StopBuyingCrap.com

FNBO Direct is running a $25 opening bonus for their Online BillPay account.

Promotion details:

• Open a new FNBO Direct Online BillPay account (FNBO Direct Savings required).
• $25 bonus credit to account within 30 days after opening.
• BillPay account will need to be opened for 90 days and you’ll have to make at least one BillPay payment during that period.
• Promotion ends on 9/30/08.

Seems straight forward enough, especially if you already have a FNBO Direct Online Savings account. Open the account, transfer in $50 bucks, make a payment for your monthly subscription to Cereal Digest Monthly and claim the $25.

Thanks to this promotion, I just remembered the FNBO savings account that I’ve opened over a year ago (with $102 in the account). It’s like finding five bucks under the sofa cushion. Sweet!

From [Blueprint for Financial Prosperity]

This promotion has ended. If you need a discount for myFICO, click here.

myFICO currently has a 20% off summer sale for their FICO scores. Original price for each score is $15.95. After discount, the cost for each credit score is $12.76. The promotion ends on July 31, 2008.

FICO credit scores are a good purchase when:

• You are planning to get a significant loan (home, auto, or boat) and need to know your credit worthiness
• You need to see if your recent financial actions have affected your credit worthiness negatively or positively
• You are planning to fix your credit and/or get out of debt (knowing your credit worthiness can help significantly in rate negotiation)

FICO credit scores are NOT a worthwhile purchase when:

• You are simply curious of your credit scores
• You haven’t made any significant changes to your credit profile
• You aren’t in a financial situation where you need to know your credit worthiness

Remember, knowing your credit scores, buying your credit reports (especially when they’re available free annually), and using credit monitoring services does NOT magically make your financial situation better. Don’t buy into the marketing of fear that’s being employ by some credit reporting companies.

By using this link from Visa Signature’s concierge service (subscription to restaurant ratings cost $24.95 per year at Zagat’s website).

I’ve never use Zagat before, but from what I read the reviews are fairly spot-on. If you don’t feel like cooking this holiday weekend, perhaps you can find a nice place to wine and dine with friends, family, and loved ones — maybe the $334 per person sushi restaurant listed above?

Sorry for the delay on releasing winners to last week’s gift card giveaway. Was busy birdwatching… or something like that.

The 20 winners were selected by the random integer generator from Random.org.

Winners based on commenter numbers are: Michele, menis, akimbo, Ulysses, shihchiun, Marc, Ryan Waldron, ED, Brandon, Andrea (1), Sarah Graham, Sara, Becca, H Lee D, Tony L, Dmitriy, Brad, kim, ben (2), and gina. Look for an email with the gift card in your inbox soon.

With only about 105 comments, odds were pretty decent. If you didn’t win, I’d most likely run another giveaway again whenever various revenue source hits certain milestone.

Now, back to my birdwatching.

I make money from my blog (yes, really). But to be honest, I’d always feel a bit sheepish about it — as if I’m cheating the balance of the universe by making money from writing about non-sense. I certainly don’t make enough to quit my day job (if I had one), but earnings did peak enough to warrant making filings to the lovely IRS.

Revenue from this blog is generated by a few different sources: Google ads that you’ll see on single pages; a handful of affiliate links that earns me a buck or two; the standard text links; and surprisingly, sign-ups from survey websites (something I completely forgot about).

I wrote a post awhile back that details how you can earn money online by taking online surveys. In essence, you sign-up, fill out your consumer attributes, and the companies occasionally sends you matching survey via email. The pay varies and depends on the difficulty and time involvement in the survey.

Last week, I logged into my SurveySavvy account and was surprised to find that I have accumulated over a thousand dollars in survey incentives. That’s a lot of Cheetos.

This is thanks to sign-ups from regular readers like you.

Seeing as how I didn’t do anything special for the blog’s three year anniversary, how about we give away a $5 Amazon gift certificate to 20 random readers? This will be sure to alleviate my money making guilt and/or celebrate three years of awful blogging.

Amazon Gift Card Give Away Details

• Click here and leave a comment along with an email address of your choice.
• One entry per person, you cheap bastards.
• 20 random commenter will receive a $5 Amazon gift card via email.
• Drawing ends in a week on May 8th, 2008 at 12:00 PM PST.

Very straightforward sign-on bonus. Open an E*Trade’s Complete Savings Account, fund it with $1 or more and within 30 days you’ll receive a $25 sign-on bonus.

• No fees and no minimum account.
• $1 minimum to open.
• Currently 3.45% APY (recently changed from 4.10%).
• Bonus offer expires in 3/31/2008.
• Soft credit pull according to forums.
• Write down your account number at end of application process to link account.
• Send in your signature card (when you receive it) within 15 days or account will close.

Reported on various blogs and forums. Bonus seems to appear without issue. If you don’t see your bonus, contact E*Trade customer service via the internal account messaging center before you try the call centers. Will update this post once my own bonus is posted.

Update:

I can confirm that the bonus does work. It looks like my transfer of $1,000 into the account triggered the bonus. So you might want to try and initiate a transfer to get the bonus going, if you don’t see your bonus being posted.

Will most likely write a review post eventually, hence the deposit. Easy bonus for less than half an hour of typing and clicking. Check out the two penny interest I earned! Reminds me of my Bank of America savings account. Good times.

Related Resources:

• Fatwallet forum discussion on E*Trade bonus

Alright, this has been mentioned on a few other PF blogs already, but just in case you haven’t seen this, Oprah.com is offering a free download of Suze Orman’s book, Women & Money. Act quick because the offer expires 2/14/08 at 8 P.M. EST.

I’m not really a Suze Orman fan (in that she yells at people too much), but I suppose there’s worse financial gurus out there…

In either case, free book! I love books. Even in digital format. I love books so much I’d sleep with them — but unfortunately, they’re not too soft.

Pillows are much softer.

That is all.