663: Bank Bonuses: How I Make $200/Hr Opening New Bank Accounts

0:00:05 200 bucks an hour opening new bank accounts. Now, if you’ve ever been curious about the
0:00:11 side hustle of bank bonuses, Dylan is your guy, dylonsbonuses.com. Dylan, welcome to
0:00:12 the Side Hustle Show.
0:00:14 Hi, Nick. Pleasure to meet you.
0:00:18 Likewise. Now, you’ve been doing this three years on the side of your day job. This is
0:00:22 the podcast where we’ve been helping people make extra money since 2013. But if memory
0:00:28 serves, we’ve never really done a dedicated conversation about bank bonuses. So let me
0:00:32 try and summarize it. Or this is my understanding. Now, banks are hungry for new customers. So
0:00:37 they’ll actually pay you to join and set up an account, sometimes hundreds of dollars,
0:00:43 because they know it’s kind of a pain or at least perceived to be kind of a pain to switch
0:00:49 banks. Now, do you recall your first bank bonus or maybe a recent one that comes to mind? You’re
0:00:53 doing this consistently. I think it’s really interesting, not just as a one-off thing.
0:00:57 I do remember the first one. When I first moved to Connecticut three years ago,
0:01:01 I needed a new bank. Citizens Bank, when I got my new address in Connecticut,
0:01:07 they emailed me a little flyer that said, $300 for a new checking account, $300 for a new savings
0:01:12 account. And I flipped it over. What kind of scam is this? Usually junk mail is like a million. Well,
0:01:17 you know, why are they only promising me? But I read the terms of service. I looked it up. It’s like
0:01:21 Citizens is a real bank in Connecticut. I don’t think we have that in Texas. It’s like five steps.
0:01:24 You open an account. You move your direct deposit there.
0:01:25 Okay.
0:01:31 And it has to be like a minimum of $500 a month or whatever it was. And three to six months later,
0:01:37 you get $300 for the checking account in cash in the account. And then you get $300 in the savings
0:01:43 account in cash in the account. No phone calls, nothing complicated. All you got to do is move your
0:01:47 direct deposit over there and keep the account open and you get the money.
0:01:50 Okay. So that’s the one challenge. If you’re doing this consistently is keeping
0:01:57 the accounts open and juggling all of the different offers that you have going on, but not a huge
0:02:01 barrier or burden. And since in this case, it sounds like you were moving and I was going to switch
0:02:02 banks anyways, because I’m moving.
0:02:08 You can open more than one new account as long as you’re able to meet the requirements. I do one a week,
0:02:14 every week. I’ve done that consistently for almost six months. And any problem I’ve encountered has
0:02:15 been small and it’s been solvable.
0:02:22 Okay. Where do you find these deals? It sounds like, okay, the first one, they sent me a postcard
0:02:27 or they sent me a letter in the mail. Where else do you recommend people look for signup bonuses like
0:02:29 this if they want to dabble?
0:02:36 The premier resource is doctor of credit.com. Okay. That’s where you find anything, any questions
0:02:40 you have, they’re going to have a frequently asked questions about bank bonuses. They’re going to
0:02:44 any, any problem you have, there’s going to be a brief answer for you.
0:02:50 Yeah. I’ve been on the site before for something else. No, this is definitely a familiar domain. And so
0:02:58 I’m on best bank account bonuses for March, 2025. And the little scroll bar is so small. He must have
0:03:00 hundreds listed here.
0:03:02 At any given time, there’s going to be like 150 or so.
0:03:08 Do you just work your way down the list? Do you sort by most lucrative? Like how do you go about
0:03:09 what makes, what’s something worth going after?
