Programming Note: These PSA posts will become a weekly post effective immediately as I have lots of little tidbits that I think are worth reminding others about so they don’t do something dumb. My past PSA posts have been pretty popular so I’ll see how the response is to a weekly post.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – it really annoys me when big, prominent bloggers push inferior offers to their readers and do not share the best offer on a particular product because it doesn’t offer them a commission. The latest and greatest example of this is The Points Guy posting (after discussing with others I took away my link to his post but I’m sure you can find it) about earning a $250 bonus for opening a Chase checking ($150) and savings account ($100). I’m sure at face to the uneducated reader that seems like a great offer but you can do much better – in fact I can show you how to get a bonus of $300 on just the checking account alone. 

So what’s the trick to getting these better offers?

1. Know the landscape of all current offers – Similar to credit cards, you want to get an idea of if a particular bonus is high or low relative to the historical bonus offered on that product. I think the best resource to follow bank bonuses is Doctor of Credit who covers bank bonuses pretty in-depth including both nationwide banks and smaller state specific banks. In this case, I see a wide range of offers topping out at $600! for both a checking and savings account at Chase. Yes, the deposit requirements might be different but its worth checking them all until you find one that works for you.

2. eBay is your friend – I’m surprised more people don’t know about this but on eBay you can buy Chase checking and savings account coupons. A quick eBay search shows several coupons available for $2-$15 dollars for offers up to $500 from Chase. Some of the most prevalent ones:

• Chase Checking ($300) and Chase Savings ($200) – This requires direct deposit (checking account) and deposit of $15,000 (savings account). The checking account bonus alone is higher than The Points Guy offer even if you choose not to do the savings account offer!
• Chase Checking ($200) and Chase Savings ($100) – This requires direct deposit (checking) and deposit of $10,000 (savings). Same as requirements as The Points Guy offer but $50 better to you!
• Chase Checking ($200) and Chase Savings ($50) – This requires direct deposit (checking) and deposit of $5,000 (savings). Same bonus from The Points Guy offer but deposit requirement are not as high.

3. Google can also be your friend – A quick Google search for “Chase checking account bonuses” returned many hits (obviously) but one of the top ones was a link to Hustler Money Blog who is giving away $300 checking account bonus & a $200 savings account bonus to all his readers with no cost involved. There were also other sites either giving them away or giving readers instructions on how to get a higher bonus. I think the 5 minutes of Googling to pocket a possible extra $50-$350 dollars is worth it.

4. If all else fails, wait – Let’s say you checked all the resources above and either didn’t find an offer you were comfortable with or didn’t want to pay a trivial amount of money for a code off eBay. That’s fine so I would recommend to sit back and wait for a targeted offer (if you have a Chase credit card you will eventually get an offer at some point) or for the public offer to increase. Again, this is just like credit cards. If the bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred was cut to 20,000 points tomorrow, you would wait to apply until the bonus was 40,000 points again right? Take the same approach here with bank accounts.

Conclusion:

The Points Guy is obviously too busy playing with his Apple Watch (seriously how many posts has he had on it?!?) as this is yet another example of his inability to post about the best offers on a particular product. Would you want to do business with a financial advisor who pushes substandard investments because it paid him a fancy commission? Of course not. But that’s why I have these PSA posts to help others avoid this mistake. Sure, my readership is about 1/10000 of The Points Guy but if I helped one person get a few hundred more dollars in their pocket, then this PSA post has done its job.