If you have a valid university email address, you are eligible to get a free subscription to New York Times Select ($50 value) via this signup link. After you enter your email, they will send you an activation email with a link that you must click. From there, it’s a little confusing because they send you to a login page, from there you need to click on the Upgrade button to upgrade to the New York Times Select subscription. The next page is just your typical signup page and after that you’re all set. Free New York Times Select, just like that.

Not much beats free, so enjoy!

(Dang, I was beat to the punch by a lot of places, including the Consumerist, this is what you get for being busy)

After taking out three 0% financing balance transfers last year and dealing with the hassles of them, I told myself that all the work wasn’t really worth it and that I wouldn’t apply for any more cards for the purposes of balance transfers. I am happy to report that I have not applied to any more credit cards and that this time the balance transfer offer sort of fell into my lap. I wrote on Monday about how you shouldn’t cancel your old credit cards because you never know when you’ll see something nice, like a balance transfer offer for no reason, and yesterday I initiated a new balance transfer off the Citi Platinum Dividend Select card.

The major downside to applying for a new card and requesting a balance transfer is that it will have a significant negative impact on your credit score. Since your credit utilization will increase and you’ll have yet another credit inquiry, it’s guaranteed your score will fall. This isn’t a concern if you aren’t planning on going after a mortgage or other large loan but I really didn’t want yet another item on my credit history so this particular scenario is perfect. I can get a balance transfer without another credit inquiry, so in essence it’s “free.”

Now, if you happen to find one of these free balance transfers, you should request a credit line increase before the transfer. On a typical arbitrage play, the card is brand new so the credit card company won’t increase your credit line limit but if it’s an “old” card, you won’t have this problem. Request the increase so you can put more onto the transfer! Sometimes you’ll get an automatic offer of an increase of a thousand dollars or so, just take that and make the transfer. Those offers usually require no credit inquiry and so they are perfect, if they don’t offer you that and instead require you to fill out a large form, just skip it. Since you’re taking advantage of the “free” nature of the offer, you don’t want a credit inquiry muddying it up.

Good luck!

Just an update to those of you who had been asking me whether my $100 gasoline reimbursement check had arrived from Citi Credit Protector - yes it has (today actually).

And in fact, if you want to check on the status of it at Rebate Status. What’s funny is that I had been trying to check the status but since they keyed in my last name wrong (they transposed some letters in an obvious typo), it wasn’t showing up. My fiancée’s rebate status had been updated accurately and showed up as CP Email Gas Coupon ($100), mail date of February 1st.

At the time of the mailing (or within days of the mailing), I had already canceled Citi Credit Protector so I do not believe membership is necessary to be eligible for the promotion. My fiancée is still part of the Credit Protector program and working off their $50 promotion.

Gotta love them credit card insurance promotions!

If you’ve been in the market for cards that offer 0% on balance transfers, you’ll probably see that a lot of cards now have decided to instead only offer 0% on purchases instead (such as this 0% on purchases for 15 months offer by Blue from American Express). Now, I don’t know what has led to this increase other than the cards wanting to end the whole 0% balance transfer arbitrage game but here’s a little way to turn your offer of 0% APR on purchases into a 0% balance transfer offer.

• Sign up for Google Checkout as a vendor. You will need a website with a privacy policy, you can just start a site with Blogspot.
• Send an invoice to yourself.
• Pay the invoice with your 0% on purchases card.
• Laugh at the card company’s feeble attempts to stop 0% balance transfer arbitrage gaming.

This will only work until February 2008 because Google Checkout has waived all the processing fees until then. If you’re concerned about reporting this an income, Google doesn’t track payments from the perspective of reconciling income (just like eBay doesn’t care how much you sell), and since in theory you’re paying yourself, it’s not really income. If you’re concerned about the tax and legal ramifications, I recommend you contacting a tax attorney on that.

Here are some good no annual fee, 12+ month 0% on purchases offers (if you’ve exhausted all the 0% balance transfers, which is pretty hard to imagine):

• Blue from American Express - 15 months
• Discover Business Card
• Platinum Business Credit Card
• American Express Platinum Business FreedomPass Card
• American Express SimplyCash Business Card

The giveaway of two copies of Health Care on Less Than You Think ends at midnight tonight, so leave a comment on that post and win a book!

With only 19 entries, that’s better than a 10% chance you’ll win a copy of Health Care on Less Than You Think! (read the review)

The Credit Protector promotion of a $100 gas certificate for enrolling in their program is still alive and kicking, I just saw a banner for it when I logged into my account - here the link. I have yet to get either one of the $100 checks from when my fiancée and I last did the promotion in December but once they come in I’ll try to sign me up again with a different card and see if it’ll give us another $100 in gasoline!

If that link doesn’t seem to work, as some links haven’t in the past, try this one. Incidentally, I was looking at my Citi Professional card’s account summary when the offer appeared but, like last time, it’s available for all Citi cards I believe.

This may soon not work since AT&T has filed papers to close the loophole that makes this possible.

I still have a lot of family back in Taiwan and while I don’t necessarily call them, my parents sure do, so this new service, AllFreeCalls.net, is certainly going to come in very very handy.

Instructions:

• Call 712-858-8094 (a phone number in Iowa).
• Listen to the instructions, in Mandarin Chinese, in Spanish, then English.
• At the prompt, enter 011, the country code (Country Codes list) you are calling and the number you wish to call.
• Talk. Talk a lot.

Thanks Consumerist! (go there if you want to know why it works)

Basically, if your adjusted gross income is under $52,000, you are eligible to participate in the IRS’ Free File program:

The Free File program is a free federal tax preparation and electronic filing program for eligible taxpayers developed through a partnership between the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Free File Alliance LLC, a group of private sector tax software companies. … Free File allows taxpayers with an Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of $52,000 or less in 2006 to e-file their federal tax returns for free. That means 70 percent of all taxpayers – 95 million taxpayers – can take advantage of the Free File program.

So, if you’re eligible, don’t waste money buying tax preparation software or services because you’re eligible to get it for free, just keep an eye out for upselling tactics (where they try to get you to buy other services, that’s why they’re offering federal absolutely free). Check the Free File site after the 16th of January for further details!