0:03:15 This is kind of sorted straight away for you. Okay. Like section one is going to be mostly
0:03:19 nationwide or there’s going to be all nationwide bonuses. You look at the top there right now at the
0:03:25 time of this recording, it’s a $900 checking savings bonus from Chase. And then you go one,
0:03:30 two, three, four, 18 down before you get to like, you know, 150 bucks for this bank, a hundred bucks,
0:03:36 50 bucks. So you can tell at a glance that the best bonuses are at the top. Okay. Then you go to the
0:03:41 second section, savings account bonuses are slightly more complicated than checking account bonuses.
0:03:47 Nothing you can’t handle, but just so you know, business bank bonuses usually have to have an EIN,
0:03:52 but sometimes they just let you open with your social. Very rarely they make you have an LLC,
0:03:56 but again, that’s, you don’t need to worry about that because there’s going to be plenty of bonuses
0:04:00 that are not complicated at all. Okay. And many side hustle show listeners are going to have
0:04:04 a business account that they could open. So that does that double your chances or is that just
0:04:09 adding more complexity to it? Opening a business account, it might take,
0:04:13 sometimes you have to go in branch. Most of the stuff you can do online in your underwear,
0:04:19 like I said, okay. Business account bonuses, sometimes you have to go in branch. So that does
0:04:25 add to my stated goal time here of an hour a week. That’s how long it should take you or less to open
0:04:31 one account. Yeah. Okay. And I’m giving a pretty good cushion there. So a business account can be
0:04:35 a little complicated, but you actually want one business. If you don’t have one already and you can
0:04:39 get one with the bonus here, if you don’t have one already, because the reason why that has a utility
0:04:44 is that gives you a flexibility to where you don’t have to move your direct deposit from your payroll
0:04:49 or your W-2 income or however you get your checks. If you have a business account and you have cash in
0:04:57 that, usually you can pay yourself to the other account, your new bonus account from your business
0:05:04 account. And that counts to meet the direct deposit requirements because it’s an ACH pay.
0:05:10 Oh, okay. So instead of doing it through your employer, your own business, your side hustle
0:05:14 could be your employer of record to meet those direct deposit requirements. Okay.
0:05:19 And that’s how I do it too, because my employer has been myself for at least six months. And that’s
0:05:22 how I’ve gotten all my bonuses. And that’s how a lot of people do it too.
0:05:27 Okay. Interesting. Because that’s always like, well, what does the HR department think? If you’re
0:05:30 calling them up every week, be like, hey, can you change my routing number? Can you change the
0:05:33 direct deposit? I was like, what is this guy doing? Just pick a bank and stick with it. But no,
0:05:37 that makes more sense. When I did have a steady paycheck, there was, I could go in the computer
0:05:42 at work or at my old job, there was a ADP app, but maybe in other apps as well, there’s going
0:05:47 to be an option to go in and change the account without having to call. You don’t have to call
0:05:52 your boss. You don’t have to call HR. You go into the app, you change, you put the routing
0:05:57 number and the account number of your new bank and your next check is going to go there. And that’s
0:06:01 how you get your bonus. So that’s an easy way to do it without having to open a business account.
0:06:09 Got it. So I’m seeing like an example, this Chase $900 checking slash savings bonus. I’m assuming this
0:06:13 is for people who don’t already have, you can’t already have a Chase account or is like, you just
0:06:16 have to open a new one and meet these minimum requirements.
0:06:20 One of the questions that she asked me was, can you do this forever? Are you going to run out of
0:06:25 bank accounts eventually? So here’s, you know how credit cards, uh, you’re familiar with the credit
0:06:28 card game, right? And your, your, your listeners are going to be mostly familiar with that.
0:06:33 Right. Okay. So the credit card game, usually the way it works is they say in their terms of service,
0:06:38 you can’t have had a bonus in the past 12 months or 24 months or something like that.
0:06:40 Yeah. Usually like a couple of years. Sure.
