As you can probably tell by now I’m a sucker for free money, but only if it isn’t too much work.
In grad school, I had a tradition of opening up a new Chase checking account every 6 months, collecting the $300 sign-up bonus, then closing it. I would alternate between my name and my wife’s name every 6 months, thereby satisfying the “not a Chase customer for the past 6 months” criterion to allow the cycle to continue in perpetuity. I’ve done similar promotions with brokerages as well.
In the ensuing years, however, I’ve kind of grown kind of lazy and unwilling to jump through the required hoops. But today, a colleague shared the following link with me. It seemed too good to pass up on.
https://www.us.hsbc.com/checking-accounts/campaigns/offers/
Notes:
- $750/person for top tier bonus.
- No household limit that I could find (hence why I’m opening up an individual account for my wife and an individual account for me).
- Soft credit pull; however you’ll need to unfreeze your credit at all three bureaus for the identify check (my wife’s application failed when we only unfroze 2/3).
- Highest tier bonus requires $5k/month of direct deposits for three consecutive months.
Great discussion here: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/hsbc-350-750-checking-bonus-direct-deposit-is-required/
Given that I opened these accounts tonight and the bonus is months away, I cannot verify that it’s as simple as I hope it will be. I guess I’ll let you know in 4-6 months how it worked out. It’s obviously taxable, so the benefit to us will be $1.5k*(1-0.29)=$1,069 if all goes to plan. Probably worth an hour or two of hassle???