TradeKing $50 bonus for new accounts runs through the end of this month. Online stock brokerage TradeKing is running this promotion for new customers that open a TradeKing account before the end of the month. You’ll get your $50 bonus after you make your first trade.

If you’re already a customer be sure to watch for the refer a friend TradeKing promotion because it’s pretty slick.  You can login to your account and recommend TradeKing to a friend or family member, if they like it and sign up then you both get a bonus.

TradeKing Promotions

Typically they pay you $50 for each referral but during the promotion they give both you and the person you refer $100.  In order to qualify for the TradeKing promotion they have to fund their account and make a trade. 

When I first opened my TradeKing account I didn’t fund it right away, and they sent out an email letting me know about their funding options of ACH, wire transfer, check, and account transfer from another broker.  So if your friends are busy and forget to add money they’ll probably get a reminder email from TradeKing.

In the past, we’ve seen the most TradeKing promotions in the Spring and the Fall so are probably your best chances to take advantage of the sign-up bonus.

TradeKing Service

TradeKing was picked as the best discount online broker by Smart Money magazine for two years in a row (2006 – 2007) and as the best in customer service in 2008. TradeKing also scored well in Barron’s in 2008, earning a 4-star rating and beating brokerages such as E-Trade, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab.

It’s good to see they’re consistent with their emphasis on serving investors, they were named the top online brokerage for customer service in 2010.  Kiplinger’s also featured TradeKing as one of the best online brokers for 2011.  

If you’re curious about what makes TradKing so popular with online stock traders, I did some research and listed below some of the reasons I found that TradeKing gets such high marks:

• Low Trading Costs
  • Smart Order Routing excecutes each trade at best price
  • No extra charge for broker assisted trades
  • Reimburse your commission if they don’t get you best available price
• Educational Resources
  • Webinars
  • Video tutorials
  • Podcasts
• Trading Community
  • Online community of stock traders
• Tools
  • Tax Manager
  • Technical Analysis
  • Detailed research reports
  • Streaming quotes
• Options Trading
  • Option trading strategies (multi-leg chain, strike price, & spread)

TradeKing Education

The cool thing about the educational content at TradeKing is that it’s free and open to all investors, not just members.  They cover the topics you’d expect – stocks, options, ETFs, bonds and mutual funds but you can also tailor the information you’re reading based on your skill and experience investing.  So new investors won’t be tripped up by more advanced topics – and experienced traders can read about higher level strategies for stocks and options without having to wade through introductory info they already know.

Something they’re really proud of, that I haven’t made much use of, is their Trader Network – kind of a social network for investors where you can share experiences, ideas and strategies.  I can say that their webinars are really useful.  They have to read through some mandated disclaimers at the beginning of each webinar but once you get past that first minute or two they cover some pretty useful topics.

TradeKing Mobile

The TradeKing BlackBerry app was a big hit for some of the members.  If you’re like me and don’t have a Blackberry this didn’t do you much good but a while back they did come out with a TradeKing iPhone and iPod touch app.

If you’re not in front of a computer all day like I am then I guess these apps can come in handy. The iPhone app let’s you see your balances & holdings, place orders, and make stock & option trades.  It also has news features where you can read market commentary and news and see quotes and charts.

Both the BlackBerry mobile application and the iPhone version are free, there are no minimum balances or trading activity levels required to use them.

TradeKing Bonus

Back to the sign-up offer. It doesn’t sound as though you’ll be able to get the $50 bonus directly through the TradeKing site. There is no promotion code that I’m aware of, you’ll need to sign up using this link through the end of this month and make a trade to get your $50.

Costco is running a promotion for existing customers – when you apply for the True Earnings American Express Card card or setup your Costco membership to automatically renew on your TrueEarnings card you get two months of free Costco membership.

Our neighbors are Costco members and they use the True Earnings cashback card not just for groceries but also for gas. They save quite a bit filling up at the Costco gas stations, the cash rewards card offers 3% back on gas purchases.

