I thought it would be interesting to share how I’ve been milking free money so far this year. Every little bit helps and you can see how all the interest and cash back add up. Here’s a list of my effortless income/savings on the side.

My money is small time hustling. Im on track to having almost $1000 extra dollars this year. How are you doing this year? Let me know if you have any questions about this in the comments below.

I have been a customer of this bank since 2006 when it was under GMAC. On May 15, 2009, GMAC relaunched its banking unit as Ally Bank. Since signing up, I have spread the good word to friends and family and have made them all happy. I first signed up for their Money Market Account, then recently added their Savings account too. They have among the highest rates of any bank, and a secure sound rating according to bankrate.com

Ally Bank was built on the foundation of GMAC Financial Services. Since relaunching their banking unit, Ally has made some changes to their accounts. Ally now offers accounts with no monthly fees, no minimum deposits, and no minimum balances. The bank offers 4 savings and CD products: Classic CD, No Penalty CD, Online Savings Account, and a Money Market Account.

As demonstrated in Ally’s television commercial, Ally Bank seeks to offer its customers a better bank that breaks away from the traditional banking process. In addition, the mission statement stresses that Ally Bank will be an “open, accountable, and honest” institution by being “straightfoward” with “no sneaky disclaimers.” Ally offers its customers around the clock access to a call center agent for customer assistance. Ally Bank accounts are FDIC insured to $250,000.

What do you think of Ally? Add your review.

Before getting any credit card you should read all the terms of use and all the fine print. I will highlight some of the things you should know about this cards cash back program before you decide to get it or not.

From the marketing text the card sounds great:

• 5% Cashback Bonus® in categories like travel, home, gas, restaurants, movies and more
• 5% to 20% Cashback Bonus at top retailers through our exclusive online shopping site
• Up to 1% Cashback Bonus on all other purchases automatically
• Unlimited cash rewards
• Increase, even double, your rewards when you redeem for gift cards from our 100 Cashback Bonus Partners
• 0% Intro APR for 6 months on Purchases, and up to 6 months on Balance Transfers*

  Apply Now!

The 5% cash back in categories such as travel, home, gas, restaurants, and movies are on a per signup basis and changes per quarter. The current Discover More Rewards calendar looks like this:

The Shop Discover is actually a really good program and you can earn up to 20% cash back on purchases as select stores.

Rewards Disclosures: Earn unlimited cash rewards on all purchases. Earn a full 5% Cashback Bonus on category purchases throughout the year by signing up for each program. In addition, earn a full 1% unlimited Cashback Bonus on all other purchases after your total annual purchases exceed $3,000; other purchases that are part of your first $3,000 earn .25%. Warehouse purchases (those made at select warehouse clubs, discount stores and their affiliates) earn .25%. We do not include warehouse purchases or 5% Cashback Bonus program purchases (up to the dollar limit specified in each applicable program) in calculating your total annual purchases to determine your tier level. Rewards are redeemable starting at $20. Rewards have no expiration date; however, if your account is closed for any reason or inactive for 18 consecutive months or if you fail to make the Minimum Payment Due by the Payment Due Date for two consecutive billing periods, your Cashback Bonus will be forfeited. Full terms and conditions will be sent with your card.

One reason I favor my Chase Freedom card still, is because VISA is more widely accepted. All places that accept credit cards will accept visa/master card(except Costco/BJ’s). Not all stores will accept Discover but most restaurants and major stores probably will.

* See the online credit card application for details about terms and conditions. Reasonable efforts are made to maintain accurate information. However all credit card information is presented without warranty. When you click on the “Apply Now” button, you can review the credit card terms and conditions on credit card issuers website.

I was so close! I can’t believe I was this close and failed to reach $200 dollars in cash back rewards from Chase. A month ago I posted an article about how to save your cash back rewards because The Chase freedom card is no longer going to give the $50 dollar bonus for waiting until you have saved up $200 dollars in rewards. It is different for each person and I think it depends on the aniversary date. My $50 dollar bonus was going away June 30th, so I had up until my last statement day which was June 25th. As you can see below I just missed it. I would have made it easy if all my pending transactions had completed by midnight June 24th.

I have until June 30th. I wonder if I can call them and see what I can negotiate with them. That $3.34 could turn into $50 bucks. I know you might think thats not a big deal, but to come so close, and to have literally made it, just some delays in transactions means I don’t get the $50 dollars.

I wonder if there is a way for me to talk to them and see if they can make this happen. I would think almost 100% NOT going to happen. Why would Chase help me get more money, that is just not in the best interest of their company.

Make sure you guys check when your statements are ending, and when your $50 dollar reward is up! Don’t miss out like I am going to.

Update:
I emailed Chase this morning asking them what I can do to make up the point/cash. I asked if it was possible to transferpoints or borrow points in order to make it to the $200 mark I need to order that $250 dollar check. Here is the reply I got from Chase about 2 hours later:

I was shocked too! That was awesome! I have always been really pleased with the customer service from Chase, but this I never expected. Get a Chase card if you don’t already have one!

Here is the results already:

I will post another picture when I get the check. Please share if you had good customer service experience with Chase.

My credit card statement this month was different for the first time. I had a balance, but the minimum payment was zero dollars. This confused me. How can I have a balance and the minimum payment be zero? I didn’t think much of this and I thought it was a mistake. I setup my payment to pay off my balance in full like I always do. I needed to find out why my minimum payment would be set to zero. So I sent a message to customer service. Chase’s customer service is very good by the way. They always get back to you quickly and accommodate you well.