0:06:45 If we look in the fine print, I don’t want to read through the whole thing, but on doctor of credit for
0:06:51 bonus and when you click on the website to actually go to chase.com or go to citizens or bankofamerica.com
0:06:57 and you see their bonus in their terms of service, it’s going to say not eligible if, and it’s usually
0:07:03 going to be one of two things. One, if you have had an account in the last six months or 12 months,
0:07:10 or two, if you’ve been the receiver of a bonus in the past six or 12 months. So basically what that
0:07:16 means is let’s say I open the account today at chase and then 90 days later, I get my bonus.
0:07:22 Okay. 90 days after that, I closed the account. We’re at six months now. Okay. You have to wait
0:07:28 another six months or a year and then you can open another chase account. Okay. Okay. So you can only
0:07:36 hit each bank once every one to two years. The thing is there’s 52 weeks in a year. There’s 150 bonuses
0:07:42 on doctor of credit.com right now. You can do one bonus a week and not run out of them. So while
0:07:48 you’re waiting on your chase bonus week two, you open up, I don’t know what’s the next best one on
0:07:54 here. Wells Fargo. I’ve gotten them twice. I’ve gotten citizens for 300 and 300 a couple of years ago.
0:07:59 And, and then three months ago, I got them again. They gave me another 300 and they know who I am.
0:08:05 There’s no fraud in this. Okay. They, they, they, they just, they just love paying you extra money
0:08:08 to open up accounts and they, you close it a little later. And then two years later, you open another
0:08:13 one. They give you another three, four or 500 bucks. Yeah. I was going to ask if it becomes like I’m
0:08:17 picturing the, uh, the back room at the casino with your, your posters up on the wall and say, Hey,
0:08:21 don’t, don’t let this guy play blackjack anymore. There are people that have been doing this for 15
0:08:26 years. And if you go to the secondary resource, I wanted to tell you about was bank bonus one zero
0:08:31 two on Facebook. And those are basically the only resources you’re going to need for months and
0:08:36 months. And you can search around if you want to, if you can find other resources, you can use my
0:08:41 website. I’m going to, you know, uh, because I know, I know how to do this. Hopefully I can accelerate
0:08:45 your learning, like implement it into your life, like a little better, just in case you have any
0:08:49 misgivings or you have a few extra questions, but mostly you’re going to want to use
0:08:55 doctrofcredit.com and bank bonus one or two on Facebook. Now the other potential hang up here
0:09:01 is the, so the direct deposit, if you can set that up, sometimes that’s going to have a minimum,
0:09:05 right? Where it’s like, it’s got to be a minimum of $500. So if I’m sprinkling that out from my
0:09:09 business account into 10 different places, like all of a sudden it’s like, well, do I have that much
0:09:15 cash to draw from? The other piece of it is the minimum balance requirements where that Chase one,
0:09:19 I think it was like $15,000 deposit. This Wells Fargo one was like,
0:09:25 a quarter million to make the highest tier bonus bonus. And so it’s like, now I’ve, if I have my
0:09:30 funds spread out and have to like maintain certain minimums that may become another
0:09:32 bottleneck in the process.
0:09:36 What if I don’t have $250,000? How am I going to get these? Well, I’ll tell you what,
0:09:41 you don’t need $250,000 to get, you only need that for this Wells Fargo bonus and maybe a couple
0:09:48 other premier brokerage bonuses, but that’s 1% or 2% of the bonuses that you have available to you.
0:09:52 Most of the bonuses you have available to you are going to be checking accounts with very basic
0:10:00 requirements that you can meet if you have either $500 in cash or a steady paycheck, any steady
0:10:05 paycheck. It doesn’t matter if you’re making 500 a week or 5,000 a week. If you have one steady
0:10:12 paycheck, you can get at least a couple of bank accounts a month. Okay. Or if you have $500 in cash.
0:10:16 Okay. Okay. And if you have more than that, that makes it a little easier, but it’s still
0:10:17 possible with very little cash.
0:10:24 Yeah. Just search or filter by the ones that have lower requirements. That makes sense. For a while,
0:10:30 like Robinhood was doing like a huge match on, you transfer your brokerage stuff over to us. It will
0:10:36 pay you like a one or 2% bonus. So if you were transferring, you know, half a billion dollars worth
0:10:41 of assets, like, oh shoot, it was a huge, huge, relatively speaking bonus for not a lot of work.
