Free $75 Checking Bonus at PNC National City Bank

PNC, who recently acquired National City, is having a promo where you can get $75 when opening a new checking account. You must open a new checking account by May 9th, 2009, which can be opened online. Their free checking accounts qualify for this promotion, but be sure to establish direct deposit to be eligible for the $75 bonus,

Their site defines a “direct deposit” as a direct deposit of a paycheck, pension, Social Security or other regular monthly income electronically deposited into checking account. Minimum amount of any single Direct Deposit must be at least $500. The Direct Deposits must be made by an employer or an outside agency.

The direct deposit must be at least $500. The payout of $75 will be credited to the eligible account within 7 days of the first Direct Deposit, which must occur before 6/30/2009

PNC Checking Account Features:

• Free transactions at any PNC Bank ATM.
• Non-PNC ATM fees reimbursed with a $2,000 average monthly balance²
• No minimum balance requirement and no monthly service charge
• Earn rewards with your enrolled PNC Bank Visa Check Card when you make a qualifying purchase
• Free Online Banking and Bill Pay

Check out the promo page for more details.

Cut Cell Phone Costs With T-Mobile Loyalty Programs

If you have had T-mobile service for more than 22 months and have a clean payment history, you qualify for the new T-Mobile Loyalty program. The Loyalty plans include unlimited minutes on an individual line for $49.99 per month and unlimited minutes on a two-line family plan for $89.99 per month. You can cadd additional lines to the family plan for $39.99 each per month.

I currently had the My Faves 1800 minute family plan for $89.99 per month. So you can see how I didn’t hesitate to swtich this. And best yet, there is no contract extension to change to these plans.

I orignally discoverd it when I had to call customer service to replace my blackberry that died. After I entered my phone number there was an option to press “1″ to speak to a customer service representative about a loyalty program. So I pressed it, and I am glad I did, since now I have an unlimited plan, on 2 phones, for the same amount I was paying for 1800 minutes. Can you say bye-bye land line?

I have also heard rumors that when you log into your T-mobile account online there is an offer screen that is presented to you with this information. If you haven’t seen either of these you can always call the customer service department to ask about it.

If you have been a long time customer of T-mobile, then make sure you get in on these added cost savings before they increase the rates of their unlimited plans.

Hot Brokerage Promos

Since the market has turned around a bit many of the online brokerage sites are offering promos to get you to open an account. Now is not a bad time to start investing since the market is still of its highs from last year but seems to be rebounding a bit. Sure we still may be in for a rocky ride, but if you are investing in the long term, now is the perfect time to get going. If you have some extra money to invest I suggest you look at one of these promos prior to signing up with anyone.

Here are a few of the current ones going on:

• Tradeking Promo – Get up to $150 in transfer fees credited to your account when you transfer your account from another brokerage to Tradeking (see post for more details)
• ETrade IRA Promo – Open an ETrade IRA and get 100 free trades. (See post for more details)
• Zecco Promo – Zecco brokerage gives you Get 10 free stock trades every month if you $25,000 balance or make 25 paid trades each month. Otherwise the commission is only $4.50 / trade which is one of the lowest out there. (See more details here
• OptionsXpress Promo – OptionsXpress is giving away $100 when you open a new account with them. (See post for more details)
• Firstrade Promo – Firstrade is giving away 5 free trade when you open a new account. (See post for more details)