One of the things that I have been seeing more and more of these days is the teaser offer by banks to open up a checking account with them.

The most effective ones offer you straight cash, but I have seen them offer anything from gift cards to just about anything else you can think of.

Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is to open up the checking account, fulfill any requirements they have for the free money, get the free money and then forget about the account.  That’s not what the bank has in mind but so what.

Several months back, I went ahead and applied for three separate offers for these accounts, and I just wanted to let you know how my experience went.  I think I ended up making $250 cash from all three of them combined. In short, you can obviously make free money with these deals, but you have got to be careful.

Listed below are just a few of the things you need to be aware of before diving in.  When weighed against the $250 that I made, it is worth it, you just need to stay on top of it.

Here goes:

Affect on your Credit Score:  I did not track this as a before and after thing, but there will be a minor effect on your credit rating.  Sometimes, these accounts can be opened without a “hard pull” on your credit, but those I think are few and far between.  It probably takes six months or so for your score to recover.  In the interim, you may have some difficulty if you try to open up any other new lines of credit, as I did.  No long term and no major effects, just something to be aware of.

Direct Deposit Requirements: Some of these offers require at least one direct deposit to qualify for your cash reward.  I would be wary of these.  I only say this because the process of switching my direct deposit information with my employer was much less than an easy process. You may want to ask your employer about this before doing so.  And if you forget to switch it back, you may find yourself with not enough money in your regular bank account to cover your bills.

Don’t forget about them!  As I said, I opened up my three accounts, fulfilled the requirements, got my cash reward, withdrew most of the money out of the account and forgot about them.  Another requirement may be that you leave the account open for a certain period of time to qualify for the reward.  Forgetting about them can be dangerous.  With two of these accounts, I recently received overdraft notices.  They charged me an “inactivity fee” which put my accounts at less than zero balances, triggering more late fees, and two big messes in general.  It took a lot of phone calls and fast-talking to straighten out.

Ease of closing:  Do not think that these banks are unaware of the people out there like me-who are only really in it for the cash reward.  They know we exist, and they will make it as difficult, time-consuming and annoying as possible when it comes time to close these accounts.  In general, it cannot be done with a simple phone call.  Plan on investing a good deal of time on the back end to close this stuff out.

Overall, I would say it was definitely worth the money I made by signing up for these offers.  I only wish I was a little better informed about a few things, and had stayed a little more organized on the back end.  This would have made my life quite a bit easier.

Had an experience, good or bad, with this type of thing?  Let my readers know about it below…

This article is for those of you who are moving quite well down the road to financial success.

Or at least somewhere close to it.  You have gotten to the point where you pay your credit cards off in full every month and carry no balances-that’s a great place to be in if you’ve recently gotten there for the first time.  I remember it well!

At this point in time, credit cards can still play a very important role in your life.  Used properly, they can keep your credit rating and score strong, they can keep you fairly well protected, and believe it or not, they should be able to also generate some cash for you.

I’d like to go over just a few of the things that I do with my credit cards to make sure they are working as hard for me as I am for them.

First, choose the right one.  In my opinion, the credit card(s) that you use the most should have one of the top “cash back” options that you can find.  Regarding the credit cards that offer “gifts” or rewards that are not actual cash, I have never really found anything there to my liking.  Also, wouldn’t you rather have cold hard cash? This way, YOU can decide which prizes and so forth you want, and you can probably get them at cheaper prices that what all of those points cost you.  I think the only exception might be for those of you that fly a lot.  The “miles” cards may offer fares at a decent enough rate to make it worthwhile to go that route-if you fly often.  Other than that, stick with the cash!

Second, use them for everything.  I try to keep enough cash on hand or in my wallet for emergencies only.  This is for safety reasons, as well as the fact that if I am getting a 1% discount  every time I buy something, I then I want this discount to be as much as possible.  Plus, by doing so, I think you maintain a stronger credit rating and/or score.

Third, don’t close them.  Believe it or not, you should have a healthy amount of what they call “available credit”.  Meaning, if you only have $5000 in open credit and you use $4,000 of it each month, this is not good for your credit score.  However, if you have $80,000 of available credit and use only $4,000 of it each month, then this again improves your credit score.  Why-I have no idea.  You may want to consider slowly opening new lines of credit for this very reason.

Fourth, don’t close your cards out.  For the same reason mentioned above, it does not make financial sense to “close out” a bunch of cards that you may no longer use.  It may seem to make your life simpler, but you could be negatively affecting your credit rating.  Also, you probably need to get on some type of program for using these cards every few months.  Credit card companies have been known to reduce credit lines or even close accounts for inactivity.

