Bookmarked: Carnivals, Links, and More - May 07
It has been a very busy week for me, but I did find time to participate in my first two carnivals ever, as well as continue to enjoy reading other blogger’s posts and contributions.
Carnival of Personal Finance
Kimberly Palmer over at US News & World Report’s Alpha Consumer blog hosted the 151st Carnival of Personal Finance this Monday, and I was lucky enough to have my post “Keeping Track of Rebates and Promotions (Remember the Milk)” included in the list. Thanks to Kimberly for hosting this week!
Festival of Frugality
Dawn over at Frugal for Life hosted the 124th Festival of Frugality (”The Name Edition”), and I was honored to have one of my posts included — “Avoiding Airline Fees“. Again, thanks to Dawn for taking the time to host the festival this week!
What I Have Been Reading
I have been considering doing a mini-road trip at some point this summer, and with talk of “How Gas Prices Will Ruin Your Summer” (ABC News), the issue of gas prices has been on my mind quite a bit lately. Naturally, this subject has been getting quite a bit of discussion lately, and I found two blog posts in particular interesting: Ron over at The Wisdom Journal’s entry on “10 Simple Behavioral Changes That Save Gas” and DR over at The Dough Roller’s entry on “25 Ways to Save Money on Gas“. Both posts offer some very useful tips that I plan to keep in mind.
On the subject of protecting yourself when making large purchases, Money Blue Book has a useful post on how to “Get A Free Extended Warranty By Purchasing with a Credit Card” — extended warranty protection is something that I always knew some credit cards had, but had never really bothered to investigate. Turns out that among my cards, the Citi mtvU card has the Visa extended warranty protection, which means that I can continue to use the card for the effective 5% back at Amazon and receive extended warranty protection.
Of course, even with extended warranty protection, sometimes you just want to get rid of the thing, which is why I enjoyed learning more about what happens when Buying and Returning Heavy, Expensive Products on Amazon over at Clever Dude. His experience makes me more comfortable purchasing large items online at Amazon.
The Outrageous Cost of Movie Tickets
Last Friday, for the first time in a long while, I went and saw a new movie in theaters (Ironman, which was definitely an entertaining, if not lighthearted, movie), and I was somewhat shocked at the amount of money simply buying a ticket cost – $10.75 for an adult ticket, with no student ticket option, and that was before any sort of concessions.
Now, I realize that ticket prices are inevitably going to creep up, if for no other reason than inflation — looking at Box Office Mojo’s list of ticket prices by year adjusted for inflation helps illustrate the extent of this creep, though (As an aside, if you are interested in the economics of movie theaters, you might want to check out a pretty interesting article from Slate, “The Popcorn Palace Economy” by Edward Jay Epstein). Since 2000, ticket prices have gone up a little over 25%, to a current estimated average price of $6.88 for the year. That is a pretty significant increase in price. What can we do?
Do you need to see it in the theater?
The obvious way to save money on movie theater tickets is to simply not go. Over at the Get Rich Slowly blog, Kevin at No Debt Plan recently had a post “Dumb Money: The Movie Theater,” assailing the movie theater experience as largely a waste of money (as opposed to seeing movies at home), listing a variety of ways where movie going is an inconvenient and sometimes unpleasant experience.
If you’re willing to forgo the theater experience for your own living room, its not hard to see how microwaving your own popcorn and loading a DVD can save money. Some tips for saving while renting:
- If you watch movies often, give Netflix a try. I have been a subscriber for years, and have nothing but positive experiences. I stick with the 1 DVD at-a-time for $8.99 a month plan (so for the price of one movie ticket, you can get a good four or five movies a month).
- If you don’t watch movies often, check your public library. My public library offers movie rentals for only a dollar or two. While the selections are often limited, libraries are often quite receptive to suggestions for new acquisitions. (Better yet, you could read a book…)
- You can also check out Redbox, the new DVD kiosk service, which offers DVDs for $1 a night. The kiosks aren’t everywhere, and they often have a limited selection, but for new releases Redbox is a great option. Plus, with creative Google searches, you can often find coupons for free rentals.
- Try to avoid renting from major chains - at my local Blockbuster, it costs almost $5 to rent a movie, which is simply absurd. Try to find a local family-owned rental store, which often have cheaper prices and much better service.
Coincidentally, Mike over at Living the Frugal Life recently posted “Never pay to rent a movie again“, which has a much more extensive list focusing on getting free movies (one recommendation that Mike didn’t include - Hulu.com, which now includes some free movies in addition to their growing selection of free television shows).
