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Many credit unions and banks offer “rewards checking.” This essentially means if you meet basic qualifications with your checking account, you’ll earn a high interest rate. Most of these institutions are for locals only, but some are available nationwide. Currently, the best natinally available interest rate for rewards checking is Founder’s Bank at 5.01%. That’s significantly better than the current interest rate of ING direct.

To earn the high interest rate for a given month,  you must meet monthly qualifications. The qualifications are 12 debit card transations, sign in online at least once a month, and one direct deposit. The direct deposit requirement is easy, especially if money is pushed from your ING, HSBC, etc. online accounts into your Founder’s Bank account. Signing in is a no brainer. But, the 12 debit card transactions means you actually have to use your checking account as the bank intends, instead of your intent to use it as a savings account. I make small purchases on a regular basis in convenient stores, so I can use the debit card there. Another method would be to schedule small payments to yourself via paypal.

So, its not really easy to earn the high interest rate if you don’t intend to use the account, but the dangling carrot of 5% APY is enough to make me jump through some hoops.

Use coupon code “napkin” for 80% off at restaurant.com. Don’t forget fatwallet.com cash back. Try to find a restaurant that gives $25 off a minimum purchase of $35 for the best deal.

Restaurant.com coupon code napkin expires 7/28/09.

As my daily spender, I use the Chase Freedom credit card. It earns me 3% on many of the things I buy most. Without warning, I received two shiny new cards in the mail stating now I have the Chase Exclusives Freedom card. Upon further investigation, I found there is almost no difference between my old chase freedom card and my new one…except the chase exclusives does not report a credit limit – which may hurt your FICO score.

Not all cardholders got the same deal. It seems because I had a Chase checking account, I received the exclusives card. Those that didn’t have a chase checking account got “upgraded” to a version of the card with an annual fee. If people were smart enough to use this card as their daily spender because it offered just about the best benefits around, they’re probably smart enough to change their card or cancel it all together before the annual fee is charged. They have a while to decide to keep the card, however. The annual fee is waived for the first year.

Bank of America is offering $100 to new checking customers. With a minimum opening deposit of $250, you get $75. Then, if you pay two bills within the first 30 days, you get an extra $25. Payment to your account will post within 90 days. Of course, this is a gimmick to get people to sign up, and fall for all their traps to assess fees to your account. For example, the MyAccess Checking Account has a $8.95 monthly maintenance fee unless you use direct deposit into that account (one direct deposit per billing cycle).

So, use ING Direct or Paypal to deposit money into your Bank of America MyAccess checking account once each billing cycle to avoid the fees. a few months later, cancel the account. Next time they offer a similar promotion (you’ll be eligible in another 6 months), repeat the process. With ING Direct, you will need to push the money (initite the deposit from ING’s website) to the Bank of America account. The amount can be quite small, like $1.

Bank bonuses are a wonderful thing for those that know the rules and avoid fees. Everyone that doesn’t understand the rules of the game ends up paying for your bonus. Enjoy your $100 bonus from Bank of America and don’t forget to enter code WIWGASINT. This will likely result in a pull on your credit report. Is the $100 worth it? I think so.

If you’re already using the ‘bumping‘ strategy of pulling your credit report regularly to eliminate hard inquiries, then you may have noticed this process takes a LONG time. It can take three months to see any results from pulling your credit report once a day.

Why not pull several times a day? All it takes is using multiple services to pull your credit score daily, and you can bump your hard inquiries in a fraction of the time. Here is a list of credit monitoring services that allow daily pulls:

• Service…………………………………………………..Pulls from………………………….Cost
• National City Identity Protect ………………..(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$9/month
• Credit Karma ………………………………………(Pulls Trans Union only)………..Free
• Privacy Matters 123 …………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)………………$30/year
• Truecredit ………………………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$15/month

This list is not comprehensive, and is subject to change, but you get the idea, for about $55, you can remove hard inquiries from your credit report in 30 days or less.  Again, this does not work with Experian, but does work with Trans Union and Equifax.

Viva la bumpage.

A few days ago, when I was talking about bumping hard inquiries off your credit report, I mentioned choppage. Choppage is when soft inquiries are cut off of your credit report (usually in a large block). The soft inquiries are good, because they fill the spaces of your hard inquiries. So, you can see why choppage can harm your efforts to bump hard inquiries.

Choppage typically happens when there is a long line of identical pulls on your credit report. So, if you’ve been using national city, like mentioned in the bumpage post, and you have 60 days worth of pulls with nothing in between, your credit file may get chopped.

One potential way to avoid a chopped credit profile (and speed up the bumping process) is to pull from a few sources. CreditKarma pulls Trans Union, you can update daily, and best of all, its free. Truecredit.com allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $15/month. Privacymatters123 allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $30/year.

Probably the best way to avoid choppage is to take a break from pulling your credit report every once in a while.