Chase New Account Bonus: Freedom+Checking+Savings

I didn't do much research in credit cards and bank accounts when opening my first credit card and bank accounts in US, and I'm a bit regretting it now. There are some really good credit cards out there with decent bonus and cash back, as well as checking and savings accounts that offer cash bonus when opening the account, which literally gives you cash for free.

The credit card I'm most interested in right now is Chase Freedom. It gives you $150 after $500 purchases in first 3 months, which is a quite reasonable consumption to me. It offers 5% cash back in bonus categories that change every quarter and 1% cash back on unlimited purchase. Sometimes the cash back doubles if it's on promotion with certain retailers. This year it gives 10% cash back on Amazon purchases in the end of the year. I know Chase Freedom is definitely not a card with the highest rewards, but what I really like about it is that all the rewards it offers are pretty easy to get and it doesn't have annual fee, so you really don't need to worry about anything after getting the card. Considering the extremely low maintenance effort and cost, the gain is quite good.

Chase also offers cash bonus for opening checking and savings account, which is also easy money to get.
$300 when opening a new Chase Total Checking account and set up direct deposit;
$200 when opening a new Chase Savings account and deposit $10,000 for 3 months.
Even though there's a $10k deposit requirement in getting the savings account bonus, it's still a good deal, because this is like earning $200 interest from $10k in 3 months, which is equivalent to 8% APY, the highest APY I've ever seen!

However, this $500 total bonus is only available to targeted customers. The public bonus is much less. It is reported that getting a Chase credit card will increase your chance of being targeted.

Online Broker for Personal Stock Trading

I've graduated for half a year now and have a little savings. I don't want my money to just sit there in the bank account and depreciate. What a waste! I'd rather lose in a battle than hide in the shadow :) Given that recently the stock prices of quite a few tech companies are increasing steadily, I decide to invest in stock market (AGAIN! But first time for US stocks.)

First thing first, I need to choose a broker in order to trade stocks. I've done some research on several popular brokers, including TradeKing, E*trade, Scottrade, Ameritrade and others, and TradeKing really stands out of the crowd with its highly discounted commission fee ($4.95 per trade) and great promotion offers that can be easily obtained without funding a huge amount of money. Most other popular brokers have a commission fee that's twice the amount of TradeKing's, and their promotion offers tend to be in favor of those with high net worth (>200k).

I wouldn't say that TradeKing is absolutely better than others, and I believe each broker has its own advantages, but it seems to be the most appropriate one for me among all those I've researched. If you are an individual investor with a small amount to invest like me, I will highly recommend TradeKing.

Register via my referral link to get an additional $50 cash bonus when opening an account!