The holiday season is quickly approaching, a time when many are hoping for or expecting a hefty year-end bonus.
Without traditional employers, alas, nobody will be sending us a check to install a new swimming pool or even a membership to the jelly of the month club. (The gift that keeps on giving.)
So not wanting to go without, I decided to just go ahead and create my own bonus season. I ended up leaving $425 on the table and one bank is still holding some funds hostage, but this year we are getting another $2,575 worth of holiday cheer. (As an added bonus, only $825 of it is taxable.)
Bonus Season
As with generous employer based bonuses, I had to actually do a little work to earn my bonus. Specifically, I opened 3 new credit cards, 3 new checking accounts, and 2 new savings accounts. There were some hiccups – I had to make 7 phone calls, I failed to obtain 2 bonuses, and I still have one bank sitting on $5,000 of my funds, but at least it is earning interest…
Credit Card bonuses
A few month ago we opened his/her Capital One Savor cards, which offered $500 cash back after spending $3,000 in 3 months. I also opened a new Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which give 50,000 Ultimate Rewards Points after spending $4,000 in 3 months. Assuming minimum 1.5 cents/point, this is worth $750+ off future travels.
Did we really spend an extra $10,000 in 3 months just to get $1,750 back? No, that would be silly. But I did employ many of our standard practices to meet minimum spend requirements, all of which was planned in advance.
This is how the $10k was doled out:
- January trip to Hong Kong (Winnie & Friends) – $250 airfare + $1000 Airbnb (will get $750 back in cash from friends)
- February trip to Thailand (family Chinese New Year trip) – $1500 in airfare, hotel, and Airbnb
- April triathlon expenses – $150 registration fee + $400 hotel
- Open new bank account – $2,000
- Business expenses – $1,500 (annual fee for mailing list provider)
- Normal everyday cost of living – $3,200 (~$1,000/month on restaurants, groceries, Ubers, cell phone bills, etc…)
Conveniently, the credit card signup bonuses make our two Q1 trips basically free.
Had I needed to, I could have also paid some quarterly estimated taxes. (Details on paying taxes with a credit card.)
* caveat – if I just put $10,000 on our existing Chase Sapphire Reserve card, we would have earned ~$275 worth of UR points. But the spending on these 3 cards earned ~$200 in cash back and points, so we gained $1,750 at the expense of not earning $75. Seems worth it.
Hiccups – all 3 of these cards required I make a phone call to the bank, as they wanted to verify that it really was us applying. For the CSP I called prior to approval, and the two Savor cards required us to call for activation as a security check.
Bank Bonuses
It’s not just the credit card divisions that are throwing around free money, the checking & savings department also wants a piece of that action. (Thank you to Doctor of Credit for details and helpful guides to bank account bonuses.)
Two examples:
Chase is giving a $300 bonus for opening a new checking account and setting up direct deposit. They are also giving $200-$300 for opening a new savings account and depositing $15,000 for 90 days. (Link to offer here.) (Specific link to $225 savings offer here.)
PNC is offering $200-$300 for opening a new checking account and setting up direct deposit, and you can provide up to $2,000 in initial funding from a credit card. (Link to offer here.)
(Disclosure: none of these checking/savings links are affiliate links, and we don’t receive any compensation for referrals. These are just the offers we used, for reference.)
We each opened a checking and savings account with Chase, and I opened a checking account with PNC (biggest pain ever…)
Chase was pretty easy for me. I opened the accounts, transferred in $15k to the savings account, made a single direct deposit, and then waited until they gave me $300 in the checking and $225 in the savings. I recently just transferred all of the money out to a higher yielding account except for minimum balances for zero fees.
Total yield on the $15k in savings is a nice 6% ($225/$15000 for 3 months.)
With Winnie they were much less friendly. When I tried to transfer $15k into savings they shut down the accounts, and wouldn’t unlock them until we had the ATM card physically in hand (technically, in our Traveling Mailbox.) Then began an hour long phone call, during which they called the source bank and verified she was the account owner and there were sufficient funds (of course, duh.)
By that time we only had 3 days left to transfer in the funds to qualify for the bonus. But of course it takes 3 days for them to link a new account, and they had already deleted the existing link, because reasons. When I tried to push funds from the same account, they rejected the transfer.
So in short, we didn’t get the bonus on the savings, but we did get the $300 checking bonus.
Seems pretty stupid / terrible, right? (But still my fault, we could have fixed the issues earlier.)
That is a walk in the park compared to PNC.
PNC allows up to $2,000 in funding from a credit card when opening a new account. Nice, right? They also offer account bonuses for setting up direct deposit, as part of their efforts to expand their “online banking” offerings.
