Another Woot Off In Progress!

Woot.com is having another of its Woot Offs right now. It started around midnight central time and will go until they run out of stuff. If you are unfamiliar with Woot.com, they are a site that offers items at a discount. Usually only one item is listed per day starting at 12am Central Time and is listed until it is sold out or 11:59PM Central Time.

A Woot Off, which happens rarely, is a number of products that are for sale on a particular day or successive days. One product follows another as soon as it has been sold out. The number of Woot-Off items, sequence, and quantity will not be announced so an item could take a while to sell out or sell out immediately. Don’t miss a chance to score some items at a steal if you have some money to blow! But remember, that I prefer you really think about saving it.

$75 PNC Checking Account Bonus

PNC Bank is offering a new account promotion where you can get a $75 bonus when opening a new account. To qualify you need to open a new checking account by May 22, 2010, setup direct deposit and make 10 purchases with your PNC debit card. Note that those 10 purchases need to be signature based transactions and not pin based. The small print also mentions that the direct deposit needs to be greater than $400 and must be “made by an employer or an outside agency”

The $75 bonus will be credited to your account within 60 days after the above requirements are met.

If you want to open a free account to get this bonus, you may consider the PNC Free Checking account. With direct deposit set up, there are no minimum balance requirements or monthly service charges on the account.

For more details see the PNC Bonus Page

$150 Bonus from American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card

There is a new bonus available from American Express Premier Rewards Gold Card where you can get 15,000 when you spend $1000 on the card within the first 3 months.

Those 15,000 points can be used for anything in the Membership Rewards catalog, but most notably they can be used for a $150 gift card at participating stores.

Premier Rewards Gold Card is a pretty decent cash back card, you get 3 times the Membership rewards when you purchase air travel, 2 times points with Groceries and Gas and 1 point per dollar on everything else. There is a $175 annual fee, but this is waived for the first year you have the card.

“Disclaimer: This content is not provided or commissioned by American Express. Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of American Express, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by American Express. This site may be compensated through American Express Affiliate Program.”

Free Starbucks Coffee April 15th

In an effort to convert people from paper cups to reusable travel mugs to help save the environment, Starbucks is giving away free coffee on April 15th when you bring in your own mug.

Hey, that is tax day too, so if you are up all night finishing off those taxes why not wake yourself up with a free cup of joe?

The details on the promo page say that this is only available at participating locations, so you may ask first before you give them your mug!

Alliant Credit Union Savings Still at 2%

If you are still looking for a high yield savings account that hasn’t had a rate drop in over 3 months, then you may consider Alliant Credit Union. Their Savings account is still sitting at 2% APY for the past 3 months without a drop. To get the 2% you must maintain a balance on $100 or more in the account

Their checking account is also at a decent 1.75%. To get the 1.75% you need to opt out of paper statements and have at least one monthly electronic deposit. They have an ACH feature that allows you to push and pull money to other linked accounts, which makes moving money around very painless.

Alliant is more of a cutting edge credit union, meaning they have features and benefits that other credit unions don’t. My favorite is the e-Deposit Plus. This allows you to deposit checks into your account by using a scanner. No more trips to the bank to deposit checks. Since Alliant is not located where I live, having an ATM, Checks and free online bill pay for taking money out of my account and direct deposit and e-Deposit Plus to put money back in, I never need to even go to the branch.

They don’t offer any debit rewards programs like other banks, but the high interest rates alone make up for that as you know most of those debit programs conversion rates are terrible.

Alliant Credit Union is based out of Chicago. To join you must be a member of a qualifying organization. A $25 one time membership to the National PTA is good enough to get you in which is how most people are allowed to join that don’t live or work in the Chicago area.

I have had a checking, savings, HELOC and HSA with Alliant for over 2 years now and use them as my main bank. They have excellent customer service and are always competitive with their rates. IF you have had it with banks that just offer teaser rates, or are tired of jumping through hoops in reward checking accounts to qualify for the high APY, you may take a look at Alliant Credit Union for your banking needs

Fidelity.com Cuts Trading Commissions To $7.95

That picture says it all. Starting February 3rd, Fidelity.com has slashed their trading rates down to $7.95 for stock and options trades. Prior to this you fell either into the Silver, Bronze or Gold groups based on trading history and dollars on deposit with them, and even in that case the best tier received trades for $9.95.

This is huge when you compare them to other full service brokers. And even better when you line them up against discount brokers. I imagine that this will help Fidelity pull in a large amount of new clients. I have a Fidelity account but didn’t use them much for trading since I was in the $14.95 / trade tier. And with my measly little investments, a $28 charge to buy and sell one commodity was really cutting into my bottom line. Their new pricing cuts that in half.

Sure you can still pay less at some other discount brokers such as Optionshouse.com where it is only $2.95 / trade, but when you look at all the features Fidelity has, it is going to be a tough matchup. Look for new brokerage account bonuses to pop up all over the place to keep Fidelity from stealing their potential customers.

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