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 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.

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.

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

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

A few of my credit cards that I know of have online shopping portals where you save extra money and earn up to 20% cash back!

Running this site and having signed up for a few affiliate programs, I know a little about how this works. When I post an ad on this site and someone buys something from that link. We get a commission off it. There are hundreds of these online affiliates to sign up with. The credit card companies, like Discover, and Chase are doing the same thing. They are affiliated with these shops to offer an additional discount if you buy the products through their online shopping website. I’ve looked up a couple of the commissions because we share the same affiliate. Gap for example offers commissions between 4-6% off CJ’s affiliate program. Through shop discover purchases from Gap, get an additional 5% cash back, on top of the standard 1% cash back.

This is a great way to save some extra coin while shopping online. I highly recommend you take a look at your credit card online store next time you think about making an online purchase. They have hundreds of stores for everything from food to electronics.

My personal example: I recently purchased a new MacBook. The MacBook came out to $1634.00. I made the purchase through Shop Discover and earned a total of $86.12 cash back off that one purchase.

As you can see from the chart, my top 3 categories of spending are not in any categories which my Chase card gives 3% cash back. Although I use this card everywhere because of the 25% bonus when you save up $200 in rewards, if I used a different card with more cash back on every purchase I would be doing much better. Right? Maybe…

Check your year end credit card summaries and see where you could be getting the most cash back. Unfortunately for me, Auto, Merchandise and Restaurants are not common cash back categories on most cards. If there were a card out there that would reward me for spending so much money on my car I would get that in a heartbeat. Those cards simply do not exist.

Realizing this information I started to look for cards that offer more than 1% cash back on all purchases. So far I have found two potential cards to get, the Capital One Card Lab, and American Express Blue Cash. In the past year I’ve estimated I put an average of $20,000 dollars on my credit card. I came up with that number because I have almost reached $200 in rewards from Chase and mostly at 1% in only 10 months. You can do the math.

There is a promotion for the Capital One Card Lab if you pick 1% cash back, you can select a bonus of 2% cash back on everything for the first 12 months. This would be a great card to get if I was going to spend a lot of money in 1 year. Sadly this card will go back to 1% after the promotional period. This would be a fine card for me in a short term, and then I would go back to the Freedom.

The AMEX Blue Cash is pretty good if I spent well over 20,000 dollars. This is much harder to do because this card is not as widely accepted. This card is 1.5% cash back after the first $6500, not a bad deal for a bawler. After doing the calculation based on $20,000 dollars, it falls short of my Chase card, and Capital One in the lowest percent category. In the Everyday Purchases category this card spikes at 5% cash back. Sounds great, but takes some dough to get there.

I am not making the switch over to the AMEX yet and sticking with my Chase card. Anyone else using a worthy card?

Here are some of my cards and APRs:
Chase – 20.99%
Chase Amazon – 14.24%
Citibank Shell - 11.99%

I’ve had my Citibank Shell card the longest, and my Chase card for about a year. You can see how your APR goes down the longer you have the card. Hank over at My Investing Blog answered, How can I lower the interest rate on my card and raise my credit limit

What credit cards are you using and what is the ARP?

As I was thinking about getting another credit card, it got me thinking “How many credit cards is too many?” I have been thinking about opening up another card, and another soon after that. After looking over my year end summaries on all my cards the majority of my purchases are in categories which do not have special rewards bonuses. I receive only 1% back on my biggest purchases every year. If you are like me and you are maximizing your cash back rewards, you want a card that benefits you the most where you spend the most.

So how many cards is too many?

Most experts say there’s no single magic number. Rather, the question can be answered by scrutinizing how much you spend and how much you can pay off. But there is an upper limit: Credit agencies warn that the more cards you have, the bigger risk you carry for racking up debt and damaging your credit. – MSN Money

Protecting your credit score
Store credit cards are great to save a quick 10-20% off your purchases but opening them can lower your credit score instantly. Simply opening a store credit card can lower your credit score 20 points. Creditors will see this as a negative because “Historically, store credit cards are issued to anyone with a pulse. They issue credit cards to people who otherwise can’t get credit.” – Steve Rhode, president of Myvesta.

