Earn extra money with these bank account bonuses– you can use that to have to eat great food like this oxtail stew! Photo by: Evan Berman

Of late, I’ve focused a great deal on travel. And don’t get me wrong, I love travel! But I’d like to talk about one of the easiest ways to get a few hundred dollars in bonuses for doing little to no extra work. Of course, if you don’t like free money, I totally understand! 😉 Feel free to check out my latest travel reports.

What Types of Deals Exist?

The most common type of offer works like this: “open a new checking account with us, enroll in direct deposit, and deposit at least $x within the first y days to receive a bonus of $z!” Note: unless described otherwise, you may only take advantage of these deals once every 2 years. Why do these offers exist?

Quick Money and Banking Econ 201 lesson: banks want to get access to funds in order to make investments. The more funds they have access to, the more investments they can make, which means (potentially) more profit. How do they easily gain access to more funds? By incentivizing people to deposit money at their bank. A one-time offer of $200, for example, can lead to $5,000 or more in deposits for a bank. Pretty good, right?

Why Should You Care about These Deals?

Hopefully you are already utilizing an emergency savings account that earns a solid return. That’s great! But how do you pay your bills? Probably with a bank account from one of the big banks or a local one (ex. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or the Bank of South Carolina). Your APY (for the purposes of this discussion, assume this to be a proxy for interest) is maybe 0.1%. Maybe. Let’s say you have $10,000 in this account on average for a year. That’s $100 in interest. Also, that’s too much money to keep in an account earning essentially 0% interest!

Why not put that money to better use? If Bank of America, Chase, US Bank, and Wells Fargo are all giving roughly 0.1% interest to checking accounts, does it really matter which one you use? Look out for these deals and you can earn $100-$300 every couple of months or years just for switching banks.

Current Offers

There are always several offers available. Many are unattractive– either requiring too much in new deposits or offering too little of a reward. Here are the 2 most attractive of the current ones:

Chase

Chase has 2 current offers, follow this link to choose the option that works best for you:

• $300 bonus for opening a checking account and setting direct deposit. If you’re feeling extra devious, you could set up direct deposit and then use those funds to create a direct deposit with another bank!
• $200 bonus for opening a new savings account with $15,000 or more in new money within 30 days of opening and maintaining a $15,000 balance for 90 days.
• If you do both, you’ll get an extra $400, for a total of $900.

BMO Harris

BMO Harris is a bank based in Chicago. They are currently offering several promotions. Follow this link to choose which one is best for you. The options are:

• $200 bonus for either the Smart Money or Smart Advantage accounts after depositing $4,000 within 90 days. I cannot tell the difference between the two other than the name 🙂
• $350 bonus for the Premier Account after depositing $7,500 within 90 days. Outside of the fancy name, the other advantages 😉 of opting for a Premier account are reimbursements for out-of-network ATM fees. Keep in mind that the monthly fee is $25 unless you maintain a balance of over $10,000.

Takeaways:

A great and easy way to earn extra money is to sign up for new bank accounts that offer bonuses for signing up and meeting the requirements. This page offers a few of the most relevant and easy to obtain. Check the requirements and bank name. Assuming you can qualify and have not received a sign-up bonus from the same bank recently, sign up and start meeting the qualifications. How does $800 in extra funds each year sound?!? Keep in mind that these bonuses are taxable– come tax season, you will receive a form for the interest that you have received from bank accounts.

Evan