You can see in the picture above that my statement clearly says I carry a balance, and my minimum payment is zero.

My message to Chase was this, “I am a little confused why my last statement says minimum payment due is 0 dollars?” Here was the response I got from Chase…

Awesome! Thanks for the good news Chase, but this is a total scam. They want me to skip this payment so they can charge me interest. I’m posting this because as soon as I read this email, I had to let everyone know about it. If they allow you to “skip” a payment don’t do it. The minimum payment for my balance would have been about $18. If I had taken Chase up on this wonderful offer I’d be charged $12 dollars in interest. So this only benefits Chase. Maybe if you were really short on cash this could help you out, but for people like me who pay all their balances in full, this is just a scam to try and make a buck off you. I know $12 dollars doesn’t seem like much but multiply that by all the accounts Chase has.

What if you had setup automatic payments? Would this not go off because the minimum payment due is zero? If so, that would really screw people over.

If you liked this, or know anyone that should know about this, please share and let me know what you think below.

Over the past 6th months I’ve seen my credit card interest rates drop to as low as 9.24%, just to be raised again in anticipation of the new credit card bill passed by President Obama, the “Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act.” The bill is intended to help consumers against credit card interest rate hikes by the banks. If this bill is supposed to help consumers against interest rate hikes why did mine just go up?

What does this mean for current card holders?
In the next several months you should be getting letters in the mail from your credit card companies explaining new changes to your terms & conditions. You will see higher interest rates and fees because they will no longer be able to change the APR’s on existing balances under the new bill.

What does this mean for new credit card offers?
It will be much harder to get approved for a credit card. They are tightening up who they allow credit. If you do get accepted, you will see a lower credit limit than what you would expect. For those who are 21 years and under will need to show they have an independent source of income or will need a cosigner. This is particularly good because credit card companies would prey on college students often getting them into debt before they graduate. Under this new bill it also helps protect young people from being irresponsible.

How does this effect the communication between the consumer and the credit card company?
Credit issuers will no longer be able to raise interest rates on existing balances. In a case when a payment is 60 days late they are allowed to raise the rates as high as they want. Not much has changed here right? The only difference is they are required to inform you 45 days in advance and explain the reason for the increase. In addition, your statements will be sent at least 21 days before your payment is due.

To help card holders stay away from debt, statements will clearly show how much it’s costing you to borrow and how long it will take to pay off a balance if you are making the minimum payments. If you can avoid it, never pay the minimum, always pay more. If you are paying the minimum payments now, you will see when these updated statements come, that by paying only the minimum payments, you are often further in debt the next bill cycle.

Photo: AP

As you may or may not know. The Chase Freedom card is changing terms on you. They will be getting rid of the triple rewards in the top 3 categories where you spend the most and switch to rolling categories where you will earn triple rewards throughout the year. They decide on the category, which means your triple cash back bonus is going to change on a quarterly basis.

I haven’t figured out if this is ending for everyone this June or just me. My anniversary month is June, so I received a letter from Chase explaining the change in terms and will take effect June 30th. If you have the Chase freedom and have not yet received this letter. I would assume it would be ending on your anniversary month in 2009. Start planning ahead!

Why should you care and plan ahead?
The $50 dollar bonus reward once you reach $200 in cash back reward is also going away. Again for me, I have to earn $200 dollars in rewards before June 30th. My current cash back balance sits at $162, which means I have to earn $38 dollars in rewards in just over a month. Can I do it?

I am going to try!
My plan is to milk the chaserewardsplus.com website which gives you additional cash back on online purchases, and buy lots of gift certificates. As stated in the terms and conditions, you will receive 3% cash back on the top 3 categories where you spend the most for the first $600 each month. My first idea is to buy movie tickets for the entire summer. I will probably buy about $100 dollars worth. I am also looking into buying gift certificates for Gas, and my local sub shop at where I buy lunch almost everyday.

By crunching numbers and working the system I think I can reach my goal of spending close to 700 dollars in pre-paid money at 3% cash back, in order to get the $50 bonus. Then after that I can go back to my regular charging habits. So if you need me to charge something for you, let me know I’m looking for ways to increase my cash back.

Do you think I can make it? Got any tips? Let me know

Photo: zert.geld_2008

Where is GMACbank.com What happened to it?

I tried to logon this morning to check my account and got an SSL security warning. This raise red flags for me because I’ve never had a problem with their site before. I then went to GMACbank.com and it said “Page not found”.

I looked it up and it turns out GMACbank has now changed their name to AllyBank. It would be nice if GMACbank.com forwarded you right to allybank.com. Instead I had a panic attack.

Ally Bank

The reason for the name change is to disassociate them form GM, who is known to be hurting these days. When asked about the name change, chief marketing officer Sanjay Gupta said, “Ally conveys the sense of a trusted partner, the attributes we are trying to convey.”

Here is a WSJ article more about the Bank’s new name: GMAC Will Change the Name of Its Bank

I’ve been hearing a lot about this as an additional investment vehicle. It sounds like it is relatively cheep to take out a large policy while you are still young. I feel like this investment is good to sell for the insurance company because its probably the longest holding period possible. Because you collect when you die. Maybe thats why financial advisors are pushing life insurance so hard on everyone lately. I’ve also heard from one of my friends who is a financial advisor, that life insurance will soon be required. Now is that different than the life insurance provided by your company, or would you need a privately funded one?

If you put into life insurance now, can you take out the money at any time?

As a young professional, should I be looking into this?

I was searching around for this and thought other people might be looking for it too. That’s all.