MyCardBlog

Some financial service companies are really generous to give out some money to you for trying their financial services. If you decide to keep with their services, you can have the money. If you decide not to be a customer of them, you can still have the money. yes, those companies are willing to pay you to try their services. So we get the chances to make some free money by trying out some financial services.

Revolution Money Exchange-–$25 bonus: This promotion runs until May 15 ,2008. This is why I put this bonus at the first spot. If you haven’t signed up yet, you’d better hurry up. Revolution Money Exchange is a new money transfer tool which is similar to PayPal for online shoppers. This is by far the easiest money to get for me. All you have to do is to sign up and link your account at revolution money exchange to your bank account. You are not required to make a small deposit or use it to buy some merchandises. This promotion was covered by this post.

ING Direct—$25 bonus: This sign-up bonus has a small requirement which I think most of us can easily get qualified—make an initial deposit of $250. Your friend who referred you to open an account at ING Direct can get $10 bonus. I like this account very much. The current APY is around 3%. I have a briefly review about the orange savings account at ING.

HSBC Direct—$25 or $50 bonus: This sign-up bonus requires you to open a savings account and make an initial deposit with a certain amount. HSBC Direct was rated as the “Best Online Savings Account” in 2006 by Kiplinger. Actually, instead of using PayPal or ING Direct to do direct deposit, you can also use HSBC Direct to make direct deposit to qualify for certain sign-up bonuses which require you to make direct deposits to your account there. HSBC sign-up bonus expires on May 31, 2008.

ShareBuilder—$50 bonus: If you open an account with this brokerage through their partner websites and make one qualified trade, you can get $50 bonus. The link to get the sign-up bonus can be found here. Costco members can use this link to get $55 bonus.

Prosper—$25 bonus: This is a famous as well as popular person-to-person lending club. You can get much higher interest rate than putting money in your savings accounts or money market accounts. Plus you can get $25 bonus once you make a loan with $50. You can visit www.prosper.com for more details.

eBates—$10 gift card bonus: eBates is a popular cash back website, you can earn extra cash rewards using the links provided by eBates. At the same time, you can still earn cash back from your credit cards. In order to get the $10 bonus, you have to make a qualified purchase through eBates within a certain time period. To minimize you spending, you can purchase a song from iTunes or Amazon.Com which will only cost you $1.0.

The above mentioned sign-up bonuses are quite easy to get. However, you can get much more money by applying for credit cards which offer huge sign-up bonuses. The comprehensive list of sign-up bonus in this May is here.

Nowadays there are many online banks offering all kinds of banking services like: checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts and certificate of deposits (CDs). You might be quite familiar with some of them as they are advertising all the time. However, you might also have never heard of some of them. The later sometimes may even offer better interest rates than other well-known banking institutions. Before you start your relationship with a new bank, you have to do a little bit research about the new bank. You have to make sure that the bank is insured by FDIC and have been in banking business for many years.

Following online banking institutions as recommended here provide good customer support and offer competitive rates.

1. ING Direct

I should admit that ING is not always offering best interest rate in banking industry but they are a very good online bank to deal with. Right now, their ING Orange Savings Account is still offering 3.00% APY. I choose ING as the NO 1 online bank just because of how easy they make everything. I can easily transfer any amount in and out of my account at ING. The online banking interface is also very intuitive. You can also easily refer your friends to open a new account there and both of you can get bonus. Current APY is 3.00%. (Frankly speaking, interest rate is not the most important factor when the rates only differ by 0.5%.)

2. Washington Mutual

This is my another favorite bank by far. If you open a free checking account together with an online savings account, you can get 3.30% APY. With WaMu, you can get free checks for life, cash back on your debit card purchases, free ATM withdraws, free outgoing wire transfers worldwide and most importantly, no monthly fees! Yes, WaMu is so good! You can use their online banking service without any worry. The free of fees, convenience and high yield interest make WaMu checking/savings combination a top choice for all of you.

3. HSBC Direct

If you are not comfortable with WaMu, you can consider HSBC Direct banking as another option. HSBC direct is rated as the Best Overall Online Bank by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance in 2006. HSBC currently offer a very competitive interest rate ~ 3.05% APY. Their service is completely online. You can transfer you money in and out of your current banking accounts for free. Their customer support is also very helpful. However, if you have an account at ING, I really doubt whether you will open another account at HSBC. Of course, if you have an account at HSBC, I will also doubt whether you will open another one at ING. Sometimes, once you have  a high-yield savings  account,  you really don’t need to open another one. HSBC is offering  $75 sign-up bonus through May 31, 2008 (here).

4. E*Trade

E*Trade, known as a discount online broker, is also a very competitive online bank. E*Trade only provides Complete Savings Account and Money Market Account. The reason why I put E*Trade here is you can link your banking account with your brokerage account at E*Trade  and instantly transfer funds between the two accounts. This feature enables you to transfer your funds between a savings account and brokerage account immediately. In this way, you don’t have to wait for several days until an ACH transfer completes.

Of course, there are other online banks provide great service and competitive rates. You can also consider CapitalOne Direct Banking, WT Direct, AmTrust and Emigrant Direct. They also offer great interest rates but other than that you can’t expect more. This post is open to all of you, please feel free to list your top online banking institutions.

Just got an email from ING Direct which is saying ” Enter the $60,000 Automatic Saver Sweepstakes”.

How to enter this sweepstakes?

In order to enter the sweepstakes, you have to either or set up Automatic Savings Plan or direct deposit of at least $100 per month into your ING Orange Saving Account or Electronic Orange Checking Account.

What can you win at this sweepstakes?

Grand prize of $30,000 or one of five $1,000 each month to be paid to your Orange Saving Account or Electronic Orange Account.

