American Express card members: Free full album download when you sign up for the Entertainment newsletter

There is a new promotion from American Express card for existing card members: Receive a free full album download when you sign up for the Entertainment email newsletter. You have a choice of six artists, Alicia Keys, Barry Manillow, Celine Dion, Kenney Chesney, Aretha Franklin or Carlos Santana.

The offer expires on December 14, 2007. According to the AMEX promotion page, only the following credit cards are eligible to participate:

Gold Card, Gold Rewards Card, Platinum Card®, Centurion® Card, International Dollar Cards, Corporate Platinum Card and the Executive Business Card, Business Gold Card, Business Platinum Card and Business Centurion Card from OPEN, if issued by American Express Travel Related Services Company Inc., American Express Centurion Bank, American Express Bank, FSB, Rewards Green Card, Preferred Rewards Green Card, Green Card, Business Green Card if issued by American Express Travel Related Services Company Inc., American Express Bank, FSB.

The AMEX appointment books are coming back!

You may have seen these for the regular American Express cards, but now they are available in Blue style as well. Blue being the AMEX card that has the name of AMEX Blue.

You can receive the 2008 Blue Appointment Book and 2008 Mini-Scheduler Set free for the first year. Well not totally free through because you pay a shipping and handling charge ($2.79 for the Appointment Book and/or $1.79 for the Mini-Scheduler.

Get two gifts or just one. Enjoy it in style. Stylishly embossed with a hologram, the Appointment Book is 8.5" x 8.5" with silver-edged pages. The Mini-Scheduler has almost the same features and yet at 3.25" x 6.75", it's so small it fits in your pocket.

More details at their website.

July 24 Daily Deal Round up

American Express promotes it's rebooted Membership Express Rewards program. One prominent new feature is actually very useful: Points Advance!. You can take an points advance if you are close to a reward. Then you have a few months to earn those points. If you do not earn them on time, then they will charge you with the purchase of those points. A very fair system in my opinion. They have also added new rewards from Red Lobster, Olive Garden, California Pizza Kitchen. You can also redeem for pre-paid Express Rewards Hotel Cards. Always earn double points in the Bonus Points Mall website.

AAA members don't forget that your membership card can give you instant discounts on a number of restaurants, both local and chains. Check under Dining on the AAA website for a list by city or by zipcode. Also if you select an automatic renewal of your AAA membership you get a one time $5 off discount off your current dues!

Rite Aid has one of the best rebate programs in the country because you can submit everything online, simply by entering numbers from your cash register receipt on their rebate website. Their rebates for the month of July total $500 if you use every single offer in the book (171 offers). Obviously very few people can do that, but they may have some items you will like. For example this week you can get one Fuji T120 VHS tape free after rebate.

Borders Books has sent an email invitation to take an online survey. Survey participants will receive a 30% off any one item coupon with purchase of over $10

Two day sale at Kohls, and free shipping with orders over $75 according to their latest email. Some of the items mentioned in the email: Kitchen Aid Classic Plus Standard Mixer at $190 and Heavy Duty Plus Stand Mixer for $250. They also promote a $20,000 summer giveaway for those visiting their website.

The latest email from Sears is promoting their washers and dryers, with free delivery, an extra 10% off if you buy a washer and dryer together, no interest and no payments for 12 months with purchases over $400 (Sears put the amount requirement in the fineprint instead of the ad, Bad Sears Bad!). They also promote a 32" Samsung LCD HDTV for just $900. It's amazing how much LCD HDTV prices have fallen! Also a Sony DVD player/VCR combo for $90

More chances for college savings at Upromise, with Land's End purchases now earning 5%, Lillian Vernon (you may remember them from the recurring MadTV sketches) at 8%, Nordstrom at 3%, Magazines.com 25% (yes twenty five percent), Overstock 6%, Sears 2%, a flat $12 reward with a new NetFlix membership and a lot more. Visit their website for more details.

For the latest digital camera deals, be sure to visit camera deals

eBay Sellers get 50% picture pack fees. Picture pack gets you up to 12 pictures in your listing slide slow, allows supersize pictures and shows the gallery picture in eBay's search results. Some listings may benefit from it, but certainly it doesn't make sense to use it for everything.