If you need to see it in theaters…
While I understand and appreciate the arguments for avoiding movie theaters, sometimes it is just too hard to resist seeing a new movie in theaters, especially one that is generating a lot of buzz and excitement — it is never fun to be culturally out of the loop (I fully plan on seeing Indiana Jones 4 in theaters, for example). Plus, there is something to be said for the movie experience. So, if you absolutely must see a movie in theaters, here are some cost-saving steps that can help mitigate the blow from ticket prices:
- Learn when tickets are discounted - many movie theaters still have some sort of matinee discount (often for shows before 5:00 or 6:00 PM), student discounts, or senior citizen discounts. Matinee discounts vary by theater, so its best to try to find out in advance.
- Check if your theater chain has a rewards program - Some theaters offer rewards like free popcorn or movie tickets for frequent patronage. AMC Theaters, for example, has the free MovieWatcher program — over the years I’ve earned several free tickets and concessions.
- Use a credit card that rewards movie theater ticket purchases - Even 1% back on a normal rewards card can help, but certain cards are better than others for entertainment purchases. For students in particular, I highly recommend the Citi mtvU card, which offers (effectively) 5% back at movie theaters (in addition to restaurants and bookstores).
- Go to the theater on a full stomach - if you eat dinner or a snack beforehand, you’ll be less inclined to need to purchase concessions at the movie theater.
- Order less: no ice and sharing popcorn - If you do have to order food, consider sharing popcorn rather than ordering individual bags. If you need to get a drink, get a small and ask for no ice — without the ice, its almost the same amount of soda as the next size up, and its not like your drink will get cold in during the two hour movie!
- Resist the upsell - Again, if you absolutely must order concessions, decide what size you are going to get (small!) before reaching the front of the line, and hold firm — do you really need a large instead of a medium for an extra 50 cents?
- Buy discount tickets in advance - This is probably one of the best ways to save money on movie tickets if you can plan ahead. I’ve seen these discounts offered all over the place — from the Entertainment Book, the AAA group, a building concierge, random websites, etc. I often order these through the Entertainment book website. Most of these offers allow you to order several tickets in advance for theater chains like AMC, Cinemark, National Amusements, Regal Cinemas, Loews, etc. Using this method, you can often get tickets for $5-$7 - saving somewhere around $3! (Note that these often cannot be used for opening week, for example. Check restrictions before buying!).
Finally, it helps to be aware of promotions that movie theaters sometimes are running. For example:
- AMC Theaters offers its “A.M.Cinema” program, where on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays before noon, you can watch new movies for under $6.00.
- Both Cinemark and AMC Theaters offer children movies at dirt cheap prices at certain times over the summer. Cinemark’s Summer Movie Clubhouse offers ten weeks of kids films weekday mornings changing every week for $1 a movie or $5 for all ten. AMC’s Summer Movie Camp offers $1.00 movies every Wednesday at 10 a.m. this summer.
Anyone else have any tips for dealing with the high cost of movies?
Free Museum Admission (Bank of America)
This is a nice deal for those that have Bank of America ATM, debit, or credit card — Bank of America has brought back and significantly altered its “Museums on Us” program that provides free access to selected museums nationwide.
On the first weekend of every month Bank of America cardholders can gain free admission to some 70 museums across the country simply by showing a BoA card. From the Bank of America press release:
“Participants in the program range from some of the nation’s largest institutions — such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago — to a number of regional cultural institutions”
In the past, this was a one-month promotion that provided free admission during the month of May to selected museums in the Northeastern United States. This year, they have a much larger list of museums nationwide, however, the offer is only good on the first weekend of the month. Also note that the free admission is only for the cardholder.
However, free is always good. More information on the promotion can be found at the Museums on Us promotion page.
Keeping Track of Rebates and Promotions (Remember the Milk)
Despite their negative reputation, mail-in rebates and similar promotions have the potential for being very lucrative and rewarding. The key to rebate success is not a secret, although a lot of people certainly have problems following it: pay attention to the details. This includes reading the fine print, following through with all terms and conditions, documenting your submission, and following up — all well covered territory (see “13 Ways to Track Down Wayward Rebates” at MSNBC’s Red Tape Chronicles, for example).
The hard part for me, though, has always been staying on top of promotions once they have been submitted. Invariably every now and then rebates and promotions fail to come through. Regardless of whether you take the optimistic outlook (mistakes happen) or the cynical outlook (companies purposely denying valid rebates hoping you’ll forget), the bottom line is that you will need to often times track and follow-up your rebates and promotions.
