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Here’s the skinny:  Amex will give you a $100 Amex statement credit if you use your registered American Express Business card to pay at least $100 to DirecTV.  Don’t have DirecTV but do have an American Express Business card?  You still might wanna register.  More on that in a bit.

Step 1:  Register your Amex Biz card(s) here by January 31st.  You can register employee cards as well.  I registered my Amex Business card and two employee cards on that account.  Payments can be made through March 31st but you have to register all your cards by January 31st.

Step 2:  Use your registered card(s) to pay $100 on your bill.  I already pay my DirecTV bill automatically with a different credit card.  So I simply signed into my account at DirecTV.com and made a one-time payment with my registered Amex Biz card.  The $100 Amex statement credit showed up two days later.  See below.

You can only get the $100 statement credit once per registered card.  I don’t know what would happen if you try to prepay more than $100 in advance ($100 per registered card).  If you try, let us know!  As for me, I am going to use a different registered card to pay $100 in January, February and March.  That’s $300 free, baby!

What if you have an Amex Biz card but don’t have DirecTV?
Register your Amex Biz card and pay $100 to your friend’s bill.  You break even, but your friend saves $100!  Maybe your friend splits it with you and kicks you back $50.  That’s a savings for him and a little something for the effort, Lama.  Gunga galunga.

There may still be time to get an Amex Biz card to signup for this promotion.  Click on Chip’s Favorite Credit Card Offers and then “Business Credit Cards”.  Remember to sign up for authorized user cards for your employees during the application process.  Once approved, you can call them to ask Amex to expedite the shipping. 

Do you have a bank account or credit card that you don’t use much, or at all anymore?  The banks may come to the conclusion that you have abandoned your accounts and will close them on you if you don’t play with them once in a while.

If you let your bank account go dormant, then you’ll have to chase down your money in banking’s Lost and Found Department aka the Unclaimed Funds I wrote about here.  If you let a credit card go dormant, you will hurt your credit score.

To avoid this, every January I do two things:

1. I sign in to all my bank accounts online. I have found this keeps my visitation privileges. Why don’t I just close an account if I don’t use it much? Banks have promotions all the time offering a higher interest rate on new deposits. Since I already have the account open, it is just a matter of a couple clicks to start collecting a higher rate. A few months ago, UFB Direct did that exact thing.  I wrote about it here.  I moved my money and increased my interest 56%.
2. I take my credit cards on a field trip to the gas station. I charge $2 on each card. A couple days later, I sign into each card’s account online and pay it off from my linked bank account. Why TWO BUCKS? Some of my cards are free versions of airline frequent flyer mile cards. They give me one mile for every two dollars I spend. Not only does this put activity on my cards, but it also refreshes my frequent flyer mile expiration dates. Pretty handy!

Instead of the gas station, you could go to the self-checkout at a grocery store and load up on Dinty Moore Mystery Meat Pot Pies.  Another option: stay in your PJs and get Amazon eGift cards for yourself.  Amazon eGift cards show up in your email moments after you buy them.  Use the code on the eGift card to load that money onto your

I kick off every New Year by grabbing a free credit report.  That explains my joie de vivre.

AnnualCreditReport.com is actually free, unlike FreeCreditReport.com which costs almost $200/year.  As I say in my video below, what’s next?  A Free Lexus for $30,000?  An ALL cotton shirt made of 100% polyester?  Vegetarian chili…with Chicken!??? It don’t make no sense.

Anywho, AnnualCreditReport.com is the result of 2003 federal legislation.  It gives you one completely free credit report annually from each of The Big 3 credit bureaus:  TransUnion, Experian, and EquiFax.  You can pull all three reports at once, or space ‘em out.  I pull one every few months to make sure everything’s kosher.

Using annualcreditreport.com does not affect your credit score.  Because it’s YOU pulling your own credit report, it does not count as a credit inquiry.

So go ahead, live it up!  If you see something hinky on there, read this post to see how to fix it.  I strongly suggest you print out each full report to a PDF so you can easily reference it later.  If you don’t have that capability already, you can download free PDFCreator here.

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to get your finances under control, what is your nut?  Your “nut” is your financial obligations (how much your bills are).

If you make a lot of money, and don’t have any debt, you may not care what your nut is.  Otherwise, you might wanna take a few minutes to figure out your monthly nut.  Knowing your nut will give you peace of mind.

When I was a couple years out of college, working at a bank, I told my co-worker that I could not save any money.  She suggested stealing from the teller’s drawer.  That’s not true.  She suggested I start by socking away $25/week.  I said, “I don’t even have that!”

Well, I was being a jackass.  I never sat down to figure out my nut so I would know how much I could save and splurge.  Instead, I simply whipped out my credit card, spent frivolously and then whined about being broke.

You don’t have to suffer through the same foolishness of youth.  So… what’s your nut?

Kiplinger has a pretty good online calculator/worksheet to help you figure it out.  That info can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet if that’s your jam.  Mmm… jam.  If you prefer to put pencil to paper, I’ll get you started with some monthly expense categories at the bottom of this post.

For expenses that fluctuate monthly (water, electric, gas, heating oil, trash, mobile phone, etc.) I suggest that you access your accounts online or go to your checkbook register.  Of course, if you are like me and use Quicken for PC or Mac (see my Quicken review), you can access that info in seconds.  Total the past 12 months and then divide by 12 to get the average monthly expense.  Don’t forget to get a monthly average of your annual or semi-annual expenses (property taxes, insurances) as well.

American Express’ VERY GENEROUS Small Business Saturday promotion is happening right now – November 29th. If you have already registered your cards, remember, they have juiced the prize! You can get up to three $10 statement credits per registered card.

I really like this promotion because it is a win-win for small businesses and consumers. Basically, Amex is buying you something at your local businesses.

Check out the map of participating shops at ShopSmall.com.  Get all the nitty-gritty here. Spend $10 or more in a single, in-store transaction at a qualifying small business location on Saturday, November 29, 2014. Do that three times per card for three $10 credits.

If you don’t have time to shop the Mom & Pops

Do what I do. Walk into your favorite participating restaurant that has gift cards. Have them charge each of your registered Amex cards three times for $10 per transaction. Total up the transactions and have them throw it on one gift card for future use.

You give business to the businesses – AND YOU GET FREE STUFF. It’s a win-win!