Upon happily accepting my $2,000, they immediately locked the account. So I called 3 times, and got different reasons from each customer service rep. Then I waited on hold for 20 minutes before they transferred me to the security department…
I did one of those multiple choice questionnaires the banks do:
- What month & year did you buy a house 20 yrs ago?
- What year is your Ford Focus (I don’t own a car)
- How long you live at X (never)
- What county is X in (no idea)
- On which of these 4 streets have you lived (none)
So I failed that little test (but passed on the second try.)
To satisfy the direct deposit requirement I then transferred funds into the account from another bank account.
They accepted that money too, and then shut the account down again. Sorry, you can’t login and can’t use the ATM card.
So I call again… wait on hold 30 minutes, and they tell me I need to come into a branch.
Dude, this is an online account and your closest branch is in Ohio.
Wait on hold another 20 minutes… “OK, you can go to any bank anywhere and then call us again…”
I guess they’ll use the bank employee secret handshake or something. In any case, they are holding these funds hostage, but at least I’m still getting interest and met the minimum spend on my shiny new credit card. I won’t get the $200-$300 new account bonus, however.
Summary
I like free money as much as the next guy, and I am definitely happy to accept $2,575 for making a few phone calls. It is paying for a couple short holidays for us, after all.
However, the bank account hassles are definitely not worth the effort, imho, and I don’t plan on making a habit of collecting checking and savings accounts. (Exception: I’ll be upgrading to Chase Sapphire Banking in the near future to get 60,000 UR points.)
The credit card bonuses are super easy though (and tax free) so I’m sure we’ll be adding more cards to our wallets throughout the year. Every season is bonus season!
Links to cards mentioned in this post:
The Chase Sapphire Preferred card is a great travel card, with 50,000 point signup bonus ($750+ value) and annual fee waived for the first year. Compare this and other travel cards here.
The Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Card pays 4% cash back on dining and entertainment, and offers a one-time $500 cash bonus after spending $3k in 3 months. Learn more about cash back cards like this here.
(These are affiliate links. Thank you, and Happy Bonus Season!)
No banks that desparate in Aus – yet. Nearest is Coles supermarket: spend $50 x 4 weeks get $50 = ~$650 / y on $2,600 spending or 25% return on ‘divestment’. Only the steeliest of free money aficionados get through Woolworths obfuscation.
Loss leader for high margin products marked “on sale”?
It is weird to me that banks want to pay me to open accounts, but then again they do pay much lower interest rates than the accounts I already have (sans bonus.) 6% is still 6% though.
“Loss leader”: Forlorn hope regarding us. Only a slight challenge to get all our groceries within the $50 / week. An adequate limit which saves money, avoids buying rubbish, prevents over eating and reduces garbage disposal. So all round a helpful and appreciated offer.
Aus banks offer bonus interest accounts; typically $200 / month deposit, 0 or 1 withdrawal / month resulting in 3% interest / year to $A 250,000 government guaranteed.
Thanks for the read. Question- what are you doing with all the older credit cards you opened for travel ? Are you slowly closing them out or all you just leaving all of them open? Curious to know because we’ve opened one or two new cards for the bonuses but don’t want to do more because we don’t know how having too many open accounts will eventually affect us. Thanks!
There is no such thing as too many open accounts.
I’ll keep and use cards for a year, and if worth the fee (if applicable) then we’ll keep them. If not, then we’ll close or downgrade.
That is a pretty good haul. My wife and I made this a bonus year. So far it looks like we’ll end up with $7,000 from bank bonuses and $5,000 from credit cards (plus another half million miles/points).
Nice!
That’s an excellent haul! I’m pretty sure everyone is hankering for more info on your mega-bonus.
You biking, swimming, of swinging a kettle bell while on hold? I think I’ll do that PNC one.
mostly playing guitar…
Hey, GCC,
Interesting experience which also confirms for me that I wouldn’t have the courage and patience to deal with the bank account bonuses. I also stopped calling CC companies when I’m automatically denied a new CC. I think it’s a widely known fact that people try to get new CC’s for bonuses only that the employees are trained to deny w/o a discussion (which I also understand since I’ve got a ton of inquiries on my CC history).
A few questions for you though:
1. What kind of direct deposit do you make when a new bank account requires it? Is it from another bank account only? I thought the DD must originate from an employer, SS, or similar institution. If you do as an employer to yourself, I’d be curious how you do it? My guess is that you have a GCC business account set up in the USA which would be your ’employer’?
