaccounts require a new phone number

Easy work around:
Serve asks what type of phone number it is (home, cell, work etc.).  One of the options is "other".  If you choose other, you can use the same phone number for every subaccount.

Serve subaccounts also require a new email address. 

There is a trick that works for this too so that you don't need extra email addresses.  If my email address is orensmoneysaver@gmail.com, I can make a quick change that gives me a new email address.  If you were to email orens.moneysaver@gmail.com, the email goes to the same email address.  I you email orensmoney.saver@gmail.com, the email goes to the same email address.  If you email o.rensmoneysaver@gmail.com, the email goes to the same email address, etc.

Even though orens.moneysaver@gmail.com goes to the same destination as orensmoneysaver@gmail.com, Serve thinks you have used a new email address so you can sign up for multiple Serve accounts with just one email destination and you don't have to sign up for more accounts.  When you login to Serve, you will have to login as orens.moneysaver@gmail.com for that subaccount

Serve subaccounts require a name on the front of the card

Multiple solutions:
1) You don't anything except a name.  You can sign up a spouse, a father, a brother, a friend etc.  No social security number, no birthdate needed.  No credit check
2) You can put your name down for subaccounts.  I think it is less risky to do #1, but this will work and I have done it.



Each serve card and subaccount will be worth $30 towards Small Business Saturday so you can get $150 per account if you add 4 subaccounts.  I think it is well worth the effort for something that should continue to work in the future as well.

My Ideal Wallet - Q4 2014

Disclaimer: I receive a referral commission for the following link(s) and I greatly appreciate supporting the site: Credit Sesame, Discover it, Chase Freedom, Amazon

These are the Credit and Debit cards that will either be in my wallet from October 1st until the end of December 2014


Make sure to sign up for Credit Sesame and/or Credit Karma to monitor any changes in your credit history for free (I have both).

• American Express Blue Preferred – 6% cash-back at groceries (up to 6k a year), 3% at gas and 1% everywhere else.  There is a $75 annual fee so it is only for those who spend a lot of money on groceries or for those who have a close Supermarket that sells $500 Visa Gift Cards.
• $150 sign up bonus for spending $1,000 in the first 3 months
• You get 6% on a gift cards you buy at the grocery store as well.
• Please email me for the same $150 sign up bonus, except I will also get a commission to keep the blog going via a referral.

• Chase Freedom – 5% cash-back at Amazon.com, Zappo's and Select Department Stores, including Macy's, JCPenny, Kohl's, Nordstrom and Sears.
• $75 maximum cash back per quarter.  You need to activate the 5%.
• Chase Freedom 2014 5% categories
• $100 sign up bonus for spending $500 in 90 days, you will get another $25 bonus if you add an authorized user who makes one purchase in the first 90 days.
• You can always buy Amazon Gift Cards for the whole year if you can't find anything else to get 5% back for.

• Discover it® - 5% cash-back on Online Shopping and Department Stores.
• 5% cashback for Discover is actually more than 5%
• Must be activated before purchase to qualify for cashback bonus
• I usually use my Discover card during these three months for Discounted Gift Cards that I am buying anyway or any online shopping I am doing anyway.

• Citi Dividend - 5% cashback on Best Buy, Department Stores and Toy Stores.
• Up to $6,000 of purchases a year instead of $1,500 a quarter (up to $300 cashback for the year).  I have no use for this card anymore this year since I already maxed out the rewards for the year in the first quarter.

• Chase Ink Classic (Business Card) - 5% cashback at Office Supply Stores, Cable, Phone (Landline or cell) and Internet bills.
• 20,000 Ultimate Rewards for spending $3,000 in 3 months.
• No annual Fee

• Bank of America Better Balance Rewards - $25 back for every quarter that you pay your full bill or more than the minimum balance in every month.  Another $5 if you have a Bank of America Checking account.
• Best Usage - Set up a monthly bill on this card and auto pay the full balance. You never have to think about it and then every three months you will get $30.

• Bank of America Cash Rewards - 3.3% on Gas into a Bank of America Checking account - 4.5% if you have a Bank of America Privileges Card.

• Fidelity American Express Investment Rewards – 2% cash-back everywhere else.
•  This card is always in my wallet

• Charles Schwab Check Card – Unlimited Free ATMs Withdrawals at every ATM in the world
• This card is always in my wallet

Chase Starting to Charge Cash Advance Fees for Loading Serve?

Update: 10/6/2014 - As pointed out by Frequent Miler, Serve loads are still safe.  The loads start as a cash advance and then they change into regular credit card spending. 

According to this Flyertalk thread, there have been reports of people's credit card loads to Serve via a Chase Credit Card being coded as a Cash Advance starting today.  A cash advance gets no points and has a fee associated with it.

A lot of this is still unconfirmed, but please keep an eye out on how your credit card loads are being categorized.

You can always call the credit card company and change your cash advance limit to $0. Any transactions coded as cash advance will be declined instead of having a fee.




According to Flyertalk, the following has been found so far:

Oct 2nd- State of CC Loading to Serve

There are reports of NO cash advance for:

• Chase UA Explorer MC
• Chase Southwest Visa
• Also Barclay, Citi cards (Prestige, AA), Fidelity AMEX seem to be ok

There are reports of a cash advance on:

• Chase UA Club
• Chase UA Explorer Visa
• Chase Ink Bold Visa
• Chase Sapphire Preferred
• Also a Capital One card
• Discover IT

Bank of America Museums on US - This Saturday and Sunday

Bank of America Museums on Us program gives Bank of America card holders free access to select museums on the first Saturday and Sunday of the month.   October 4th and 5th are the dates for this month so that means this Saturday and Sunday are the free days this month.


You need to have a credit or debit card in the name of each person so you still have to pay for kids, unless you get a credit card for you child, like I did.

Sign up for email or text alerts to remind yourself of the dates here.

Here is a list of the museums in the New York/New Jersey area:

• NJ
• Liberty Science Center (Jersey City)
• Montclair Art Museum (Montclair)
• Morris Museum (Morristown)
• Newark Museum (Newark)
• NY
• Suffolk county Vanderbilt Museum (Centerport)
• Long Island Children's Museum (Garden City)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (Manhattan)
• Staten Island Children's Museum (Staten Island)
• New York Historical Society (NYC)
• Whitney Museum of American Art (Manhattan)
• Brooklyn's Children Museum (Brooklyn)
• Queen's Museum of Art (Queens)
• Guggenheim Museum (Manhattan)
• Old Westbury Gardens (Old Westbury)
• Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carraiges