(Update) After seeing how our friends used the wholesale club, my wife and I have became Costco members. Our experience has been that if you can find a few things that are a great savings for you then the membership will pay for itself easily.

Costco Memberships

We actually started out as Gold members and shopped there for a few months to see what kinds of savings we’d see. Once we ran the numbers and saw that an Executive Membership made sense for us financially, we upgraded.  

The reason to start out at the Gold level is that it has the lowest annual fee.  For some people, being a Gold member makes more sense due to the lower fee.  If you’re like us and spend significant amounts at Costco then the cash back you earn as an Executive member can more than make up for the higher annual fee.

American Express Cards

You don’t have to use the True Earnings card to shop at Costco, you can always pay with cash.  But if you want to use a credit card Costco only accepts American Express cards.  We’re a big fan of earning cash back on our purchases so paying by credit card is what we prefer.  We do have a Blue Cash card but if you don’t have any AmEx cards then True Earnings is a good option.

Of course, one thing you have to ask when dealing with cash back cards is how the rewards are paid out.  With the Costco True Earnings card, the cashback you earn is applied to your card automatically, you don’t have to request payment.  Something else people ask about is whether you can use the card to shop on the Costco website.  You can but you don’t automatically have an online account when you become a member – you’ll have to create an account on costco.com before you can use the card to shop online.

Cash Back Rewards & Fees

Although you have to be a member of Costo to be approved for the True Earnings card, you aren’t limited to using it only at Costco. 

You earn cash back anyplace you use the card.  Since most everyone has to buy gas regularly, probably the best deal is the 3% back you get on the first $3,000 of gas purchases.  You earn at the 2% level when you eat out at restaurants, the cash back rates is 2% for travel purchases, and you earn 1% for everything else you put on the card.  One nice thing about the card that not all cash back programs offer is that there’s no limit on the rewards you can earn.

In terms of card costs, there is no fee to become a cardmember.  Once you’re a Costco member you’re eligible to apply for the True Earnings card.  If you’re approved you can actually use the card both to pay and as proof of your Costco membership, you don’t have to carry two different cards.

Click here to sign up for the card and start earning more cash back on your purchases at Costco.

ShareBuilder bonus of $50 for opening a new account and making a trade by the end of next month.  You can setup your ShareBuilder account to make periodic automatic investments for only $4 per trade so the $50 should cover you for a while. (Updated February 2012)

ShareBuilder is offering this bonus for new customers, this promotion is double the previous $25 ShareBuilder offer from last month so it’s a pretty good deal.  Your $50 bonus will be deposited after you make your first trade. 

Investing with ShareBuilder

ShareBuilder is setup to allow you to make regular, small investments into the market without spending a fortune on trading fees.  Since there are no account minimums it’s easy to get started investing right away, even if it’s only a little bit of money.

One nice thing about the service is that although it’s setup to invest a fixed amount regularly, if you find yourself needing the money that month you can cancel that one investment.  Obviously, if you cancel it every month then you’re defeating the purpose of automatic investing but if you have a tight month here and there it’s easy to hold that money back to help pay bills.

The cool thing about ShareBuilder is that on the months when you do invest money, you’re not required to have enough to buy a whole share of stock.  For example, let’s say you put $50 into your ShareBuilder account each month.  If you’re setup to invest in some of the best dividend stocks, like IBM or Chevron, the stock price may be over $100.  Even though you only put in $50, ShareBuilder will allow you to buy partial shares of the stock. 

The nice thing about this approach is that you’re not waiting around to buy shares until you have enough money.  If you’re a fan of dollar cost averaging, you know the principle is that you invest regularly into a stock, mutual fund, or ETF rather than trying to time the market and buy on stock swings.  Since you can regularly put the same amount of money into your account, you’re taking advantage of that concept

ShareBuilder Fees

As I mentioned above, automatic investing is really the sweet spot of ShareBuilder and it helps to keep your fees low, just $4 a trade.  If you want to use the service to occassionally buy and sell stocks outside of your regular investments you can but you’ll pay more for the trade.