2. Did you not apply for personal CC’s in the last 2 years that you were approved for the Chase Sapphire Preferred CC? If I understand correctly, you use a USA address to apply for bank accounts and CC’s? If so, how do you get the CC’s physically?
3. How do you handle open accounts of all the no-AF CC’s? Do you somehow supervise by checking them occasionally to make sure nobody stole their # or do you charge them yourself occasionally to keep them alive? How badly does it affect you if you close even the no-AF CC’s if you know the CC will not be used after the bonus? Also, do you set travel alerts on all your CC’s considering that you don’t reside in the USA, and the CCs are being used overseas?
4. You say that you spent so much time calling banks. Do you call them collect or directly? If directly, I would love to know what service you use so you don’t spend too much money on overseas calls. I know that one of my friends once she relocated to Germany from the USA, she took her Magic Jack along, but I don’t know how that or any other services work.
Sorry, a lot of questions, but I hope you don’t mind answering them.
Thx!
Here is the short of it:
There is an art to direct deposits. See the DoC resource I linked in the post.
I applied for lots of personal cards. We use Traveling Mailbox for all of our mail.
I track all of my accounts in Personal Capital and Mint. No need to complicate things.
I use google voice for all of our US phone calls.
Nice job with the bonuses. This year we signed up for a bunch of cards too. I had to pay estimated taxes and that’s an easy way to fulfill the signup requirement.
I’ve been thinking about the Chase banking, but haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Maybe next year when we live closer to a branch. I need to read up on the Chase Sapphire banking. What’s that about?
Happy Holidays! We’re heading to Thailand for 5 weeks. Those points came in handy.
When will you be in Thailand again? We’ll be in CM over CNY.
I just opened a new Sapphire checking account as it was easier than upgrading. Deposit or transfer $75k of new funds and get 60,000 UR points. I’m transferring $75k over in cash and then using it to buy an ETF (no trade fees.)
My wife and I used to do the Chase bonus annually while in grad school, but eventually we got sick of the hassles. Haven’t done much bonus chasing lately, but recently wrote a post that you might be interested in: https://www.frugalprofessor.com/best-credit-card-rewards-strategy-2018-edition/.
I was bank bonus curious, so gave it a try. Too much work, not enough gain.
I tried to get a bunch of these bonus type things this year too and found that it was a time consuming hassle. I also found that they put up a lot of road blocks like the ones you mentioned (when did you live at X address? Never. Which of these people are related to you? None. You fail. Please call us.) that took up time while the clock was ticking on the bonus window. I got a lot of stuff like “we will mail you a postcard with a code. When you get it, enter the code online.” Then the card takes 2 weeks to arrive. Overall, I found that chasing these bonuses is not really efficient use of my time unless I already need the account or they are offering a great interest rate as well!
Happy holidays to you!
Same. The hourly rate is actually not too bad, but my tolerance for bs is at an all time low.
Hi, GCC! Long time listener, first time caller. There were no hassles with the Savor card? I’ve tried to get that one twice now and been denied due to opening too many credit cards within the past 18 months. The second time I was applying off of an approval letter and code they’d mailed me. They are such a tease. I’d been playing the rewards game. I guess they didn’t like that? Any ideas besides wait the 18 months out? I thought it would be a nice addition since I tend to eat out and the bonus is nice.
Not really, we just had to call to verify it wasn’t some guy in Russia applying in our names. Did you try calling their approval line?
I did not. I got an email to a link with the formal disapproval letter with reason why. It said if you want to dispute the reason for disapproval send a letter to such and such address. I sent one with reasons why I’d be such a good customer but was still denied. I don’t carry balances. There’s not much of a benefit for them to take me on. I’ll check out the approval line. Perhaps talking to a real person will help. Thanks!
I understand that Capital One makes a point of rejecting people with excellent credit and no carried balances, and has churner red flags (such as numerous recent apps). They don’t want delinquents either, but they are purposefully targeting “ok” customers.
We recently returned from a year of full time travel with two teenagers and tween. As part of the preparation we accumulated miles and points for about three years. It took our family of five a long way around the world. Though, I used a ton of hotel points for hotels as well.
The kids are back in school now but I’m getting the bug again.
Haven’t played the bank account bonus game – don’t have any direct deposit or “new assets to link”. Instead, I lined up the Chase-SW companion pass requirements – will have them fulfilled/posted in January ’19 – for the 23 month free ride. Just in time for new SW Hawaii flights…
Also, ran my ’18 tax estimates and made a few final moves to enginer MAGI to 138% FPL – and max out those ACA subsidies and CSRs.
The companion pass is a sweet deal.
Most of my direct deposits and new assets are just moving funds from bank A to bank B.