0:10:46 Yeah. I saw that. The thing that dissuaded me from that was from transferring my IRA over to them
0:10:50 was I noticed that you weren’t fully vested in it for something like 36 months.
0:10:53 So you had to keep it open for three years in that case?
0:10:58 It was almost like, don’t quote me on this, but there was something where it might’ve been where
0:11:03 you couldn’t move it for several months also. So it’s like, number one, you don’t, you don’t get
0:11:10 the one or 2% for 36 months. So it’s like, that’s first off, it’s, if it’s 2% on a significant amount
0:11:15 of money, then sure. Okay. Maybe, but I mean, do your financial planning. I don’t have a billion dollars.
0:11:22 So I, 2%, 2% of my IRA is not worth locking it up for a long time. No.
0:11:28 Yeah. And that’s kind of what has dissuaded me from really pursuing these because like, okay,
0:11:34 open a new credit card, meet the minimum spend, get this bonus relatively easy, relatively low lift.
0:11:39 But it’s like, I’ve had the same bank account for 25 years. I don’t know. It’s like been a long time
0:11:45 since switching banks. It’s like with all the direct deposit or all the auto pay, all of, you know,
0:11:51 so many different things are tied to that where it’s like, it’s a pain to switch it, switch it over.
0:11:55 And so your setup is to have like, like the business bank account as like your primary
0:11:59 inflow. And you like minimize the, the work required to do all the switching.
0:12:03 You know, that, that’s a good problem for me to remember, Nick, that if you have like a bunch of
0:12:07 auto pay, you don’t have to close your other bank account. You don’t have to close whatever your bank,
0:12:12 who’s your, who’s your primary bank right now? Chase. Chase. Okay. The only reason you would need to
0:12:15 close your account is if you want to open another one 18 months later and get a bonus.
0:12:20 That’s like, you can leave that open. I leave my Chase business account is going to stay open
0:12:24 forever. Okay. No, that’s a, no, that’s a good, that’s a good reframe, right? You don’t have to,
0:12:27 you don’t, you have to close it. And if you’re doing this, you don’t necessarily have to like
0:12:31 permanently switch in your mind. Like it’s just a game, a game that you’re playing. Okay.
0:12:34 No, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t have, no. Thank you for asking that. That’s a good,
0:12:35 that’s important point.
0:12:39 No, no, no. That’s, that’s, that’s helpful for me because I always would frame it as like,
0:12:43 oh, is it worthwhile switching? It’s like, no, the switching costs are too high, but oh,
0:12:45 if I’m just playing a bonus game, then sure.
0:12:49 No, you just open a new, you don’t have to move anything there except put some money in there.
0:12:54 And you can just, sometimes you can shoot it from your account, but usually you’re going to need to
0:12:58 make sure you’re either meeting it with a direct deposit or shooting it from a business account.
0:13:02 More with Dylan in just a moment, including the potential impact on your credit score
0:13:07 and other risks associated with going after bank bonuses right after this.
0:13:13 Some businesses are quite adept at helping you part with your money, with their crazy high bills,
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0:14:19 On the Side Hustle Show, we spend a lot of time on generating ideas and the marketing tactics that
0:14:25 drive traffic and make sales and intentionally less time on the behind-the-scenes mechanics of how those
0:14:30 sales actually happen. And the reason for that is for tons of Side Hustle Show guests like Randall
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0:15:28 selling today. Shopify.com slash Side Hustle. Okay. The other thing that I’ve noticed on this doctor of
0:15:37 credit list is they say opening this account is a soft credit pull. Can you speak to the impacts on
0:15:43 your credit report of doing this consistently? There’s not one. As far as I know, there’s a soft
0:15:49 pull that doesn’t lower your score. I don’t think lenders care about that. Hard pulls are what you
0:15:52 need to worry about. Okay. And when I say worry, I just mean you just need to be aware.