Enter “Remember The Milk”
I have recently begun using the web-based (and free) task manager “Remember the Milk” to keep track of things that I need to do. Remember the Milk is essentially a high-tech “To-Do” list, allowing you to keep track of tasks in a simple and fast method; it includes the ability to categorize, tag, and prioritize tasks, set due dates, schedule reminders, and more. Over at Lifehacker, they have pretty much fallen in love with Remember the Milk, and have a very helpful and highly recommended beginners guide to “Get Organized with Remember the Milk.”
Using “RTM” to Manage Rebates and Promotions
Remember the Milk is an amazing task manager, but it can also be particularly useful for staying on top of the details of rebates and promotions. Here’s my system:
- Create a “List” for Rebates and Promotions - In RTM, you can do this by going to Settings, then Lists. Creating a list just for promotions allows you to keep these items separate and isolated.
- As soon as you decide to participate in a rebate or promotion, create a task for the promotion. RTM allows you to include quite a bit of information on the task, so make use of it! I usually include: a title like “$20 - Norton Antivirus Rebate” that describes the reward and from where its coming, the due date for submitting or completing the promotion, and notes with information on the promotion — such as a copy/paste of the rules, a link to the promotion online, or even the file location where I’ve saved a copy of the rules on my computer. For purchases made online, I may include a copy of the receipt as a note.
Any tasks in my “Promotions” list during this stage are meant to help me make sure I complete specific requirements for the promotion. For rebates, this is often a quick process (fill out form, copy receipt, copy UPC code, etc.). This is more useful for complicated promotions, though. For example, Delta Airlines recently had a promotion where they offered bonus miles for every five partner activities, and I used RTM to keep track of my partner activity progress towards the requirements. - Once you complete the promotion, immediately update the task in RTM. For me, this usually means two steps: (1) updating the due date to reflect when I should expect the reward to arrive (such as 8-10 weeks), and (2) adding a note that includes when I submitted the rebate, where I can find supporting documentation (i.e. in my physical “rebates” folder in my desk, or virtual “rebates” folder on my computer), and (most importantly) who I can contact for support.
- Sit back and wait, and watch for any updates. Frequently rebate companies will send you some sort of tracking number for your rebate or updates you on the process — when I get these updates, I immediately add them as a new note to the task in RTM. In this way, each promotion in RTM becomes a sort of mini-portfolio folder including information on when I submitted and any update information I received.
- When you successfully receive a rebate, mark it as completed in RTM.
- The most useful part of RTM is that it will present your promotions in order of their due dates – so you always know what promotions have deadlines coming up or when to expect payment. It also gives you an easy and straightforward way of seeing what rebates and promotions you have outstanding and that need to be followed-up on. When a task becomes overdue, RTM will show it at the top in bold, and you’ll know you need to act.
- If you run into problems with a rebate, you can use the information attached to the task in RTM to follow-up with the rebate or promotion organizer. RTM adds a time stamp to all the notes you add, so you’ll have a clear record of when you sent things, and where you can find supporting documentation. Note: Often times when you follow-up, rebate companies will process your rebate but tell you to expect it to take another month or two — don’t forget to update with the new expected arrival date!
Having used these steps for a few months now, I can say that it has drastically improved both my organization and my promotion yield — I’m batting almost 100% for successful promotions. I should also add that you could use a similar system in Microsoft Outlook or a similar task manager, but Remember the Milk seems to provide a sleek, elegant, and easy-to-use interface.
Avoiding Airline Fees
I hate annoying fees. Which is why I was not thrilled this morning to read that effective May 12, American Airlines is charging a $25 fee for checking a second bag in most cases (excluding international travel). That makes them at least the eighth carrier to make such a change. Alaska, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways have all announced similar $25 second-bag fees. Even low-cost carrier JetBlue has announced a $20 fee for second checked bag.
When I travel, I rarely check a bag — it does not matter if I’m going on a one-day trip or a two-week trip, I can usually fit everything into my carry-on bag. Unfortunately, the only time I can’t avoid checking a bag is when I’m moving in and out from school for an extended period of time (summer), when I easily fill two bags to capacity. This means that now, in addition to trying to stay under American’s 50 lb limit, I’ll have to give careful consideration as to whether or not I’m willing to pay for an extra bag — $50 round trip.
