Q: Hey found this site and you have a lot of good advice man. The reason I came here was because I want to get a credit card, or maybe a few, that have free money on them. Do you have any recommendations?

A: I can definitely help steer you in the right direction but let me first clarify a couple things…

1. The “free money” comes with stipulations

It used to be you could apply for a credit card a get the bonus right up front. For the most part, they stopped doing it this way because there would be some people who would apply for a card but not use it.

Now most of the free credit card deals require you to spend a minimum amount before the cash comes. For example, if a card offers $100 bonus it might require you to spend $500 before that bonus should show up on your account.

2.  Don’t open and close an excessive number of cards

Before you make cashing out free card bonuses your second occupation, understand that your FICO score looks at the average age of your accounts. The higher the average age, the better.

This is why you don’t want to go overboard signing up for credit cards with money/airline/point promotions. So try and stick with a card you will actually want to keep and use.

3. A bunch of credit checks aren’t good either

Every time you apply for a new card, loan, etc. there is a credit check (a.k.a. credit inquiry) that is done to see if you’re worth your salt.

For 12 months after, a credit check might impact your score. Usually not by much – maybe just a few points, maybe not at all.

At any given time it’s normal to have a few of these on file. But if you start applying for say, 5 or 10 cards over the period of a year, then that’s going to be 5 or 10 credit checks… and that high of a number will probably ding your score more (until they are no longer counted – 12 months from date of inquiry).

So don’t go crazy and apply every time you see cards with money on them being offered. Be picky and only go for the best, which brings us to my top 5 recommendations…

#1. Chase Sapphire

This is probably the best deal you will find right now, if it’s a money bonus you’re after. Why? Because while most people use the points for travel, you can also convert them to cash at a good 1 point = 1 cent conversion.

Right now the standard version (a free card) gives a large points bonus after spending a minimum amount. The Preferred version gives an even larger number of points but there is an annual fee (but it’s free for the first year). You can compare the Chase Sapphire vs. Sapphire Preferred here.

#2. Chase Freedom

Next up is another card from Chase which undoubtedly you have also probably heard about before. Right now the Freedom comes with an enticing offer for spending a minimum amount after the account is open.

#3. AmEx Premier Rewards Gold Card

Now this is not a “free” card because it does have a $175 annual fee. However, the first year is free and the bonus you can earn is quite generous, so wanted to mention it anyway in case you wanted to check it out. Here is the review of the Gold Card and its current promotion. However as a warning, the conversion from points to money is lousy, so best to use ‘em for gift cards instead.

#4. Citi Dividend

This card has been around a long time but with all the new cards on the market lately, it’s not getting much love. To try and change that Citi has been trying to ramp up exposure with this offer for the Citi Dividend MasterCard. This is one of the best free credit cards on the market for cash rewards, so you will probably want to keep it around (I’ve had mine 7 years).

#5. Citi ThankYou Preferred

This is the entry-level, no annual fee card in Citi’s “ThankYou” series. The drawback is that you don’t normally get higher rewards on categories like gas, grocery, etc. However on the bright side, you can apply for the Citi ThankYou Preferred and get this promotion.

Over the past 12 months, for most of us those little non-descript envelopes which contain credit card solicitations aren’t showing up in our mailbox as often. However this doesn’t appear to be the case for a Chicago-area family. They decided to save all their credit card offers they received in the mail over the course of a year. The result? 23 lbs of wasted paper, over 445 different envelopes containing credit card applications. Whether it was an airline reward card, 0% balance transfer credit card offer, or virtually any other type – it was all there.

The father and husband of the family, Gary Silbar, observed that the biggest peddlers were Chase, Citi, and Amex. In fact, roughly 25% were from Chase alone. In the third quarter of 2008 there was a 28% decline in credit card offers when compared to the year before.  However that still leaves over 1.34 billion card offers that were mailed out during the third quarter this year. The difference is that now, creditors seem to only be targeting those with the best credit, like the Silbar family.

And what did these banks get in return for spending several hundred dollars on sending the Silbars these credit card offers? Absolutely nothing – no new card signups. No wonder the banks are broke when they’re wasting money like that!