Keeping your debt ratio low is important. This does not mean opening up many cards to increase your allowed limits. Try to keep your balances less than 50% of your total limit. Creditors do not like to see your cards almost maxed out. If you have to make a large purchase, split up the cost among two cards to keep your debt ratio on each card less than 50%.

Pay off your balances in full each month and pay on time. For most cards when you miss one payment, your interest rates will go up and you can kiss your special 0% financing goodbye. Creditors love when you mess up and make late payments because they get to charge you a late fee as well. If you pay your balances in full and on time, you will never pay a dime of interest. This is so important when building up your credit scores.

Keeping up with payments will build a better credit rating than opening numerous credit-card accounts.

No need to close unused credit cards. If you do, don’t close more than one at a time; this will quickly shoot up your debt ratio among your cards. For example if you have a balance of $5,000 and $10,000 in potential credit don’t close a card with $2,500 credit. You will raise your debt ratio to over 50%. Also don’t close an account you have had for a long time just to get better rates or rewards. Creditors like to see a lengthy credit history so closing out your oldest card will shorten your credit history.

Also, don’t close your oldest accounts if you find a better card. “If you close a card you opened in college 10 years ago because you found a better card, creditors will penalize you, because they are looking for a lengthy and successful credit history,” says Joyce Murray of Money Management Internal.

Overview

• • Make your payments on time.
• • Regularly pay off your balances in full.
• • Keep your debt ratio low. Less than 50% on each card.
• • Close out those store credit cards once you have received the benefit.

Stick to these rules and you will build a high credit score and keep it.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/CreditCardSmarts/HowManyCreditCardsIsTooMany.aspx – MSN Money

To take advantage of this free money you have to pay off your credit card bills in full each month. If you miss payments or can’t pay the balance in full, you are paying more money in late fees and high interest rates. If you can handle this, you are ready to start earning free money!

First thing you have to do is find the right credit card that will reward you the most, where you spend the most. I rotate between 3 different credit cards. My favorite card is the Chase Freedom. With their new offer, you earn 3% cash back on the top 3 categories where you spend the most money. There are 15 different categories where your spending can fall under. Purchases that do not fall under these categories will earn 1% cash back per dollar. An added bonus to this card is when you reach $200 in rewards you get an extra $50 dollars.
So I use this card as my default credit card to reach that reward quicker, there is no reason not to. My top categories on this card are probably food, movies, and my cell phone bill. You can also use this card to pay your utilities and cable/internet bills. In the 6 months I’ve had this card I earned $100 in cash back rewards. At the rate I am going in another 6 months I will reach that $200 mark and claim my bonus $50. You can read more about this card in my review: Chase freedom.

My other two cards are for gas. This is probably where people are spending the most money so it’s important to get a gas rewards card that is at lease 5% cash back. The two cards I use are the Discover Open Road, and Shell Platinum MasterCard from Citi®. The Shell card is great because it’s 5% back on Shell gas and at any Shell convenient store. I use only Shell V-Power for my car so this card works great for me. I spend an average of $45 a week on gas, which is about $195 a month, and is about $10 cash back each month. If you don’t use shell gas all the time, then get a credit card that is 5% back on all gas stations. I use the Open Road for when I am not close to a Shell or if I am buying oil and filters for my car. The Discover open road is 5% back on gas and auto maintenance purchases. When you are not buying gas, both these cards have 1% cash back on all other purchases. I’ve racked up $75 in rewards from my Discover card so far. You can read my review of these cards at: Discover Open Road & Shell Platinum MasterCard from Citi®.

To get the most out of these cash back cards you have to put all your purchases on them. I have not been to the ATM in months. I put every purchase I can on a credit card because the credit card companies pay me to use them. I get rewarded for spending money I already would have, and you can too. Just follow a few simple rules of paying them back, and on time, and you will earn cash quickly.