Unfortunately, with soaring fuel costs and airlines filing for bankruptcy left-and-right (R.I.P. ATA, SkyBus, Aloha, Eos…), these added fees are becoming a common occurrence. Just last month, Delta raised or added fees for an astonishing ten different categories. Its becoming increasingly important to be aware of the changing fees when flying so that you don’t get caught at the airport.
6 Steps to Avoid Fees
- Always purchase from the airline directly if possible (up to $10 saved). Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz are great resources for comparing airfare — however, all three charge service fees for buying tickets through them that can range from $5 to $10 a ticket. You can usually avoid this fee if you book through the airline directly. If the itinerary is all on one airline, the airline often, if not usually, will have an equal or better price. Does your itinerary have multiple airlines? Sometimes you can still book through an airline by selecting an “All airlines” search.
- Always purchase over the internet from the airline ($10 or more saved). Most airlines are now charging fees for booking travel over the phone or at ticket counters at airports. Simply purchasing online from the carrier can avoid that fee.
- Check-In Inside ($2 or more saved). Or, better yet, check-in at a Self-Check In Kiosk. Just don’t use a skycap — several airlines now charge for curbside check-in on a per-bag basis.
- Know Your Airline’s Baggage Rules ($25, $50, or more saved). This is the big one that gets most people, and it doesn’t help that the rules are constantly changing. You need to know three different types of restrictions — limits on the number of bags, size of bags, and weight of bags.
- Number of Bags - As mentioned, the big news now is that most airlines are charging for a second checked bag. The going rate seems to be $25 each way. Some will still let you have a third bag, but that will cost you even more.
- Weight of Bag - The standard baggage limit for legacy carriers — American, United, and Delta, at least — seems to be 50 pounds, which is a surprisingly easy weight to hit, especially when you’re trying to avoid the last fee. Go over the 50 lb limit on Delta, and that will cost you $80 each way. Go over it on United, and they’d like a $100 for that 52-pound bag.
- Size of the Bag - This is a less common problem, but most carriers also limit the size of the bag. If you’re using a normal piece of luggage, you shouldn’t have a problem, but its worth checking.
It is hard to stress how quickly these fees can add up, especially given that they apply each way. On Delta, now, if you bring a third bag that weights fifty-one pounds and is oversize, round trip, those fees can add up to $610.
- Know Your Carrier’s Food Policy. Or Don’t Fly Hungry ($5 or more saved) - Only a few airlines even offer snack service these days in domestic coach (Continental being a notable example with coach meals on some domestic flights) — if you’re the type that is going to get hungry, plan ahead. Most airlines are more than happy to give you some food — but for a price. You’ll cringe when you pay $3 for a candy bar on American.
Airport food is usually slightly cheaper than airplane food, but for the best value — and most healthy meal — bring it from home. Over at the Beat of Hawaii and Beyond blog, there is a very informative piece on “How To Eat Well At 30,000 Feet” that talks about how to prepare a meal for a flight.
- Know Your Change Options - Unfortunately, on most airlines, changing airline plans can be expensive after ticketing. On United, to confirm a change in advance will now cost you $150. However, these policies are not uniform and some are quite generous. On Southwest, they won’t charge you a change penalty, just the change in price (you may even get a refund if its cheaper). On American, they’ll let you make a same-day change to an earlier or later flight for $25. Even more useful on American, though, is that on most domestic fares you can standby at the airport for free same-day for an earlier flight — if there is room on an earlier flight, they’ll put you on for free.
No one likes being hit with extra fees, but with a little planning you can work to avoid them.
Anyone else have any tips for avoiding airline fees?
End of Year: The Textbook Dilemma
One of the inevitable tasks at the end of a school year is what exactly to do with textbooks. As any one who has had the pleasure of attending college recently can attest, these books are not cheap — I cringe when I think about how much I spend each semester — which makes the problem of what to do with them all the more difficult. Over time, though, I have started to figure out a system that works for me.
Sending Books Home
The first step I always take is to identify which books I might want to keep for the future. I have never found much use in keeping old textbooks with me at school — all they do is take up valuable space — so I generally pack up and ship home any books that I want to keep.
Unfortunately, textbooks are often quite heavy, which is never a good thing when shipping. Thankfully, the US Postal Service provides a special shipping rate for boxes that contain books and media only, called Media Mail shipping. It is not the fastest shipping method, but gets the job done — to ship a five pound book across the country from New York to LA, for example, would cost a little under eleven dollars using the normal parcel post, but only three and a half dollars using Media Mail.
