Do you love the fancy perks from the credit cards? I do. In particular, I love to take advantage of fat cashback offers and 0% APR balance transfer deals. Last year, I explained how an average family can expect $1,000 from credit card rewards without spending like crazy. This year, thanks to the generous (but expired) 5%-reward-on-everything promotion of Citibank's Driver's Edge card, I already received $1,300 from various cards by August.

Now here comes a problem: you will probably have to sign up multiple offers to get four-figure income from the plastics, but if you don't track the promotion periods diligently, you will lose the opportunity to maximize potential rewards. Think about a promotional 5% cashback becomes 1% unnoticed, or a 0% APR promotion suddenly costs you double-figure APY to maintain.

Here comes the rescue. You don't have to create a spreadsheet to keep track of everything. You can leverage your personal finance software like Money or Quicken and here is how to do it easily:

The moment you receive your new card, read the fine prints and find out when the promotion will end (say 12/31/2005). Then, create the account in your Money file, and immediately add a transaction of $0.01 on the expiration date.

Furthermore, if you want to avoid looking around your dozens of accounts and find out the next date to switch your card, make this special transaction a TRANSFER to your daily checking account, and make it look like this:

This way you can always remind yourself when you reconcile your checking account.

With a little more effort, you can even create a customized report in your Money file so you can view all coming deadlines in one screen. How cool is that?