As many of you know, I get a kick out of finding ways of generating 'free' money. Thus, I thought it might be fun to tally up what I've been able to come up with over the past year. While I'm not great at keeping records when it comes to some of this stuff, what follows is a rundown of everything that I can recall...

$300 in rewards from the Citi AT&T Universal Card
-- This was helped along by a 5% off all purchases special offer
-- Cashed in as checks from Citi

$300 in rewards from the Citi Dividend Platinum Card
-- As above, this was helped along by a 5% off all purchases special offer
-- Cashed in as checks from Citi

$1000 in rewards from the Citi Driver's Edge Card
-- Once again, this was helped along by a 5% off all purchases promotion
-- We mostly cashed this in when we bought our new car

$45 in Citi Credit Protector enrollment checks
-- 3 checks x $15 each

$90 in Citi Credit Protector retention rebates
-- I got duplicate sets of 5 x $10 rebate coupons, and successfully cashed in all but one of them before they discovered their gaffe

$38.99 from Upromise
-- We really don't go out of our way to generate money through Upromise, but it still adds up

$16.88 from FatWallet FatCash
-- This corresponds to a variety of smallish transactions initiated through their 'CashBack Mall'

This brings the grand total to (drumroll please)... $1790.87! Note that we really haven't gone after account opening bonuses, or those types of things, but we've still done pretty well. As I've noted previously, those credit card rewards were padded by a variety of things, including some pricey orthodontia, as well as a variety of work-related expenses for which I was later reimbursed. All in all, that's not a bad take for very little effort.

--
Please CLICK HERE to read/leave comments on this entry

"Free Money 2005" was first published at fivecentnickel.commortgage calculator