Two Sony items are advertised in the latest CompUSA email, the Sony Reader Electronic Book for $300 (you get $150 worth of eBooks with purchase and registration before 7/31), and the Sony VAIO FZ180E/B notebook computer at $1850 after a mail-in rebate of $150.

For gift card collectors out there, Office Max is adding five new back to school gift card designs.

Universal announces a new 75 original theatrical cartoon collection of Woody Woodpecker and friends

Amazon offers a free 2gb memory card with select digital camera purchase, the TomTom GO 510 GPS for $300, the pink Apple iPod Shuffle for $75, LCD monitors under $200 and a lot more

Now through September 1, 2007 get $30 in reward certificates after your first purchase with your Best Buy card outside of Best Buy stores or BestBuy.com

$50 dining dough dining card with any purchase over $150 at Staples. Be aware though that the dining dough card is a restaurant discount certificate program, it is not a $50 gift card. The way it is presented is misleading for those not familiar with the program. Read the details at diningdough.com

American Express enchances their Rewards program

AMEX has refreshed the look and feel of their rewards program. They are also playing with the name, advertising it as "Membership Rewards Express program". Do expect annoying Flash multimedia eating up computer resources while visiting their website.

Remember now you can get a "points advance" to get the reward you want faster. You have to earn the "advanced points" within a period of time, otherwise Amex will simply charge you for the advanced points at the going rate at the time of the advance. This is a fair and balanced way to implement a points advance program. And a clever one too!

Also Amex is running a double points promo on all purchases that runs through August 31, 2007. Check your mail (snail-mail) for postcards/mail with that promo and also your email inbox for similar offers. From a strategy stand-point this is good, because there are a number of items that you can't get more than 1% rewards with other credit cards. So being able to get 2% on everything (even for a limited time) is a nice way to boost your rewards total!

Free Investment guide from American Express

Free Investment guide from American Express entitled "How to Invest Smarter". If you are in their mailing list, you may have received an email inviting you to request it. This is from Ameriprise Financial, so after you receive the guide, also expect to receive invitations to talk to their professional advisors/managers. (Nothing is really free!)

Some of the things included:

The differences between bonds, mutual funds, annuities, stocks, IRAs and cash reserve investments, and some benefits and drawbacks of each

How to determine your personal tolerance for risk

Why you should always "pay yourself first"

How to make taxes work for you

New Amex Blue TV ad: 0% APR for 15 months!

New American Express Blue credit card ad on TV promoting a 0% APR offer for 15 months, and a free rewards program. As always read the fineprint!

Credit Card Rewards Strategy session

This post will be growing organically.

Here are some suggestions on how to maximize your credit cards rewards:

For grocery, drugstore and gas station purchases, Citibank offers 5% rewards, either in a cash-only rewards program or a rewards program (Thank You Network or Thank You Redemptions or something like that). You can have both type of cards. You can't complain with 5%! There is an annual cap on your total rewards per individual credit card.

Chase has a new creative idea for their Chase Freedom card. They have fifteen (15) categories of purchases. Each month, they calculate your top three categories and give you a 3% reward on those purchases. Everything else earns 1%. The categories are computer-calculated for every statement. You have a choice of rewards or cash. You can switch between the two choices once per month

American Express has special mail-in and email offers to receive double points for purchases until August 31, 2007. This means your Amex Blue or Optima purchases earn 2% instead of 1%. Not bad for things that don't qualify for higher rewards in other cards.

Discover's Get More program offers featured rewards that change every quarter (every three months). These earn you a flat 5% reward on those featured purchases regardless of your regular reward percentage status. The 5% reward has a cap per quarterly promotion

As always with all these, make sure you read the fineprint!

AMEX Rewards Point Advance!

American Express boldy goes where no other credit card rewards programs have gone before. Based on your account history, you can now take rewards points advances so you can get your favorite reward faster. If you do not acrue the advanced points within 12 months, then AMEX will charge you the price of the points at the going rate of the advance. Or something like that. This sounds like a brilliant idea if you are close to getting a reward, or you have special promotion points that may be coming up in a couple of months, but can't wait to get your hands on the reward. Brilliant idea American Express!... As always read the fineprint.