Selling the Rest
That is usually the easy part — the hard part is dealing with the books I no longer want. I quickly learned that selling back to the campus bookstore is a terrible deal. So instead, I have generally been selling them on the internet.
Despite my initial concerns, It is actually remarkably simple to sell used textbooks online. There are lots of websites out there in this field (just try searching Google for “sell used textbooks“), but I generally stick with Half.com, which is a part of Ebay. With Half.com, the process usually goes something like this after registering:
- Select “Sell your stuff” and enter the ISBN number for the textbook
- Fill out the quality information and description, set a price, and list it for sale.
- Wait to be notified that you have a sale
Once you make a sale, you need to mail the book fairly quickly; Half.com provides you a small payment to cover shipping costs on-top of your sale price. For each transaction, Half.com takes a small commission for itself, and then the rest of your earnings are held in your account, and soon thereafter are direct deposited into your bank account. It all is very straightforward, and I have had nothing but pleasant experiences as both a buyer and seller on Half.com
Just a quick note on pricing: one of the nice things about Half.com is you get to see the range of prices at which other sellers are offering your book. Not surprisingly, the cheapest copies are what people gravitate towards, and as a result I generally will be fairly aggressively in listing my textbooks at the lower end of the price range. It may not maximize my return, but it usually results in a quicker sale.
Read more
Ryanair Airport Check-In Refund
File this under the “annoying” category. While in Europe last month, I flew a quick leg on Ryanair — one of Europe’s low-cost carriers that provides dirt cheap airfare and tries to get you by charging for everything extra they can. Ryanair also pushes you to use web check-in; if you check-in at the counter, they make you pay a check-in fee. What is annoying, though, is that if you don’t have an EU/EEA passport, you have to check-in at the airport, and thus have to pay the check-in fee. At Stansted, that fee was 3 GBP.
On the help section of their website, though, they have this section: “Where a passenger is unable to avail of Online Check-in by reason only of not being the holder of either a valid passport or a National Identity Card, issued by the government of an EU/EEA country, any airport check-in fee paid will be refunded upon application.” So, from that, due to my US passport, I should be entitled to a check-in fee refund of the 3 GBP. Of course, Ryanair provides absolutely no information on how to do this on their website.
Luckily, there is the internet, which led me to the post “WARNING: RyanAir Online Checkin” over at Less Than a Shoestring who managed to figure all of this out. Apparently, to request the refund, you need to write to them with your name, flight details, and confirmation number to:
Ryanair Refunds Dept
Ryanair Head Office
Dublin Airport
Co Dublin, Ireland
Yes, that’s right, you actually have to write in, which just makes this process even more annoying. So if you’re going to write to get the fee refunded, its probably a good idea to mail it while you’re in Europe. From the United States, it cost my ninety cents to mail the request to Dublin.
Ryanair will reply to your letter at the email address you used to book the ticket (so while I have to pay international postage, they don’t respond in kind). Frustratingly, they got back to me telling me that they needed a copy of my passport identification, and that, you guessed it, they would appreciate it if I mailed it to them in Dublin. Now, there was no way I was going to provide them a copy of my passport, but I did send them a heavily censored copy of my identification page that removes most of the private information, which should suffice.
At this point, its pretty much a matter of principle that I am trying to get this fee refunded. The current weak value of the dollar makes this slightly more worthwhile, too — 3 GBP is somewhere around 6 USD right now, so even spending two dollars to get four back seems somewhat worth it. While it probably is not worth getting worked up over a single 3 GBP fee, it almost certainly is worth writing in after a round trip (which would have TWO check-in fees) or several legs.
Bookmarked: What I’ve Found Interesting - April 24
Here are some of the blog posts I have starred in Google Reader in the last week:
- Get Rich Slowly describes “How to Stop Junk Mail in Its Tracks.” A lot of the steps listed have effectively helped me. Unfortunately, I have not yet found an easy way to take care of the worst offender in my mailbox: charities. No joking - during the last year I have received dozens and dozens of those sheets of personalized labels. I now use a template email to send to each charity I receive a solicitation from, and slowly it has gotten better, but there must be a better way…
- Living the Cheap Life asks “Is it worth it to buy an Entertainment book?.” I have to agree with Mike’s conclusion — the Entertainment book is often a good deal if purchased at a steep enough discount. For me, the movie theater discounts and the 5% American Airlines coupon pay for the book.
- Hustler $$$ Blog tells us how to get a “Free DVD Rental every Monday” using the RedBox DVD Kiosk service. I’ve used them before and it was quite a good deal — unfortunately there isn’t one convenient to me, so I’m sticking with Netflix for now. (If you do use RedBox, be sure to check out their credit card skimmer security alert).
