Category: Bank Bonuses

  1. The American Express Business Platinum card has several new sign up bonuses that include travel credits. Depending on where you are, the color of your socks, what type of browser you’re using, whether or not you liked Walter Mondale, or which geolocation your IP address is in, you’ll see one of:

    – 150,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel
    – 200,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel
    – 250,000 Membership Rewards + $500 off of $2,500 with AmEx Travel

    All three require $20,000 spend in three months earn the Membership Rewards. Each bonus is also available via referrals, and if you don’t see the offer you want, try changing how you feel about Walter Mondale and a new browser; even the same referral link can give different offers.
  2. The Cardless Avianca Elite personal American Express has an increased tiered sign-up bonus of:

    – 20,000 miles after a single purchase
    – 80,000 miles after $10,000 spend in six months

    Cardless limits you to one credit card per lifetime, so pretend to be a cat for nine cards? As far as Cardless cards go, there are worse ones I guess.
  3. The Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless has a new sign-up bonus of 50,000 Bonvoy points and three free night awards of 50,000 points each after $6,000 spend in six months. This will likely be available via referrals next week.

    I’d prefer a 200,000 point sign-up bonus personally, but for a $95 annual fee card this isn’t a terrible offer.
  4. Bank of America has a new personal checking $300 sign-up bonus with promo code PSJ300CIS through May 31. To qualify for the bonus, you need to receive at least $2,000 in direct deposits within 90 days. Personal checking accounts at Bank of America are useful for three reasons:

    – Fast track to Platinum Honors status
    – $5,000 or more in a checking account changes application rules and eases approvals
    – Reminds you of how bad your real bank’s UI could be

    These are churnable every 12 months.
  5. The Chase British Airways Avios personal Visa card has a heightened sign-up bonus of 100,000 Avios after $7,500 spend in six months, and this offer will likely be available via referrals next week.

    I’d rather just get an Ink card with the same sign-up bonus and annual fee to have transferrable points and to avoid the account reporting to any credit agencies, but you do you.
  6. The Barclay Wyndham Earner personal Visa has a pre-qualification tool available online. (Thanks to David)
  7. Staples has fee-free $200 Mastercard gift cards starting Sunday and running through the following Saturday, limit nine per transaction.

    These are Pathward gift cards.

Bank of America’s prototype advanced date of birth picker.

  1. The Citi AAdvantage Aviator Business card has an increased sign-up bonus of 75,000 AAdvantage miles after $5,000 spend in five months, and the annual fee is waived for the first year.

    You can double dip these if you do it and have multiple tax IDs by applying for one card, waiting 8 days, then applying for a second card. Don’t hit minimum spend until you have both cards in hand, and definitely don’t get more than three AA card bonuses in a year unless you want Toby to visit you in your sleep.
  2. Wells Fargo Deals has a card-linked offer for 10% back on $100+ at Hilton properties through May 16, limit $65 cash back.
  3. OfficeDepot / OfficeMax stores have $15 off of $300+ in Mastercard purchases through tomorrow night and according to their press release, “this time it workie for realsies 🥺👉👈”. For best results, buy these in even multiples of $300.

    These are Pathward gift cards.
  4. There’s an interesting $625 bonus stack for a SoFi Checking and Savings new account bonus requiring $5,000 in direct deposits within 45 days, and it requires the use of a referral link:

    1st: $325 bonus from SoFi via referral
    2nd: 45,050 MyPoints, worth approximately $300 (about 0.67 cents per point but can be more valuable with games)

    The $325 bonus doesn’t exist without a referral link. I’d prefer you find a friend or other player’s referral link to use to maximize your payout, but you can email me for one if you can’t find another option. Yes, I’m extra. Note that the stack requires you to click the referral link first, then click the MyPoints link and apply through that tab. (Thanks to USCCS)

Have a nice weekend!

ODOM personified.

  1. There are two Hawaiian credit cards issued by different banks that each have a sign-up bonus of 70,000 HawaiianMiles after a single purchase, and each has a $99 annual fee:

    – Bank of Hawaii
    – Barclays

    Since these are two separate banks it’s easy to hold both, and since both transfer to Alaska MileagePlan, they’re both actually good bonuses. (Thanks to bb)
  2. There’s a new no-lifetime language (NLL) link for the American Express Business Gold card for 200,000 Membership Rewards after $15,000 spend, and it’s largely popup resistant. This modified link isn’t risk free, but is probably low risk.
  3. The American Express Delta Gold personal card has a sign-up bonus of 50,000 SkyMiles after $3,000 spend in six months and a $500 statement credit after making a purchase of any size with Delta within six months available on the checkout page when making a flight booking, even if you don’t complete the payment.

