Quite often, banks offer a promotion of some kind for opening a new account with them, and the best kind is when they deposit money directly into your account, which is what this blog post is all about.
Specifically, Chase is offering a $200 cash bonus for opening a Total Checking account with them and setting up a direct deposit, no questions asked.
I’ve personally been through this and just to prove that, here’s a screenshot of my $200 bonus being deposited into my account.
How to Get the $200 Bonus
There are 2 main steps to get the $200 bonus:
- Open a new Chase Total Checking account
- Set up a recurring deposit
The first step is easy. I signed up in less than 4 minutes, and had access to my new account right after that.
But to be honest, for the second step, it was not 100% clear how much your direct deposit needs to be.
Under the section where it talks about how to avoid the monthly fee, it does say that the $12 fee would be waived for “Electronic deposits made into this account totaling $500” per month.
I personally hate bank fees and I don’t want to pay them, so I used this as a baseline for my direct deposit.
Your other options are having a daily balance of at least $1,500 in your account, or keeping an average daily balance of $5000 or more in all of your Chase accounts combined.
But because we need the direct deposit to qualify for the bonus, that’s the option I chose.
I get paid every other week, so what I did was set up a $250 direct deposit from my paycheck into my Chase checking account, and within 5 days of my first direct deposit, I saw my $200 bonus get deposited into my account.
How Long Must You Keep the Account Open?
At a minimum you need to keep the account open for at least 6 months, otherwise Chase will deduct the bonus when you close your account.
My plan for now is to close my account after 7 months and walk away with essentially a very safe 7% return on my investment.
In the past, I’ve seen other offers from Chase for $500 to do pretty much the same thing, but I didn’t take action and missed out because the offer expired.
And if you’re reading this after that, Chase might have a similar offer that you can take advantage of.
Let me know if you have any questions about this topic below and I’ll do my best to help you out.
Please consider using my personal referral link to get your bonus https://accounts.chase.com/raf/share/2776028228 and I’ll get a reward too!
