Three New Credit Cards : Should Net $700 in cash & points

My FICO has recently hit 837.   Time to go use that good credit and get me some free money.

I just signed up for three new credit cards in order to get some promotional cash and points.

The three cards are :

1. American Express Blue Cash Everyday
2. US Bank Cash+ Visa Signature*
3. Chase IHG Rewards Club Select Mastercard  (via MyMoneyBlog)

For the Amex card I got an email offer from Amex offering me the card with a $200 bonus if I spend $1000 in the first 3 months.       Looks like that $200 deal was a targetted offer since when I go direct to Amex to find the card I do not see a promotion like that.   The Amex card also has 3% cash back at supermarkets, 2% at gas stations and 2% at department stores.   I've already got cards that meet or beat those.

The US Bank card will give me a $100 bonus after spending $500 in the first 3 months.   I am not sure where I ran across that deal, but it seems to be a promotion as well.   *The link I have for it seems to be a referral link from someone.   So if you click that someone (not me) might get a commission.      The US Bank Cash+ card also has 5% cash back categories that you can pick.   Some of the options are department stores, clothing stores, charity, cell phone bills.   I figure that benefit alone would give us an extra ~$50 a year in rewards (above earning 2% on our Fidelity Amex). 

The IHG Rewards Club gives 70,000 points after spending $1000 in the first 3 months.   I'm linking to MyMoneyBlog on that one as he covered the card in an article.   Using his links will probably give him a commission, but hey... why not?        I have 7,000 points on IHG rewards now so another 70,000 points will give me enough for 3 hotel nights.   The hotels we'd stay in usually run us about $150 a night so I value those rewards at about $450 total.     You also get one free nights hotel stay every year with this card.    However the card does have a $49 annual fee which is waived the first year.

Combined I'll need to spend $2500 in 3 months to get the promotions.     I should be able to do that easily enough, but if necessary I can always buy some gift cards if I'm nearing the end without hitting the required spend.

The total expected bonus money I'll get is $300 cash and about $450 worth of hotel nights.   If I'd used my Fidelity card to spend $2500 I'd get $50 cash back so the net benefit is about $250 cash + $450 in hotels or $700 in total value.

The USBank and IHG cards are probably keepers for us.   The 5% cash back categories from the US Bank Cash+ will be worth using for the extra few bucks it will give us.    The IHG's annual free night is worth about $150 to us and that makes paying its $49 annual fee worth while.

Chase seems to trust me

I signed up for all three cards within a few minutes and was approved instantly online for all three. 

Shockingly the three new cards came with a combined $68,000 credit limit.   

Other cards I considered but passed on are :

• Citi ThankYou Premier card offers 50,000 bonus points after spending $3000 in 3 months.   Those points are worth $625 in travel or $500 in gift cards.  
• Chase Sapphire card which gives $500 in travel benefit if you spend $4000 in 3 months.
• American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card which gives 10,000 points for signing up and 15,000 more points for spending $5000 in 6 months
• CapitalOne Quick Silver card that pays $100 for spending $500 in 6 months

Those are all decent deals.  However I only wanted to get 3 cards for now and wanted to limit my required spend.   So I chose the 3 cards that gave me the best reward for a minimum spending requirement.

After 3 months I might sign up for one or more cards out of that runner up list.

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* this looks like a comission link, but I don't remember where I found it

15% off and 6% cash back at Living Social via Ebates

You can get 15% off at Livingsocial right now through Ebates. by using promo code EBATES15APR

Plus you get 6% cash back from Ebates.

Combined that gives you about 20% off total.

Looks like the promo code expires tomorrow.


Standard Ebates blurb:To get cash back from Ebates you need to be signed up with Ebates.  Then simply go to Ebates to get the referral to the store before you do your shopping.  I also get a referral bonus if you use my links to sign up with Ebates.  



--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

Cheapskate Computer Project - April update

I outlined my Cheapskate Computer Project last month.     This is my first update on the project and my status so far.

My shopping list with base prices for the project is :

CPU ~ $48
Motherboard $43
Chassis $46
Memory 4GB $30
120GB HDD Drive $20
OS = $100
TOTAL = $287

I had a goal of getting under $100 w/o the OS.

So far I've only bought two items with one decent price success and a minor blunder.

I bought a chassis for $10 after rebate.   It was a $35 chassis with a $25 rebate.
The chassis does not come with a power supply so I'll have to keep an eye out for a good price on a decent PSU.    Tigerdirect has a HEC model for $20 which is OK but I'd like to get one cheaper.     I actually have a spare PSU that should work, so I might end up cheating on this item.  

I also got a $20 DVD read/write drive for free after rebate. Score!    Except then after I bought it I realized its the old PATA interface instead of SATA.   doh!   PATA is so old I didn't even think to check to make sure its SATA before I bought it.  Oh well, its free so I guess it wasn't that big of a mistake.   Anyone want a PATA DVD writer?

The two rebate forms I did took me a total of 25 minutes to fill out and I had to spend another $1 on the 2 stamps.  

I will also make 2% cash back from my Fidelity Amex which should amount to about $1.10 and I made 35¢ cash back from Ebates on the chassis purchase.    I think I forgot to use Ebates with the DVD purchase.

I passed up on a deal to get a 8GB DIMM + McAfee software bundle for free because it required signing up for McAfee auto-renewal and I just didn't wanna bother with it.   TigerDirect also has a similar deal for Windows 7 + Mcafee for $60 after rebate.    I'm passing on that too.   But those Mcafee rebate deals can be a good way to get a fairly high value part for free.   It does however require you to sign up for McAfee and then cancel auto-renewal at the right time.   So its a bit more hassle than just mailing in a rebate form.

All together I haven't made much progress and I haven't seen any good deals on most of the key parts I need.   A single $10 chassis isn't that much of a bargain.


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Standard Ebates blurb:To get the cash back you need to be signed up with Ebates.  Then simply go to Ebates to get the referral to the the store before you do your shopping.  I also get a referral bonus if you use my links to sign up with Ebates.  

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Use CashBackMonitor.com to Maximize Cash Back

Checck this site out : CashBackMonitor.com

They monitor the different cash back portals to see which one gives you the most cash back for each retailer.    So say you want to buy something pricey at Home Depot and want to make sure you get the most cash back .  If you go to Cashbackmonitor.com right now they say that the max cash back is 5%.  Top Cashback and Discover Deals are both giving 5%.   

They seem to monitor a bunch of cashback sites, some of which I haven't even heard of.

Looks like a good way to make sure you get the best cash back.

I did however notice that for Amazon at least they list the top cash back at 8.5% but thats only available for some products.   So you may have to sort out some figures that are really "up to" the amount.

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