    The annual fee is also waived in the first year, and you get a $100 somewhat easily gameable Delta Stays credit too.
  4. The Chime Prepaid card has a $600 opening bonus, $500 provided by InboxDollars (or $525 for new accounts) and $100 provided by Chime, for opening a new account and receiving two direct deposits of $200 or more each within 30 days.

Happy Monday!

How do you tell the two Hawaiian cards apart? One has glasses, duh.

The CFPB is effectively non-existent 🪦, which means that when a bank holds your money and shouldn’t, doesn’t award a bonus when they should, changes credit card terms in an illegal manner, or sends all of your personal details to an adult website owner, you don’t have an easy, central resource for fixing it. You still have tools at your disposal to help though (ordered by of likely ease of use):

  • Your state banking regulator and charter administration
  • The BBB
  • Your state banking commission
  • The FDIC for banks or the NCUA for credit unions
  • State small claims court
  • The OCC (ya down with OCC? yeah you know me!)
  • FTC
  • Arbitration (most banks have these clauses in their paperwork, and they’re almost always obligated to pay for the arbitration too)

Don’t shy away from the arbitration option when the numbers get into five digits, if the bank obviously behaved incorrectly your odds are probably great.

Happy Wednesday!

OCC’s current official coffee mug.

  1. Do this now: Register for double points at Choice hotels through April 7, but the offer is only good on up to four stays because how dare Choice encourage you to stay more than 4 times?
  2. Mastercardgiftcard.com has fee-free gift Mastercard cards with promo code MCGIFT.

    You can buy up to $10,000 of these per account per rolling 24 hours. Don’t use an American Express because it won’t earn points, and make sure you have an air-tight liquidation plan because these InComm issued cards have gotten difficult.
  3. The CFPB has effectively been shut down. Expect more on this later, but for now assume that no government agency will take action on your CFPB feedback from this time forward, and explore other options when you demand satisfaction.
  4. You’ve got until February 28 to finish earning AA Loyalty Points for the current elite year, and right now PointsYeah is offering 25 miles per dollar through the AA eShopping portal in case another 2,500 miles will make the difference for you. It didn’t for the CFPB though so there’s that.

How to recognize a churner in the post-CFPB world.

  1. The Bank of America Alaska Business card has an increased offer of 75,000 miles after $4,000 spend in 90 days. You can usually get multiple cards with multiple businesses.

    In the before times, I loved getting multiple Alaska cards each time a heightened offer came out. Now that (a) BofA’s payment options aren’t what they used to be, and (b) the Alaska and Hawaiian merger completed so you can transfer Membership Rewards → Hawaiian → Alaska, this card is mid at best; especially when Membership Rewards card bonuses approach a half-million points with a little 15x fun.
  2. US Bank has a $900 sign-up bonus for a new Platinum Business checking account with promo code Q1DIG25 through March 31. You’ve got to bring $25,000 in new funds within 30 days and maintain them through day 60, and you’ve got to have 5 debit, ACH, or other transactions.

    If you time everything perfectly, that means that you only need funds in the present for 31 days, which is an effective APR of 43%. Last I checked, 43% was slightly better than, let’s say Chase, was paying on checking accounts too. Having this account will help with US Bank business credit card approvals, like the $750 Business Leverage or $750 Triple Cash rewards cards. (Thanks to DDG)
  3. The American Express Delta SkyMiles personal cards have increased sign-up bonus for direct links and referrals, but the increased bonuses require the American Express random number generator to work in your favor. The offers:

    – Gold: 80,000 miles after $2,000 spend in six months, annual fee waived first year
    – Platinum: 90,000 miles after $3,000 spend in six months
    – Reserve: 100,000 miles after $5,000 spend in six months

    If you don’t see the heightened offer, try switching browsers, using incognito mode, or poking an Ed Bastion voodoo doll.

Have a nice weekend, and watch for a guest post tomorrow!