0:15:58 If you have too many inquiries in a short period of time, that can make an impact.
0:16:04 A hard pull. But there’s going to be maybe four on this list that are a hard pull. But doctor of credit
0:16:09 is going to tell you. They’re going to say when you click on it. And you’re going to need to give
0:16:13 them permission when you’re set. So if you don’t want a hard pull on your credit right now, it’s not worth
0:16:18 it because they’re going to give you the same $200, $300, $400 as the next account. So skip the ones
0:16:23 that are hard pulls. Yeah. And then you keep it open long enough, usually, like you said, 30, 60,
0:16:28 90 days, however long you have to do it. And then did I hear you say you kept it open another three
0:16:34 months, another period beyond that? Best practice is to leave the account open past when you get the
0:16:40 bonus. Okay. Now, the optimal way to do things, you would think theoretically, as soon as you get the
0:16:45 bonus, close the account. The thing is, the bank might notice it to reset your clock or whatever.
0:16:50 Yeah. Yes. So you might think you want to close the account straight away so that instead of keeping
0:16:55 it open the full six months, the thing is, banks might take notice of that. And maybe they won’t
0:17:00 let you open another account next time. Okay. So that’s if even if you’re selfishly concerned,
0:17:04 don’t close the account straight away, leave it open a couple months, just keep opening other
0:17:08 accounts in the meantime, and just let that one cool down after you get your bonus. If you want,
0:17:12 put a little activity on it, put a little debit card purchase here or there, don’t no need to
0:17:19 complicate things, but you don’t want to like make it obvious that they’re not making a lot of money
0:17:26 off of you because they want good customers. Right. So don’t stand out as somebody who’s just going to
0:17:28 hit them for some money and leave. Don’t make yourself a target.
0:17:30 Got it. How many accounts do you have open right now?
0:17:32 I have 20 open right now.
0:17:37 And so you’re having to spread direct deposits, so to speak, you know, across a dozen or more
0:17:41 different, different places. You just do it once or twice. You usually, usually you just have to do
0:17:44 that once for each account. You just use that. They just have to get one.
0:17:48 Okay. One direct deposit checks the box. Like, okay, he set it up.
0:17:52 And then you can forget, basically you can almost forget about it until you get the bonus three months
0:17:57 later. Okay. Got it. How do you keep track of all that? So it’s more intimidating, like working on
0:18:01 20 at a time. I mean, I guess there are more complex problems in the world to solve, but like
0:18:06 picturing like a chart of like the timeline to the bonus and like the requirements. Like,
0:18:09 how do you, um, is there an app for that? Like, how do you do it?
0:18:13 Yes. You want a spreadsheet. Here’s the fields that I have. And I’ll show you a picture of this
0:18:18 later or something. If you want to put it on whatever bank name is your field one. And that’s where you
0:18:23 put Chase, Wells Fargo, U.S. Bank, Chime Bank, Bank of Everything. That’s the name of the bank.
0:18:28 My second field I have there is account type. I want to remember if it’s a checking account,
0:18:35 a savings account, a business account, or a portal. Okay. Cause that, that helps me know at a glance
0:18:42 whether I’m eligible for the next checking account or savings account. So next thing is reward amount.
0:18:46 That’s the cash money you’re going to get for each account. So at Chase reward amount, I have up
0:18:56 there $900. Wells Fargo, $2,500. One bank, $250. PSECU, $300. So that’s, that’s your third field.
0:19:01 You got bank account type bonus amount. Yeah. Then you want to have your open date when you open the
0:19:04 account. Then you want to have your close date. And obviously that’s not going to be filled out
0:19:07 straight away. You’re going to fill that out later when you close it so that, you know, next time
0:19:13 when, if, if you need to wait 12 months, yeah. When you can reopen. Next thing you want to know is fees.
