American Express has an excellent offer for those who live near New York: When you register your eligible Amex for this promo, then use that card to spend a total of at least $200 at 2 or more participating merchants between February 1 and 29, 2012, you’ll receive a $50 statement credit.

Registration is limited to the first 10,000 enrollees and you may only register one card for this promotion. To see the list of participating merchants and to sign up, see this .

Note that online purchases do not qualify for the spending requirement, with the exception of purchases made at ticketmaster.com or telecharge.com.

If you have decided that 2012 is the year you’re finally going to kick your finances into shape, then getting into the savings habit will be a big part of the process. Don’t think that sorting out your money needs to be too daunting a task though, Sian’s got some great tips on how to get organised bit-by-bit.

And now, the saving. This needn’t be complicated either. Aside from a current account to use for day-to-day spending, there are only two other places you absolutely must have some money saved up.

1. An emergency fund

With the number of unemployed in the UK at 2.64 million – the highest it’s been since 1994 – redundancy is still a big worry for plenty of us. But if you did lose you job, how long would you be able to support yourself and your family?

That’s why if you save for anything this year, it should be an emergency fund. Yes, you could

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Employees naturally expect their employers to reimburse them for any expenses they’ve incurred on their behalf, says Tax Tips & Advice. While these will be free of tax and national insurance when incurred as part of their job, it means employees must collect receipts for every item and their employer will eventually have to process them all.

One way to avoid this hassle is to implement a “scale rate payment” based on the average amount your employee spends a month. “Your employee won’t be required to collect receipts and you won’t need to check or report anything to the taxman.”

To set this up you’ll need an agreement from the taxman, which means you’ll have to show the payments are intended to “do no more than meet your employees’ business expenses”.

Employees don’t need much encouragement as they’ll welcome not keeping receipts and can benefit financially. If, for instance, you pay a

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Signing up for a credit card from a retailer can be cumbersome. If you take the application home, it often gets misplaced or forgotten. But if you fill it out at the store, you have to fish for a pen, fill out the form by hand, and often hold up the checkout line while doing so.  Shouldn’t there be a better way to get store credit cards? Now there is — with your smartphone.US Bank has announced a new program that will enable consumers to apply for and receive retailer credit cards using their smartphones. The financial institution is partnering with retailers to enable quick, easy, and convenient credit card applications with the help of an app that can be downloaded for free to your iPhone (an Android app is expected soon).

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For a limited time, you can get a $10 statement credit for spending at least $10 at a local small business when you pay with your American Express card and check in via foursquare, the social networking site that allows you to share your location with friends.

From foursquare’s blog:

Check in at a merchant with a Special… load the Special to your card, and then pay for your over $10 purchase with your American Express ® Card. No need to show your phone to a cashier or anything – you’ll receive the credit on your Amex statement within 5 business days.

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Falling living standards and the looming return to recession has failed to dent the British public’s sunny disposition, according to the results of David Cameron’s “happiness index”.

The poll found around three-quarters of adults in the UK are satisfied with their lives despite the continuing economic gloom.

The survey of 4,200 people asked participants to rank how happy or anxious they felt on the previous day on a scale from nought to ten. Just over one in every four respondents scored seven or more out of ten for happiness. The remaining one in four felt anxious.

Seventy six percent of people were estimated to have a rating of seven out ten or more when asked “how satisfied are you with your life nowadays”. When asked,

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