Q: Why does the Ed Bastion voodoo doll have a cape?
A: AmEx works better that way.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m on an annual blogging vacation for the last two weeks of the year. To make sure you still have content, some of the smartest members of the community have stepped up with guest posts in my absence. Special thanks to Graham, the author of the TC Tailwind Blog, who candidly shares his story on the dark side of credit card churning for writing this post. I’ll see you on January 1!

tl;dr: If you have multiple players with different tax situations, being smart about who earns taxable referral or bank account bonuses could more than double your post-tax earnings. Or it could make no difference at all. Calculate the difference it would make for you, by punching in a fake 1099 to last year’s TurboTax file.

Credit card sign up bonuses and points from spend aren’t usually considered taxable, but referral bonuses, checking account promos, and plenty of other kinds of rewards are. This tax treatment means that if you’re a high earner, you could be paying up to half of the bank-assigned value of your points in taxes. For some pathologically high points valuations, this could even result in owing more in taxes than what you think your points are worth. These facts make it worth doing what you can to optimize the tax treatment of your points.

In investing, Asset Location is the concept of putting assets with poor tax treatment into tax advantaged accounts (eg. holding bonds in your 401k to avoid paying annual taxes on the dividends). In the churning world, those of us with multiple players can practice a similar concept, by locating our taxable earnings with the player with the most favourable tax situation.

How much of a difference can this location strategy make? Let’s run a few scenarios. In each scenario, we’ll assume that:

  • We’re going for a $900 Chase checking bonus (while SideShowBob233 howls faintly in the distance).
  • It is equally convenient in our churning plans for P1 or P2 to receive the bonus.
  • There are no special tax situations, such as ample capital losses that one player or the other could use to balance out their earnings.

Here are a few scenarios:

  • The Best:
    • P1 is a very high earner in California and would be subject to a 37% Federal, 3.8% NIIT, and 12.3% State tax on the bonus, for a total of 53.1%.
    • P2 has no income, can take the standard deduction, and will be subject to no state or federal tax.
    • Results: P1 would pay $477.90 in taxes, keeping only $422.10 of the bonus. P2 would pay $0 in taxes, and keep the full bonus. Earning the bonus with the right player would more than double your earnings from $422.10 to $900.
  • The OK:
    • P1 and P2 live in Florida, and would be subject to only a 24% and 12% Federal tax respectively on the bonus.
    • Results: P1 would pay $216 in taxes, keeping $684 of the bonus. P1 would pay $108 in taxes, keeping $792 of the bonus. Earning the bonus with the right player would moderately increase your bonus earnings by $108 from $684 to $792.
  • The Wash:
    • P1 and P2 are married and file their taxes jointly, meaning they share a tax rate.
    • Results: It doesn’t matter who gets the bonus, it will increase their joint taxes.

Does taxable bonus location matter to you? Taxes are complicated, so it’s hard to know for sure. You might be able to eyeball the impact by looking at the above scenarios and seeing which looks closest to your situation. For an even more exact estimate, boot up last year’s TurboTax (or other tax software of your choice). Try punching in a fake 1099-INT with $900 in Box 1, for P1 and then for P2. That will tell you how much more each player would have paid in taxes last year, if they’d gotten this Chase bonus.

P.S. If you’re interested in more nitty-gritty financial optimization content like this, check out my blog. There’s a subscribe box at the bottom of every page, if you’re interested in seeing new content as it comes out. And if you think I’ve missed something, gotten something wrong, or should write future posts on a particular topic, please drop me a line.

– Graham

SideShowBob face-planing while howling in the distance.

Bank of America’s written rules and their real life behavior never quite matched one another. Some of the consequences of the mismatch include:

  • Business cards aren’t really limit one per product type, despite the language
  • Hard-pulls are combined for between 1 and 30 days, generally
  • Phantom credit lines can exist in Bank of America’s systems for a year after you close a card

There’s more detail about the quirks and app-o-ramas in the Bank of America Followup post from 2021, but in the past several months things have changed. Multiple data points now suggest that if you apply for more than 3-4 cards on the same day:

  • You may be still be approved for all cards on the same day
  • A day or two later, only one card shows up in your online profile
  • Several days later, emails or letters show up saying all applications but your first are denied
  • If you’re really unlucky, Bank of America will close your accounts (this is rare)

This isn’t entirely consistent, but it happens enough that it’s time for some new guidance on Bank of America app-o-ramas:

  • Stick to between one and three cards for safety
  • Stagger your applications across days

Generally you’ll still only have one hard pull on your credit report too, and you can freeze your reports after the first application to make sure.

Good luck!

Following up requires a followup to the shirt too.