Back at the beginning of February, I set a goal for myself to earn $2,000 this year in deal and "found" money – through promotional offers, incentive checks (such as signing up for Chase Payment Protector or various Trilegiant programs), and general arbitrage plays. Basically, to reach my goal that means "finding" about $167 per month.

How am I doing so far? Here's the run down:

I found out last week that I am getting a 10% bonus this year, which is really, really cool. I should see it in my next check, and so over the past week I've been thinking about what to do with it.

It really isn't that hard of a decision for me. I could go get a new LCD TV and a wii, or maybe schedule a vacation (what's that again?). But of course, that wouldn't be the responsible thing to do *sigh*.

So, I was doing some number crunching and discovered that last year I completed $1,428.95 in sundry deals over the course of the year. Most of that was from sign-up bonuses and in the form of cash (or cash equivalent, such as a statement credit). I also got at least $50 in gas cards, and a free iPod shuffle (Gen 2), which I gave to my daughter.

Market Watch reports that the Treasury Department wants to solicit ideas about how to change the banking regulatory system, and they offer a few suggestions of their own about which parts may be flawed.

I got an e-mail today from TradeKing describing a temporary referral program in which TK would give $100 to Toys for Tots for each referral. It got me thinking about other similar philanthropic incentive programs I've seen, like:

Is it just me, or does there seem to be fewer "free money" deals these days? And for the deals that do exist, it seems like you have to do more to get less.

I don't have any hard objective data, but taking a look at the deals mentioned on the bonuses page at Bank Deals, it seems that there are fewer straightforward deals now than there were a year ago.

Okay, I just went through a rather bizarre experience, and it's left me feeling a little like Indiana Jones when he retrieves his hat from underneath that slow-moving, heavy stone door at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

There's a new SMS-based payment service called TextPayMe. I probably won't use the service, but I did sign up for the $5 referral bonus sent to me by a friend. If anyone is interested, send an e-mail to moneyliberty (@) gmail [d0t] com with the words TextPayMe referral in the subject line. All I need is your first name and e-mail address.

About 10 months ago, I started a focused approach to taking advantage of various deals and promotions offered by companies, mostly financial institutions. I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew that some people made a decent amount of extra cash from such bonuses.