0:19:18 Okay. Now that’s one thing that you’re going to, this is part of why tracking is important. And when
0:19:21 I, when I say tracking, I just mean having a spreadsheet and knowing what you need to do.
0:19:27 You sometimes half the accounts, there’s no fees. Okay. But some of the accounts, you know,
0:19:31 they might charge you a $5 maintenance fee or a $12 maintenance fee. I saw one crazy bank,
0:19:37 bank of Hawaii was like a $25, but that’s, you know, that’s crazy. You want to put in one of your
0:19:45 fields your fees and you don’t need to know what the fee is. I just put, uh, for chase $2,000 D. And
0:19:50 what that means is I need to make sure that in my bank account once a month, there needs to be at
0:19:56 least $2,000 going into that account in order to avoid the maintenance fee. And usually it’s not that
0:20:02 much. Usually it’s something like, okay. Citizens is like make one transaction. And I chatted what is
0:20:06 one. Well, you know, I have a citizens checking and a citizen saving, move a dollar over to savings
0:20:10 and then move it back. That satisfies your, yeah, that’s a transaction. Okay. I mean, yeah, yeah.
0:20:14 And then another one is going to be, make sure there’s like Santander was make sure there’s at
0:20:19 least three debit card transactions. And that’s easy too. You just, if you use Amazon, do a $5 reload
0:20:24 three times once a month. So that’s what you put in, in your fees field so that you can avoid
0:20:30 paying a $5, $15 maintenance fee, whatever it is. Okay. Next thing on your spreadsheet is, um,
0:20:36 paid by. Got it. So when you read the, the, the fine print, it’s going to say after you meet the
0:20:42 requirements, 90 days before you get the bonus. Okay. So you have to meet the requirements. Usually
0:20:47 within 30 days, you have to move your deposit over, make sure they get the 500 bucks. And then 90 days
0:20:51 later, you get the bonus. You don’t get the bonus straight away. You have to wait. You have to wait
0:20:56 like a few months, mostly. Yeah. Chase, they pay you quick. They pay in 25 days or faster. And Bank of
0:21:01 America is the same thing. So you want to put when you expect to get paid. Okay. Just so that
0:21:06 if that date has passed, then you, you know, that you either made a mistake or the bank made a mistake.
0:21:10 And it’s usually you, it’s usually you, you messed up meeting one of the eligibility things.
0:21:15 And then the last thing is notes. That’s where I put random stuff like, uh, like relay. I have a note
0:21:19 here for relay bank that they have some useful services besides just the bonus I got from them. So I’m
0:21:24 going to leave the relay bank open just because they, they have some like helpful like software
0:21:29 and stuff. That’s it. Bank name, account type, bonus amount, open date, close date fees, paid by and
0:21:37 notes. That’s it. Okay. What do you see is maybe the biggest risk of somebody starting down this path?
0:21:41 I mean, I guess you could dip your toes, do one or two and see how it works, get comfortable with it
0:21:46 and then go, go nuts with it. Like you have, like, you might think the risk is, Oh, what if I, uh,
0:21:50 what if I lose my money? Or it’s like, what if I put money? What if I need the money? Like,
0:21:53 like people ask that some, like, what if I put the money in? What if I need the money? Well,
0:21:57 it’s your money. It’s a checking account. You can use it. So that’s not a risk. Like moving,
0:22:03 moving your direct deposit over to your checking account is, is not a risk. Now it’s possible
0:22:09 theoretically, like let’s say the bank detects fraud or something like that. Now, now I don’t know why
0:22:14 they would, it’s never happened to me, but let’s say, let’s say you need to pay your bills and you
0:22:19 moved your money over to it over to your new bonus account and you get hit with a fraud alert and your
0:22:24 money’s locked up. Usually, unless it’s the weekend, even if it is the weekend, cause it’s fraud,
0:22:28 usually like they’ll handle that on the weekend too. You call them up, whatever they need your ID or
0:22:33 something, and then you get your money back. So that’s a slight risk. I guess one thing that actually
0:22:40 did happen to me was Fidelity bank. And as far as I know, they’re the only bank that’s done something
0:22:43 this egregious and a long, cause a lot of people were talking about it on bank bonus one Oh two
0:22:51 Facebook. I moved something like $5,000 there with an ACH pull. Don’t, don’t, don’t worry about the
0:22:59 difference between these, but just, I moved $5,000 there that they locked it up for like 25 days.
