Sharebuilder has some new brokerage account bonuses up. They are:

^$500 for ^$100,000+
^$250 for ^$50,000+
^$150 for ^$25,000+
^$75 for ^$10,000+

You have to keep the assets in your account for at least nine months in order to keep the bonus.

Note also that Etrade is offering $1,000 for $250,000.

If $250,000 is small potatoes for a high roller like yourself, Fidelity will gladly give you $2,500 in exchange for $1,000,000 of your assets under management.

The “Best Brokerage Bonuses” page has been updated, but I’m pasting the entire contents below, because who has time for superfluous clicking in today’s fast-paced world?

DISCLAIMER: I don’t get paid for any of these links. I wish I did, but I don’t. Everything here represents the best offers on the market to the best of my knowledge.

IF YOU HAVE $500: $100 from Sharebuilder IF YOU HAVE $10K: $75 from Sharebuilder… $50 from Merrill

IF YOU HAVE $25K: $150 from Sharebuilder… $100 from TD Ameritrade… $100 from Merrill… $100 from eTrade… 15K miles from United… 15K miles from American… 15K miles from Delta

IF YOU HAVE $50K:  $250 from Sharebuilder… $200 from Schwab… $200 from eTrade… $200 from Fidelity… $150 from Merrill… 25K miles from United… 25K miles from American… 25K miles from Delta

IF YOU HAVE $100K: $500 from Sharebuilder… $500 from eTrade… $300 from Schwab… $300 from TD Ameritrade… $300 from Fidelity…  $250 from Merrill… 50K miles from United… 50K miles from American… 50K miles from Delta

IF YOU HAVE $200K: $600 from Merrill

IF YOU HAVE $250K: $1,000 from ETrade… $600 from Schwab… $600 from TD Ameritrade… $600 from Fidelity

IF YOU HAVE $500K: $1,200 from Fidelity

IF YOU HAVE ONE MILLION DOLLARS: $2,500 from Fidelity

(H/T: Fatwallet Finance)

UPDATE 2: Ends today! Damn you, Best Buy! In other news, the Internet has exploded due to the Slickdeals thread on this deal.

UPDATE: No go! I tried a Best Buy gift card, a Kindle gift card, and a Visa gift card, and none of them would work with the coupon. Other things worked just fine, so as far as I can tell it’s coded not to work with gift cards despite the lack of language saying so. That said, there is still no prohibition I’m aware of against using this multiple times.

ORIGINAL POST: This just showed up in my inbox today:

SAVE $50 WHEN YOU SPEND $100 IN-STORE AT BEST BUY AND PAY WITH ANY MASTERCARD.

I’ve read the fine print several times and there are two exclusions I can’t find anywhere:

1. There is NO exclusion on gift cards.
2. There is NO limit to the number of times you can use this coupon.

Best Buy opens at 10 am, and I will be there right at 10 am to investigate. More details to come…

A couple of our regular reads recently put up some interesting information on quantifying exactly what loyalty program benefits are worth. To begin, View From The Wing had a go at gauging the value of hotel loyalty programs, specifically Hyatt. Here’s his calculation:

In other words, an outlay of seven grand gets you another five grand in benefits if you make use of the loyalty benefits.

Since we just spent two weeks in a Hilton, we’re very keen on the free breakfast perk–it’s a great benefit for Hilton Gold members, and you can get gold status free or cheap with either the Amex Surpass or the Citi Hilton Reserve. In our case, we fed four people for fourteen days, let’s say $30 per breakfast total–that’s over $400 in perks, and we haven’t even mentioned the executive lounge food they had every evening. So yes, you can do well at the high tiers if you’re a consultant spending 100 nights on the road every year… AND you can also do well (not quite as well, but still pretty well) if you’re somebody who travels rarely.

Next up is Frugal Travel Guy, who took a stab at figuring out how much frequent flyer programs are worth. He considered United, American, and Delta:

A couple of observations. First, note that if you’re flying coach, frequent flyer miles are worth a lot closer to one cent than two or three cents. The travel blog industry loves to talk about getting two or more cents of value from each mile, and we don’t doubt that they do… but traveling first class isn’t always the best way to go for everyone. That’s why we love the British Airways Avios program–we have no problem getting two or more cents per mile on coach flights within the United States.

The other observation is that Delta Skymiles live up to their Skypesos nickname. Although we should point out that we recently redeemed some skymiles toward a ticket using the “pay with points” option: that allows you to redeem your miles at the rate of one point per cent toward the purchase of a ticket, which does make them a little easier to use.

If you find any of this confusing, be careful reading our next item from Points, Miles, and Martinis. Here is how American Airlines’s frequent flyer redemption program works:

ONE WAY TRIP FROM HAWAII TO LOS ANGELES: 22,000 miles.

ONE WAY TRIP FROM LOS ANGELES TO BERLIN: 30,000 miles.

ONE WAY TRIP FROM LOS ANGELES COMBINED PLUS A ONE WAY TRIP TO BERLIN BOOKED A FEW MONTHS LATER AS PART OF THE SAME FREQUENT FLYER REDEMPTION: 20,000 miles.

And if that makes sense to you, you’re either a travel blog writer or an American Airlines employee. The reason has something to do with it being a trip to Europe which originates in the offseason (April). Read the post and the comments if any of this piques your interest.

NEW YEARS ARE ALWAYS HAPPY: The new year is a time of hope, renewal… and new financial marketing initiatives as bank budgets are freed up! You can see if you’re eligible for any freebies from B of A (aka FIA Card Services) by going to their Easy Rewards site and trying out all your cards–even if you didn’t get anything in the mail from them. Click “Don’t have one” when it asks you for your promo code, and then fill in the requested information. There’s also a Bank of America site to check as well. (FIA is legacy MBNA and is part of B of A. Some cards are issued by FIA, others by B of A.)

The PFD household received an offer for a $15 giftcard for, in marketingspeak, “using your new FIA Card Services credit card for monthly bills”. When we read the fine print closely, we saw that all we have to do is to make one purchase from a cable, phone, internet, or insurance company. In other words, we can send one dollar via credit card to our cable company and we’re good to go. Done!

Citibank also sent out a bunch of emails today. Our offer from Citibank: “Earn 5 ThankYou Points per $1 spent on retail purchases at electronics and computer, clothing and accessory, toy and department stores. Earn up to 2,500 additional points, through 03/31/13.” Okay, Citi, if you insist!

Note that an electronics promotion is great to combine with a Best Buy promotion: the electronics retailer occasionally offers double points if you spend over $500. Their rewards program normally gives you 2%, so double would be 4%, plus you’d get 5% from Citi, so that’s 9% total. They sell Amazon gift cards and phone cards, so stacking those two promotions is a good way to stock up if you need those.

Various posters on Fatwallet reported getting 5% other categories, including gas, grocery, drugstore, and travel. There was even one report of a 10% offer. If you didn’t get an email from Citi, you can always log in to their website and go to “Benefits and Services –> Limited Time Offers” to check.

And remember: always sign up for emails and mail from your bank! You never know what they’re going to offer you.

TURBOTAX REMINDER: Since tax forms are starting to trickle in, we wanted to remind you that you can get TurboTax for free by opening an account with State Farm. We previously reported that the minimum balance required is $100, but apparently it’s actually $25. We opened our $25 account last night and are currently waiting, as the process apparently takes about a week. If you’re going to do this, open your account now so you’re ready for those W-2s! As an added bonus, you can fund your account opening with a credit card (up to $100).