Happy Bonus season! We’ve been hitting it hard this year. I did the $500 Cap One bonus x2. So far only I have received the bonus while Kaisorn’s bonus isn’t due for a few more days. I had to call twice, so I invested another 20 minutes to make that $500. :)
On the credit card front, I accumulated 880,000 (!!) points, miles, etc across several hotel programs, Chase UR, Southwest, and American Airlines. Conservatively those are worth a penny apiece. We redeemed for a few flights to Miami (4500 to 7500 SW or BA miles), and round trip to SE Asia x 5 (355,000 AA miles) plus some small hotel redemptions. And all of that was with routine spending (plus paying the occasional fee to pay with Credit instead of cash – hat tip to you for making me do the math on that one :) ).
So overall we’ll be raking in right at $10,000 worth of points/miles/cash for 2018 and only $1000 of it will be taxable!
Very nice :) That sounds like our 2017 haul. This year I wasn’t as aggressive since I didn’t have a specific destination in mind to build points towards.
I never really accumulate with trips/goals in mind. Just snap up whatever might be valuable and whatever I can get approved for. Chase Biz has been very accommodating and generous with me lately :)
I haven’t done any of the Chase biz cards yet, but did just open a new Sapphire checking account (upgrading requires going in branch…)
Does the Savor bonus post after you’ve paid the bill on 3k or after you’ve charged 3k? I assume the former. I don’t want to have to call :)
The latter in my case
Ahhh! Mine just posted! Outstanding. Merry Christmas to me.
Winnie’s just posted too. Merry Christmas indeed :)
By the way, I’m with you on the bank bonuses being a pain. I probably won’t do many more of those unless it’s super easy and highly lucrative. Too much hassle AND it gets included in income!
But I might try one of those sweet $2500 brokerage bonuses for transferring $1MM+ in assets!
Good to know the banks are a pain and not worth it. I will move on. Agreed with the brokerage bonuses. JP Livingston does this every year. I believe she calls it the “annual migration.”
Thank you for sharing the good and the ugly behind getting these bonuses.
I was excited about the 50,000 UR pts for the Sapphire Preferred, but I already have the Sapphire Reserve so I must wait 48 months before applying for the Preferred…
I never got the CSR as I was over 5/24, but just applied for the CSP before they changed the eligibility from 24 months to 48.
Jeremy they suspect you are outside of the USA or your mail handler has been coded as a nonresidential address.
I’ve run into similar problems if I don’t use a VPN when banking online because I live outside the USA.
Vanguard froze my accounts. They told me I had to provide to them credit card statements showing local purchases and a utility bill. I couldn’t. I’m no longer there customer.
Mike
Probably the case. I’ll end up closing the account as it has served its purpose.
I had a similar experience with bank account bonuses this year. Chase withheld $72 from my $300 business checking account because of tax withholding. They will not give the money back even though I provided a W-9. Worst customer experience ever, I will be closing that account in 6 months and never banking with Chase again.
PNC has still not paid me the $300 bonus after a month of completing the 10 debit card purchases and $5k direct deposit. I will be closing that account in the future as well.
Credit card bonuses went much better, especially with American Express. My address is a military APO address and many banks struggle with that. AMEX seems to deal ok with it.
My wife was denied a Chase card recently for having no credit history. Which is insane considering she has 3 other Chase cards in her name.
Going forward I will not be opening any more bank accounts for the bonuses. Too much hassle for the overseas military servicemember. Credit cards I will continue to hit hard.
Other readers might benefit from this – here’s a link to get $300 from opening a new savings account with Chase https://accounts.chase.com/consumer/banking/online/savings010318
As a data point for others,I opened a Chase Sapphire checking account online and deposited 50K in it. The the next day my online account got suspended. Called the customer service and the told me that I was required to show up in a branch to show my ID and the ownership of the source account of the deposit. So I had to go to a local branch to unfreeze my online log-in…. a bit of PITA…
fingers crossed I don’t hit the same snag (I just transferred over the $75k)
Soo…optimistic on the ACA for your return after today’s ruling?
Sure, it’s not unexpected. Failure by design. We were fine pre-ACA and will be fine after. Predictability is nice, but without MAGI based taxes we’ll likely be better off without the ACA. The keyword there is “we”, as most lower income people will not.
(I still think this is more of a meh hiccup on the road to something better.)
What counts as a direct deposit for these offers? Is it any ACH transfer, or does it have to be a pension/payroll recurring direct deposit?
typically deposits from a paycheck or government agency
On the website Dr of Credit they keep track of what different readers have used as a qualifying deposit for each bank / account type