I would suggest you guys to do automatic savings plan which I’m using currently. The process is quite simple. Under “Transfer Money” tab, you can see “Bank Account to Bank Account Transfer”. You can set the amount you’d like to transfer from the banking account you’re using now to ING account. The frequency can be set as “Weekly”, “Biweekly”, “Monthly” or “Fifteenth and End of Month”. In this way, you don’t bother to manually transfer your free money from 0 interest checking account to this high interest saving account. It’s all depend on yourself. You can change the amount and frequency at any time. Smartly use the ” Automatic Savings Plan” and take the chance to win $30,000!

I received a lot of emails about my previous posts—“How to Make Money with $100”. I mentioned that if you have an ING orange saving account, you can get up to $250 bonus by referring your family members or friends to open orange saving account. Some of friends are not sure all the features of this account. Many of them are afraid of be charged extra fees by ING. I have been using this account for a long time and like it very much. Hereby I write a brief review with this account.

ING Direct is a branchless or virtual bank in the United States that was funded in 2000. ING Direct is a member of Feral Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). I think most of us have known that the Net Bank was acquired by ING in September 2007.

People open the orange saving account for two goals: 1). Use it to make direct deposit to take advantage of sign-up bonuses offered by other banks or financial institutes; 2). Enjoy the famous $25 sing-up bonus and earn high rate interest (currently 4.2% APY). A unique feature is you don’t have to maintain a minimum balance to get such high interest rate. As long as your account is active, you can enjoy the 4.20% interest rate without any restrictions.

$25 sign-up bonus if you referred by your friends with minimum $250 initial deposit. (Sometimes they offer $50.)

High interest rate, no monthly fees.

No minimum balance required to earn interest.

No fees, no service charges, no penalties, no hidden fees.

24/7 access your online account.

Link other bank accounts can be easily done via mailing checks or online (Maximum 3 external accounts can be linked online. No maximum accounts limit if you link account through mailing checks.)

Safe and secure—FDIC insured.

They offer Automatic Savings Plan which allows you to automatically have a fixed amount of money regularly transfer to your orange saving account from your linked checking account. All you have to do is to specify how much money you would like transferred, and how often you would like it moved. It’s very simple and easy to maximum your earning.

Other comments:

You might have to wait 10 days until your initial deposit becomes available. Your sing-up bonus will show up immediately you open the account. You have to wait 30 days or so to link other accounts online. At the same time, you can link your other bank account by mailing a check to them. Online funds transfer usually can be finished in 3 business days without any charges. No hard pull to open this account. Click here to learn more features.

I have a post about how to make money from by taking the advantage of sing-up bonuses (click here). However, you will always see “Free checking with direct deposit” or “$100 bonus when you open a new account with direct deposit”. Most of banks require direct deposit if you want to get sign-up bonus. The reason is very simple: banks exactly know the influence of bank account with the rest of your financial life. They hope you can use their other services like mortgages, personal loans, auto loans, student loans and other financial products. They assume that you are too lazy to go to contact your payroll office to have your direct deposit redirected to another bank account. It’s true we don’t want to change our bank account frequently. However, we are not satisfied with merely one bank account. There are so many sing-up bonuses from so many banks. Then an “unofficial payroll office” is a must in order to jump in so many deals. ING and PayPal are most discussed and used direct deposit tools.

According to the definition from electronicpaymnet.org, a direct deposit is simply an electronic transfer of funds to your account. This is usually done by a method known as ACH transfer. Unless a real person is looking at the detail of the ACH transfer, there is no real way to automatically tell if the ACH is a payroll deposit or not. Most of the time a bank will count these non-payroll transfers as a direct deposit, which allows you to avoid service fees and/or collect promotional bonuses based on the use of direct deposit. (For more detailed information please refer to electronicpayment.org.)

After searching on the internet via Google, I summarized some most common banks that count ING or PayPal ACH transfers as direct deposits.

Bank of America (ING, PayPal)

Bank One (ING, PayPal)

Chase (ING)

Citibank (ING, Paypal)

Citizens Bank (ING)

Commerce Bank (ING, Paypal)

Compass Bank (ING)

E-Trade Bank (ING)

HSBC (ING)

PNC Bank (Paypal)

Principal Bank (ING)

SunTrust (ING, PayPal)

USAA (ING)

Wachovia (ING, no PayPal)

Washington Mutual (ING, Paypal)

Wells Fargo (no ING)

You can set direct deposit alert on Chase checking account. If the ACH transfer is counted as direct deposit, they automatically send you an email to confirm that. Of course, the prerequisite is you should set the alert by yourself. Please note that you should never call your bank to verify whether or not ING & PayPal are counted as Direct Deposit.

A good news for those who don’t have an ING account right now. ING Direct is offering $50 sign-up bonus for their new customers. It says it’s a special bonus for New York Times readers, but you can sign up here by using the promo code: NY3. Offer expires 09/30/2007.

TO receive the bonus, you have to open an Orange Savings Account with initial deposit of $250. This account features no minimum balance, no fees and 4.30% APY. For those who need the source of direct deposit, ING is a good choice. When paypal is not considered as a direct deposit, they usually take the transfer from ING as direct deposit. When you open the account, a soft pull will reflect on your credit report. Compared to the previous post from which we can get $25 by referred by our friends, this is really a good deal!
This deal has been a history.

If you are referred by one of your friends from ING, you can get $25 bonus! To get the bonus, you must have to use the link sent to you by your friend and deposit $250. You will receive the bonus immediately! (At least from my own experience) The drawback is: you have to wait about 15 days to use the money. After that, you can transfer money as you wish.

PS. That’s really good. If anyone wants to get a referral, you can send email to me.