- The Digerati Life has a recent article “Coupon Tips and Tricks That Can Cut Your Grocery Bill By 80%” that has a ridiculously long twenty-five coupon tips to lower your grocery bill. Definitely very interesting reading.
- Finally, No Credit Needed presents how “The $100-A-Day-Rule Prevents Impulse Buying.” It is a simple, but very clever, way to try to fight impulse buying and force careful consideration before purchasing.
Why Debit Cards Scare Me
I’ll be honest, debit cards scare me. I know that I am probably in the minority on this; if my close friends are any indication, debit cards are quickly replacing cash as the average student’s primary means of payment, and are perceived as responsible, safe, and easy to use. But while there are certainly benefits to debit cards, compared to credit cards, there are risks, too. What scares me?
Bankrupt Airlines
I cringed the other day when a friend bought an airline ticket home using his Visa Debit Card. Within the last month, Aloha Airlines, ATA Airlines, and Skybus have all completely ceased operations. For customers with tickets on those airlines, the airlines themselves gave no refund option — the only advice was that if you purchased using a credit card, you could contact your credit card company for a full refund. Otherwise, out of luck.
If you have the choice, you should always purchase travel arrangements using a credit card. Over at Money Blue Book, Raymond wrote an excellent post recently covering this very topic, “Always Pay By Credit Card to Protect Against Airline Bankruptcy Loss,” which does a very detailed job of explaining how credit cards offer federally-mandated protections that you just don’t get with debit cards. With a credit card, under the Fair Credit Billing Act, you can dispute charges within sixty days for services that were not delivered as agreed to, and get a full refund. With debit cards, you simply don’t have the same protections; some banks may offer more limited debit protections, but these policies are not standardized and are on much more uncertain territory.
These protections, of course, do not just apply to airlines, but also to any transactions where the goods or services weren’t delivered as agreed.
The Blank Check
The other major factor that scares me with debit cards is how they are directly tied to your checking account. Now, many people consider this to be a major positive over credit cards — with debit cards, you pay immediately out of money you currently have. However, consider the danger if you lose the card: the thief has the ability to drain all of the money in your checking account. For me, that is a scary proposition.
Most banks these days try to reassure you with zero liability protections. Bank of America says that it guarantees “reimbursement for fraudulent transactions when reported within 60 days from statement date.” Chase has a similar claim, promising that “your account will be credited by the end of the next business day as we resolve the unauthorized transaction dispute.” What is the problem, then?
The problem is that your money is still taken out of your account to start. Unless you are in the habit of checking your bank account every day, it may take a while to realize that someone has gotten your debit card number. During that time, your account could have been wiped out, and you might be bouncing checks to utilities, having debit card transactions declined for insufficient funds, or not have immediate access to that money in an emergency. Its true that in all likelihood the bank will get you your money back quickly, but you may still have quite a headache to deal with. This is where a credit card comes in handy; you always get to see the final bill before paying it.
Favorite Student Credit Card - Citi mtvU Visa Card
College students spend a lot of money. Friends of mine occasionally ask me what credit card I would recommend, and while it usually makes me cringe to say it, my answer is always the mtvU Platinum Select Visa Card for College Students from Citibank. Despite the annoying name and card design, this card has probably the greatest reward structure for college students, and has been the primary card I have used in college. What makes it special? The card offers rewards for book purchases, restaurants, good grades, and paying your bill on time.
ThankYou Points and the Citi mtvU Card
The mtVU card offers Citi ThankYou points as rewards — you can view the current catalog on the ThankYou Network website, but the best value usually comes from $100 gift cards, student loan rebates, or travel rewards. I plan on covering ThankYou Points in more detail later, but the bottom line is that if you save your points and redeem wisely, you should be able to get about $100 in rewards out of 10,000 points.
You can earn points for a variety of activities, but most significantly it offers 5 ThankYou Points per dollar at restaurants and bookstores — that is effectively a 5% reward on all your textbooks and restauraunt charges, which can be huge for a college student.
- Earn 5 Thank You Points per dollar for purchases at restaurants, fast food joints, bookstores, and selected entertainment categories.
- Earn 1 Thank You Point for every dollar spent on any other category.
- Earn up to 2,000 Thank You Points a semester for maintaining high grades
- Earn 25 Points a month for paying your bill on time (which you should be doing without any incentive!)