Bonus offers are just one of the ways that bank accounts sometimes try to entice people into opening a new checking account. When you open a new checking account, you might find that you can earn a bit of extra money if you meet the requirements for a specific checking account bonus offer. However, the process of finding a checking account bonus offer can be difficult. Here are four steps to look through checking account bank bonus offers more effectively.
1. Check the Actual Bonus Amount
Most commonly, people are first going to check how much they can earn from a bonus. This is a great place to start, because if you weren’t originally thinking about opening a checking account, you might only want to open an account with a fairly significant bonus. Bonuses can range pretty significantly in dollar amount, but often start at around $50, and can range up above $1,000 in some rare cases.
2. Look Into Whether the Account Has a Monthly Fee
Monthly fees can end up cutting into your bonus amount without you even realizing it. If the bank account that you’re interested in has a monthly fee, make sure that you’re paying attention to the dollar amount of the monthly fee and whether or not you can waive it. If there’s an option to waive the monthly fee, and there usually is, make sure you meet the requirement for it.
3. See the Account’s Minimum Deposit Requirement
A minimum deposit requirement is the amount of money you need to deposit to open an account. An account without a minimum deposit requirement allows you to open an account with any amount of money, while an account that has one will only allow you to open the account if you can meet the deposit requirement. If you’re trying to open an account with a very small amount of money, you’ll want to make sure the deposit requirement isn’t very high.
4. Determine How You Can Qualify for the Bonus Offer
Lastly, you need to make sure you’re looking at qualification requirements to receive the bonus. There are many different possible requirements, including spending a certain amount of money, setting up direct deposit for a specific dollar amount, or making a certain number of transactions. While these requirements are often less taxing than requirements for credit cards, they can still be difficult to attain if you’re not prepared for them.
Conclusion
A checking account bonus offer can be a great way to save some extra money and front-load a significant amount of value to your checking account. However, not every checking account bonus offer is right for every person. If you’re looking for the best checking account bonus offers for your specific situation, you’re going to need to look at a variety of elements. These four tips can help you save as much money as possible when you first open a new checking account with a bonus offer.