AMEX $25 OFF $75 PURCHASE AT AMAZON: Amex is offering its cardholders $25 off a $75 Amazon purchase. There are three ways to sign up for this deal:
- Via their Sync program.
- Via the “Offers For You” tab which you see if you log in and scroll down a bit. For my wife and I, it showed up for some cards but not others.
- Via this link. According to this Fatwallet thread, you can use this link to register authorized user accounts as well as the main account.
Probably the easiest way to work this is to get a $75 egift certificate from Amazon. I bought one and received the “Thank you for using your enrolled card” message a minute or two later.
UNLIMITED 3% CREDIT CARD REWARDS: I’m a little late for this, and it was a short-term deal anyway, but I have a soft spot for obscure credit card deals. Here it is: Mountain America Credit Union is offering triple points on all credit card purchases through December 31.
The offer started November 1, which raises the question: would an uncapped 3x offer for two months be worth a credit card application?
3% CD RATES FROM PENFED: Pentagon Federal Credit Union is offering CD rates of 3% on 5- and 7-year certificates! From DepositAccounts.com:
- 3.04% APY 5-yr and 7-yr (was 2.02%) EWP: up to 365 days
- 2.22% APY 4-yr (was 2.02%) EWP: up to 180 days
- 2.02% APY 3-yr (no change) EWP: up to 180 days
- 1.41% APY 2-yr (was 1.26%) EWP: up to 180 days
- 0.75% APY 1-yr (no change) EWP: up to 180 days
PenFed calls their CDs “Money Market Certificates”, but they are essentially certificates of deposit (CD) with fixed rates for specific terms.
Minimum deposit is $1,000. The rates are also available in an IRA and a Coverdell Education Savings Account. The early withdrawal penalty is up to 180 days of interest for terms from 1 year to 4 years. The penalty is up to 365 days of interest for terms of 5 and 7 years. The penalty doesn’t eat into the principal. For example, if you withdraw principal before 1 year on a 5-year CD, you’ll lose all interest but none of the principal. This feature should come in handy for those who had opened a 2.02% PenFed CD last month and would prefer a 3.04% CD. You should be able to close those CDs without losing any principal. You’ll just lose all interest.
Even though PenFed typically maintains CD rates through the month, they no longer guarantee it. Since this 5-year CD rate is so much higher than the competition, I wouldn’t assume this rate will last for the whole month.
Membership in PenFed is not open to the general public, but you can get in by joining the National Military Family Association.
A BIG VICTORY FOR JUSTICE, PFD: Thanks to reader Harv for sending this along–a few weeks ago, I wrote about Tarik Dehko, a grocer who’d had his money arbitrarily confiscated by the federal government because they didn’t like the way he was depositing it at the bank. Two days after that post appeared, the IRS filed a motion in federal court to dismiss its claim on the $35K it stole from Mr. Dehko. I can’t prove that millions of outraged PFD readers prompted the IRS’s decision, but it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?
“I can’t prove that millions of outraged PFD readers prompted the IRS’s decision, but it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Or it might just be the really good lawyer that recently began representing them (whom I had drinks with tonight, and is a mileage junkie).
Thanks Gary! That may have had something to do with it as well. 😉
Can Gary prove that PFDigest was not responsible for the IRS’s reversal? Where is his proof?
I doubt that very much. Whereas we can prove that PFDigest did write about this and it’s very likely that in doing so saved this family, awesome to see.