If you find yourself regularly buying stocks in addition to your automatic investments if wouldn’t hurt to check out their Advantage plan.  The monthly fee is higher but each additional trade you add over your 12 scheduled investments is only $1 a trade.  It also gives you a cheaper rate for any real-time buying or selling of stocks.

Another nice thing about the Advantage plan is that they offer a two month ShareBuilder free trial when you signup.  So you can use the service and see how you like it before committing to a monthly fee.  Based on other deals from online brokers and services, a two month trial is pretty good.  Most times you’ll get a week, maybe two to try it out for free.  Having two months free gives you enough time to get a feel for ShareBuilder Advantage and see how you like it.

ShareBuilder Bonus

If don’t know if you can get a bonus when you signup for the free trial, you’ll have to check during the signup process.  When you signup for ShareBuilder, if you can, include your promo code so that you’ll be eligbile for the new customer bonus.  If you see the coupon code option as shown below, make sure you enter your promotion code:

Click here and enter promotion code 25WO10 to qualify for your ShareBuilder bonus.

Electric Orange Checking promotion from ING offers a $50 bonus if you open an account by the end of the month and make at least 3 signature transactions in the first 45 days with your debit card.  ING has doubled the bonus they are offering, last month there was a $25 bonus for opening an ING Electric Orange account.

I’d recommend this account, here is a review of ING Electric Orange, below are some of the features it offers:

• Free MasterCard Debit Card to directly access your account
• No monthly fees and competitive interest rates
• Send money at no charge with Electric Checks
• Free ATM access at over 35,000 locations

ING Savings Account

I started using an ING Direct account years ago after they first made online savings accounts available. I started off with an online savings account because they offered a much better interest rate than I could find at a local bank, or any other internet bank at the time.

Then they added an online checking account and let you link your checking and savings accounts together, which made using the online bank much easier.  At first it was tough to get my money out of the savings account, the only way I could access it was to transfer the money to my local bank and wait a few days for it to go through.

It wasn’t a big deal but I was using direct deposit to put money into my ING online savings account every pay period.  We had our emergency fund and several other accounts setup there for a variety of things we were savings for.  Even thought the ING bank was paying us great interest rates, there was no quick way to access our money, particularly if we needed it for an emergency.

ING Checking Account

As I mentioned, once the Electric orange checking option became available, it made it much easier to access our money since we could just transfer the cash from savings to checking.  It was also nice they were offering an ING checking promotion.  Some of the offers came through the mail, some over email.  They all all included an ING promotion code that you could use when opening a new Electric orange account to earn a bonus.

Once you had the checking account setup and got your debit card in the mail, you could use the Mastercard to pay at the store or go to an ATM to pull out some money.  They also had the option of paying with a check but I don’t really write checks that often.  However, if you’re more of an online type person like me you can also use their online bill pay service at no charge.

I don’t really expect checking account interest rates to be that high, if you’re looking to earn interest on your money a savings account is really the best place.  However, Orange checking is an interest checking account so you’ll earn a little on the money while it’s waiting to be spent.

ING Checking Promotions

The ING checking promotions can pay out some nice bonuses but they do have some qualifications you have to meet to earn your bonus.  For example, fifty days after your account is opened and you’ve made at least 3 signature transactions on the debit card your bonus will be deposited into your ING account.

In order to qualify for the bonus you’ll have to use one of the special coupon codes I mentioned earlier when opening your account.  The ING Electric Orange promo codes here are updated regularly and can be a nice way for you to make some extra money when you sign up for an ING Electric Orange account as a new customer:

• EL574– $25 Bonus
• EM227 – $50 Bonus
• EL545 – $25 Bonus