0:23:07 Okay. And that didn’t ruin my life or anything, but there was no way to get that $5,000 faster than
0:23:13 the 25 days they needed. Okay. But that is one bank and that, and I’m just telling you the truth.
0:23:17 That’s the only time anything like that has happened to me. Yeah. Okay. And it was just
0:23:23 Fidelity bank and everybody was talking about it. And if I paid attention to bank bonus one Oh two
0:23:30 Facebook, I would have seen don’t do an ACH pull to Fidelity bank cause they’re locking it up for 25
0:23:35 days for some reason. Okay. But most of your banks are not, not going to do that. And if they do lock
0:23:39 it up, it’s not going to be for 25 days. It’s going to be for a few days or a week while they figure out
0:23:44 who you are. But remember that’s very unlikely to happen. Yeah. Then you can just, yeah, get to get to
0:23:50 the bottom of this. Yes. No, that’s fair. Any mistakes that you’ve made or something you would
0:23:56 do differently if you were starting over? The biggest mistake I made was I learned that you
0:24:00 could do this three years ago and I didn’t take it seriously until six months ago. Cause I thought it
0:24:04 was too good to be true. They’re going to, they’re going to catch on to me. I’m not going to be able
0:24:10 to open accounts anymore. They’re going to send people to break my legs. Okay. But I could have been
0:24:16 making an extra two, 300 bucks a week for two and a half years that I didn’t just because I was busy,
0:24:22 you know, busy working full time. I didn’t, I didn’t want to take one hour, maybe, maybe two out
0:24:29 of my week to just figure out exactly how to do this and do one a week. So not starting sooner would be
0:24:33 my biggest mistake. Second mistake, which is not really a mistake, but a problem since you asked me
0:24:38 about problems. Also, the second biggest problem I encountered was because I changed addresses
0:24:43 recently. Whenever you go to open an account, you put in your personal information, your address,
0:24:48 your social, whatever. Sometimes they want like a picture of your ID. And if the, if the information
0:24:52 in the form doesn’t match your, like, let’s say you haven’t moved your ID over with the DMV,
0:24:56 that could make a problem and they’re going to fail. They can just automatically, it’s going to,
0:25:02 can’t, can’t, can’t do it. Cause if you know, their system thinks you’re still in Texas or Knoxville
0:25:08 or whatever. Okay. So you need to get your ID changed over with the public records with the DMV.
0:25:13 Yeah. I had a problem because I had changed addresses twice since coming to Connecticut.
0:25:18 Some public records were spitting out that I was still over in new Britain when I’ve moved elsewhere
0:25:25 since then. So you’ll know if you get a declination, when you go to open an account, failure to identify,
0:25:31 they’ll usually tell you that. And you’ll know that one of the, whatever record that they’re pulling,
0:25:35 it has the wrong address for you. The wrong phone number was doing it for me one time.
0:25:40 Like I, like I have two different phone numbers or if they asked me like what company I, I gave some,
0:25:45 I gave some, some smart aleck answer to some company I worked for that doesn’t exist 10 years ago.
0:25:51 And that was getting me a declination from what, you know, one bank. I don’t remember which,
0:25:53 so you got to make sure your public records are square as well.
