Bank Bonus Offers

[njhowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki So this morning Marcus showed that I had met the time eligibility on 11/7. Bonus $500 expected within 14 days. Looked again and the bonus has posted! The Gal's account shows she has met eligibility but the bonus hasn't posted yet. Marcus is paying 1.9% so I don't see moving it right this moment.. Made for nice short term earnings - not hard money loan scale, but we are down to one large loan and a couple modest ones and I don't sweat bank deposits as much.

Excellent! We have two Marcus bonuses hitting over the weekend, then the money transfers out to Simple on Tuesday for the next one.

[calmloki]

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Originally Posted by njhowie Excellent! We have two Marcus bonuses hitting over the weekend, then the money transfers out to Simple on Tuesday for the next one.

Already have 2 Simple accounts going - gotta support a Portland Oregon founded bank. Nah - just in it for the ducats.
Found every CSR with Simple to be friendly, helpful, and they actually emailed back quickly if they said they were going to do so. They did have some fun wrinkles - we were shifting from my primary address in Oregon down to Gal's primary in SoCal, so mailing and addresses were problematic. She was instructed to take a selfie holding a couple bills in front of our SoCal house and send it as confirmation that she what, wasn't a mad terrorist?
We worked out something different, but it was a fun request.

Now I'm looking for a home for some rental house sale money - not sure I want to go with P1FCU at 3.35% or PSECU at 3.25%. Bonus money keeps it short term and with better returns.

Edit: Discover doesn't work for us - we have accounts with them. Discover and Ally are our hub accounts - none of this $5000/day ACH withdrawal stuff with them. But I do look longingly at the $200 bonus I'm not eligible for

[Dtail]

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Originally Posted by GrayHare You might pause and ask why Discover is making such offers. I have it on good authority Discover is having trouble getting low interest loans within the industry. Instead, via these special offers they can instead get money (loans) from a large number of people, at a rate of less than 2%, and with FDIC insurance, that means their risk of default is held by all of us.

So who cares what the underlying reason is. These bonuses are worth the 10 minutes a piece with no risk to us.

[MichaelB]

This is a good thread discussion - aside from the snark and sarcasm. Why don’t we all remember our Dale Carnegie and make it a better thread...

[njhowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki Edit: Discover doesn't work for us - we have accounts with them. Discover and Ally are our hub accounts - none of this $5000/day ACH withdrawal stuff with them. But I do look longingly at the $200 bonus I'm not eligible for

Any kids or relatives you can do it for (with your money under their name)?

As far as a home for your other money, it sounds like it may be significant, so you might want to consider the bigger offers that can get you $1000 a pop. Did you look at the Chase Sapphire Checking $1000 offer that was back on Page 2? Deposit $75,000, maintain for 90 days, get $1000 within 10 days.

https://accounts.chase.com/consumer/...apphirebanking

[Curmoodgeon]

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Originally Posted by jazz4cash Just got email from Chase. I think the offer has been out there for awhile: New Chase checking account gets $200 bonus with direct deposit.

Is there any kind of "direct deposit" you can sign up for, without having a j*b?

[njhowie]

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Originally Posted by Curmoodgeon Is there any kind of "direct deposit" you can sign up for, without having a j*b?

Yes...however, your mileage may vary. It is all a matter of how the bank you are ACH'ing into treats it. For some, you can simply do a transfer from another account you have elsewhere and it will pass as a direct deposit, for others it won't.

See my post here for the links to check:
http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...ml#post2315350

[jazz4cash]

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Originally Posted by Curmoodgeon Is there any kind of "direct deposit" you can sign up for, without having a j*b?

I took a 401k distribution from Fido to BofA recently and it showed up as “pension” at BofA so I’d try that with an IRA. I think they just want it to look like income vs. a transfer between taxable accounts.

[Lagniappe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Curmoodgeon Is there any kind of "direct deposit" you can sign up for, without having a j*b?

I just got the HSBC Advance bonus. I didn't have any income to direct deposit, so I instructed Vanguard that monthly dividends from a Muni Bond fund should be deposited at HSBC. That seemed to do the trick, since the bonus hit my account yesterday.

[Golden sunsets]

Crazy fast. Transferred the 25K on 11-5 to Discover, $200 deposited 11-6. Pulled the money through Ally just now. Will redeposit in DH's account next week. Rinse and repeat.