These are just a few of the concepts that I have implemented in my daily life to get the most out of my credit cards.  I generate as much cash as I can from them, as well as using them to keep my credit rating and score as healthy as possible.

Keep in mind that most of this advice is only for those of us who can pay the balances off in full at the end of every month.

Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated below.

I would like to let you all know of my gratitude and appreciation for your support and readership over the last several months. I know that we are all very busy with our lives and I appreciate you taking the time out of yours to read my words.

I am finally took a major step towards reaching some of my longer term goals. My first book was recently published and is now available for sale at Amazon.com

It is called “Don’t Be A Mule: A Common-sense Guide to Saving More, Spending Less, and Generating Extra Income in Your Everyday Life.” It s based purely on my personal experiences. Namely, the journey that I took from the depths of financial debt to the modest successes that I am experiencing now.

This journey was not a very long one and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. Once I got my mind straight on how I needed to deal with the money that was coming in and going out of my life, it all became pretty basic. Sure, there was some hard work and some sacrifice along the way, but for anyone who thinks that getting out of debt involves years of suffering and foregoing the basic pleasures of life is simply wrong.

The basics that I learned are that it is mostly in your mind. You don’t need huge raises at work to get out of debt; you don’t need to hit the lottery. Honestly, you don’t even need an organized long-term plan. I certainly didn’t have one. If you are deep in debt now, there is a very good reason for it. For most, I would imagine that it is nothing more than living beyond your means. Well, guess what you need to do to solve this? Stop living beyond your means until you are out of debt. Then, you need to live AT your means. Then, you need to work on increasing your means.

If you are in the UK  www.ThinkMoney.com is a useful resource for help and advice on debt.

All of this and more is outlined in my book, and I hope you decide to at least check it out. I think it can provide value to the life of anyone who decides to read it. This journey was the best learning experience I’ve ever had in life, and I think that you can benefit from it too.

Thanks again for your support.

Don’t Be A Mule

So I think by now we all realize the importance of having a good and clean credit report. And in order to stay on top of this, we must monitor our credit report from time to time. Most people will say that, at the very least, you should check your credit report at least one time a year.

But of course, if you listen to all the commercials out there for businesses that say they will monitor your credit report for you, you need to check it every single day. Well, I think that realistically you should fall somewhere in the middle. If someone, God forbid, has compromised your credit, I think that waiting for almost a year is too long. On the other hand, I think that having a service that constantly monitors it is a little over the top.

And, most importantly, I think that PAYING to have your credit report monitored is absolutely insane.

So, what I will outline for you here is an easy and simple way to get a fresh copy of your credit report every four months without paying a dime.

You see, any of these sites or businesses that want to charge you money to monitor your report are just trying to take your money. Really. It can all be done for free. And, it is incredibly simple.

First, you’ll ant to go to the following website. Now, make sure you type it in exactly as you see it below (or copy and paste it) because there are several copycat sites out there with similar addresses.

www.annualcreditreport.com

Now, from there, you’ll have to enter some personal information in order for them to access your file. Once that’s done, I believe they will ask you which credit report that you want. There are actually three different national credit reporting agencies—Trans Union, Experian, and Equifax.

It doesn’t matter which one you access first, just follow the prompts to get one of them. Then, you can either print it or you can have online access to it for thirty days. Personally, I ordered mine first, glanced at it look for any major errors, and went back later when I had more time to look at it in depth and print it off.

You are allowed one free copy of your credit report per year per agency. So now, you simply need to set up a schedule where every four months you go to the site and request a copy of your report from one of the other two agencies.

So, now that you have the system set up, let me go into a little detail of what you need to do with the reports. Obviously, make sure you recognize everything that is there. If this is your first time doing it, and your credit history is less than stellar, I would really go thru it with a fine tooth comb. You’d be surprised at what “small” things on there may be having a big effect on your rating.

After you’ve done that the first time the rest is pretty much maintenance. You are just looking to make sure that all of the information is accurate. Especially, any “negative” information, which it should spell out for you in separate section. Of course, if there is something there that doesn’t belong there, immediately start the process to fix it. The instructions are right there as well and are easy to follow.

For example, I just requested mine for the first time in about a year and for some reason there was one negative item there. I never saw it there before but it was there now. It said that I made a credit card payment late in April of 2003. Well, I researched it and sure enough, I did–by two days!! So, the good news is that it wasn’t a mistake–the bad news is that I will have this on my record until April of 2010 (most things like this will stay there for seven years).

Hopefully, you won’t have any mistakes and you can being to monitor your credit report every four months for absolutely nothing!!

To learn more about improving your personal finances, stay tuned for my soon-to-be-published book, “Don’t Be a Mule-A Common Sense Guide to Saving More, Spending Less and Generating extra Income in Your Everyday Life.”