0:25:59 Yeah. That’s something I kind of forgot to mention. Like the, you know, what would,
0:26:03 what would trigger a rejection in the credit card world? It’s, well, you already have too
0:26:08 many open accounts with us. You had too many recent inquiries or we don’t like your credit
0:26:13 utilization ratio. Like any number of things could cause a rejection on that front. And by the way,
0:26:17 you know, they just made a hard pull to tell you that they were rejecting you, but less so in this
0:26:27 case. Yeah. The other big red tape thing that you need to know about is checks systems and EWS that
0:26:32 stands for early warning systems. You need to know about checks and EWS. Okay. And Dr. Credit has a page
0:26:40 on this. It’s not complicated. Basically checks and early warning systems are what’s the word? Consumer
0:26:47 reporting agencies and they keep track of how many new accounts are opened in your name. And the purpose
0:26:53 of this is let’s say Nick Loper, let’s say checks tracks, Nick Loper and Nick Loper opened 20 checking
0:27:00 accounts today. The bank is going to pull your checks and see, Oh, somebody’s trying to scam Nick Loper by
0:27:06 opening a bunch of accounts in his name. Yeah. It’s like an identity theft thing. Yes. So checks and EWS
0:27:15 are primarily detecting identity theft. You could get a declination because the bank is checks sensitive
0:27:24 and they see you’ve opened a lot of accounts. Okay. The thing is that’s to find fraud. That’s part of why
0:27:29 you’re limiting yourself to one a week is because you don’t want to have too high of a velocity or else
0:27:33 you’re going to trigger fraud. Okay. So that’s what banks see automatically. Just what their
0:27:39 computers see is if your checks numbers are really high in a short amount of time, you might get
0:27:44 declined just because they think that somebody’s trying to steal your identity. Got it. But, but you
0:27:48 found one a week doesn’t run into that issue. No, it doesn’t. And it doesn’t for, for most people
0:27:53 either. The only biggest problems I had was just because I changed my address. Okay. Well, Dylan, this is
0:27:57 really interesting stuff, a side hustle that ever really considered, but you’re, you’re making a good case
0:28:03 for it. Dylan’s bonuses.com is a, is where you can find them. Let’s wrap this thing up with your number
0:28:10 one tip for side hustle nation. Get started and don’t give up. It’s real. Make sure to enlist help
0:28:16 from me or the community at doctor of credit or bank bonus one or two Facebook, and you’ll start seeing
0:28:21 gains sooner rather than later. Okay. So don’t, I wouldn’t put it off if I was you. I wish I wish I had
0:28:26 started sooner and it is real. I have a second number one tip. The second number one tip is be
0:28:32 nice to the bank and be nice to your fellow bonus hunters. Don’t close accounts early and don’t make
0:28:38 a scene. Don’t make a scene. What would constitute making a scene? You don’t call the bank unless you
0:28:44 need to. That’s basically it. Don’t take up their customer service reps time. Don’t make them pay a
0:28:48 whole lot more attention to you than they need to. Okay. Yeah. Don’t, yeah. Don’t be the squeaky
0:28:54 wheel. Yeah, exactly. No, it’s super interesting. I, my mentality was always like this full on switch
0:29:00 and it’s like, yeah, it’s a $300 to switch my entire financial backing. Like, I don’t know if it’s
0:29:06 worthwhile, but to open a new separate account and not looking at it necessarily as a one-off thing,
0:29:11 but something that you can do consistently, just working your way down the list. Is it going to replace
0:29:16 your day job? Probably not, but relatively simple, relatively low risk, not a lot of specialized
0:29:20 skills required. Dylan mentioned his tracking spreadsheet. If you can keep track of that,
0:29:26 you’re in good shape and you can use those extra funds to pay down debt, invest, seed money for a
0:29:31 new side hustle, lots of different ways to go about it. So Dylan, appreciate you sharing your insight.
0:29:35 Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up
0:29:41 sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place.
0:29:45 And of course we’ll link up the resources that Dylan mentioned in this episode as well.
0:29:50 That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in until next time. Let’s go out there and make
0:29:55 something happen. And I’ll catch you in the next edition of the side hustle show. Hustle on.