[calmloki]

Quote:

Originally Posted by njhowie Any kids or relatives you can do it for (with your money under their name)? As far as a home for your other money, it sounds like it may be significant, so you might want to consider the bigger offers that can get you $1000 a pop. Did you look at the Chase Sapphire Checking $1000 offer that was back on Page 2? Deposit $75,000, maintain for 90 days, get $1000 within 10 days. https://accounts.chase.com/consumer/...apphirebanking

No kids and don't want to get into tax issues with relatives by using their names and racking up taxable gains under their SS#. Nor do I want to get into sharing the bonus amounts or doing the deals just as an exercise while demonstrating that we have excess cash floating about. We've both had several iterations of the Sapphire cards and the Gal still holds one, so that's out. We are just finishing up the requirements for Chase Ink Business Preferred cards - 80k points each and she referred me for an extra 20k - and tax freee! Thing is I've signed us up for a number of cards and bank accounts and we're now running out of higher dollar bonus opportunities. Gotta keep the eyes open so I appreciate these threads.

[njhowie]

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Originally Posted by Golden sunsets Crazy fast. Transferred the 25K on 11-5 to Discover, $200 deposited 11-6. Pulled the money through Ally just now. Will redeposit in DH's account next week. Rinse and repeat.

Fabulous!

[Sunset]

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Originally Posted by calmloki ..... We've both had several iterations of the Sapphire cards and the Gal still holds one, so that's out. .....

So how did you get around the 4 year waiting rule for the bonus ?

[calmloki]

There wasn't one. Good times

Just checked and Gal got different Sapphire cards on 10/2011, 11/2014, and her current card on 9/2016. Think the first one had a $1000 bonus for a $3000 spend. I got my first one in early 2012 and just baerly got the $1000 bonus before they lowered it.

[audreyh1]

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Originally Posted by Curmoodgeon Is there any kind of "direct deposit" you can sign up for, without having a j*b?

Yes, besides SS or pensions, you can do your own direct deposit from your brokerage. That will count.

When we signed up they asked where the direct deposit would come from, and I told them from our retirement accounts. That made sense to them. I’m sure they assumed IRAs.

I made two ACH from our taxable brokerage, and they were treated as “direct deposit”. I knew this would work because I had read several discussions on doctorofcredit.com.

[Dtail]

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Originally Posted by njhowie Fabulous!

@njhowie
As a general observation, would you say that these bonus deals would be available to non current BUT former customers as a general rule?

i.e. do you find most of these deals to be one shot and done (setting aside multiple family members), or there is the ability to open and close accounts each year for new deals with the same bank?

[derick]

These are incredible offers. I think I am going to see to it. The one from Citibank is great

[njhowie]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dtail @njhowie As a general observation, would you say that these bonus deals would be available to non current BUT former customers as a general rule? i.e. do you find most of these deals to be one shot and done (setting aside multiple family members), or there is the ability to open and close accounts each year for new deals with the same bank?

Sometimes, after a period of time (a few years later), you can do it again if still being offered. We did one of the Chase savings account offers a second time for DD after a two year waiting period. As we discussed on the Discover, theirs is one and done.

Overall, I'm not sure how many let you redo them, or restrictions between different offers at the same bank. I do know that cross-product will generally work. You can do a banking or credit card offer and then turn around and do the other. We did that with HSBC. Did a $200 checking account bonus (on a $1500 deposit), then turned around and did their credit card for $150 bonus for charging $500 in the first three months.

What I also know is that over time most banking offers have gone to requiring some level of direct deposit. Until now I've always stayed away from them, but with audreyh1's comment, I may try a few which do have direct deposit requirement and transfer the money from our brokerage account. Last year, one local bank specifically indicated that plain vanilla ACH transfers counted so we did that one, merely transferring money in/out of our primary bank.

[njhowie]

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Originally Posted by derick These are incredible offers. I think I am going to see to it. The one from Citibank is great

derick, I'm going to sound like a damn broken record here, but (if you have the money available) do the Discover offer (first). See Golden sunset's comment just above - deposited the money, had the bonus one day later, and was able to transfer it all out immediately - no fees or any other requirements. You can put the money into Discover, get the bonus quickly (a few weeks later at most), and then roll it in to Citibank, where there is a longer requirement.

[OldConch]

SoFi. Transfer $100 into SoFi and they give you a $50 bonus. Took me about five minutes to set up my account and plug in my routing/account numbers for the transfer. Bonus posted almost immediately and was available for withdrawal when transfer was complete.

There's a $50 referral bonus so, after referring DW, we had $150 in bonuses for less than 15 minutes effort. $10,000 limit on referral bonuses.

Debit card shipped quickly and we used it on a trip to Ensenada. No foreign transaction fee and they rebated the $3.55 ATM fee immediately.

You can close this account immediately but the debit card worked so well I may keep at least one account open.