90% Off Restaurant.com Gift Cerfiticates – Today (10/1) Only!

Today (October 1st) only, you can save 90% off of gift certificates from Restaurant.com when using the code WOW during the checkout process.

Most restaurants allow you to use one gift certificate per table. And most have a minimum purchase requrement which is usually around $35, but I have seen the range from $20 – $50. Even still this is a great offer since you can get $25 worth of food for $2.

Restaurant.com allows you to search for Restuarants in your area by zipcode. You can then see the requirements per each restaurant.

So say for example you and a friend go out to eat and it will cost you $40. You then figure a 20% tip. The total comes to $48. Now say you had purchased a $25 gift certificate for $2, your total would be $48 – $25 – $2 (cost of certificate) = $25. Not bad for a two person meal!

I like to stock up on these when they have a restaurant.com promo since that can be big savings over time if you like to eat out alot. To date I have never had an issue where the restaurant refused my certificate, besides they uses these as ways to get you in to their place to eat so that is the cost of advertising for them. Plus I’m sure they hope you will stay and drink too!

Merrill Edge – 30 Free Trades Per Month

Merrill Lynch, which don’t forget was picked up by Bank of America, has a new promotion where you can get up to 30 free online stock or EFT trades per month.

What’s the catch? You need to have at least $25,000 in cash deposits in your Merrill Edge account or your Bank of America deposit account. Note that these are cash balances and not money that is already invested in securities. So for anyone that has over $25,000 in Savings or CD’s at BofA will most likely qualify.

This account also offers real time transfers between your Bank of America accounts and your Merrill Lynch account. This is nice when you want to buy some stock right away, but don’t want to wait for a 3 day ACH transfer wait.

I can’t comment on Merrill Lynch’s service as I have never had an account with them, but they have been around for a while and imagine that it is probably up to par with places like Schwab or Fidelity.

There doesn’t appear to be any expiration on this promotion meaning that you will receive the 30 free trades every month as long as you have the $25,000 minimum cash balance. Obviously they can change the terms, but this looks like something that will stick around for a while.

Check out the Merrill Lynch Promo page for more details on this offer.

2010 Social Security Contrbution Limit (2010 SSN Limit)

For those of you lucky to be making a 6 figure salary, you should be approaching the 2010 SSN limit. And that means more money back to you in your next few paychecks. This year, the wage limit is $106,800, meaning that once you hit that number in terms of your total paid wages you will no longer have to pay the SSN tax for the rest of the 2010 pay year.

The government likes to in increase that number every year, below I have listed what the amounts were for the past 5 years and you can see that they stick to around a 3-5% annual increase. This is great when your salary increase by that much, but not if you are stuck at a certain salary and that level passes you by!

Year	Wages	% Increase
2010	$106,800	NA
2009	$106,800	4.7%
2008	$102,000	4.6%
2007	$97,500	3.5%
2006	$94,200	4.7%
2005	$90,000	2.4%

But you will notice that there was no increase from last year, which is interesting. It must be related to the sluggish economy as I don’t remember the last time we didn’t see an increase in the wage limit.

Also, don’t forget that if you switched jobs this year and will make over $106,800 between the 2 jobs, you will receive the excess SSN tax money back when you file your tax return, however if you have only 1 job this year, then your company’s payroll department should stop taking out the tax once you hit the $106,800 wage.

OptionsXpress Bonus – $100 Bonus With New Account

The current OptionsXpress promotion promotion is still available where you can get $100 when opening a new account.

To qualify for the $100 bonus, you need to open a new OptionsXpress account with a minimum balance of $500 and execute three online trades within 12 months of account opening date. The bonus will be deposited into the new account as a $100 credit one month after those requirements are completed.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with OptionsXpress, they are a full service discount broker based out of Chicago. They were founded in 2000, so they have 10 years under their belt in terms of experience. They offer a flat commission rate or $14.95 per trade, but it gets cheaper the more trades you do a month.

I have had an account with these guys for a bout 5 years now. I actually learned to trade options by using their Options Education Center. They have great customer service and an easy to use trading interface. I also wrote an OptionsXpress Review last year, so take a look if you want more details on their service. If you are looking for a new broker or just deciding to start trading stocks, you should definitely take a look at their services.