The problem with freebie offers from the bank perspective is that those accounts are usually junk–they get closed after the requirements are up and don’t generally create good relationships with the customers.

Perhaps ‘don’t make your big spending decisions based on freebies’. or ‘don’t open accounts, no matter what the perks, if you have no self-discipline’.

I have been going after the $100+ freebie options to open accounts, and after their requirements are met, I have closed accounts. Again, I do not do this everyday, but 5-6 times a year. I consider this effort as an effort that leads to a free iPad2 type of reward.

When we reverse the thinking above (mine), and ask ourselves, what are we willing to put in to get a FREE iPAD2 with 3G, you will think differently and maybe do what I do.

The logic you are using is wonderful to say that customers like me might be the ones that stay with them, and maybe I will close the account.

Over the years, I have changed accounts based on these offers AFTER THE FACT and not proactively figuring out the benefits and then going after it.

For example, TD Ameritrade offered me $100 to pay 4 Online Bill Payment bills worth more than $25 each, and another $100 for doing 4 debit card transactions worth $10 each. It took me approx 15 min to set it up, 15 min to do bill payment, and 25 min to do 4 transactions on Debit card. Therefore, 55 min to get $200, and I do not make anything close to $200 per hour!!!!!!

My son open 4 bank accounts during the Xmas break and got $725 total, meeting all of the minimums / transactions counts needed at Chase, TCF, MB and ING. Why not? After he plays with all 4 bank accounts, he might decide to close 3 of them, but in the meantime, he is PAID for the efforts of opening the account. This was MORE money than he would have made working part-time at some store at Xmas.

Hope this viewpoint helps.

Kenny

Also, with credit cards, many companies offer 30,000 skymiles (or whatever the particular airline mileage program calls them) for signing up for a new credit card and making one purchase. You can bet we have both signed up for many many of those and then cancel them after the year is up. We have taken free trips all over the place using our skymiles but we always pay our credit cards off every month (if we even use the credit card after the initial purchase).

Around here banks give out iPods.

I read the rules very carefully. I’m required to maintain a $1,500 balance per account to avoid fees or a total of $5,000 in linked accounts. I have to keep the account open six months. I can’t use funds already in the same bank to open the account. Since I have the money already, and it would otherwise have been earning about .25% interest, this has been like buying a six-month CD paying 20% per annum interest.

This blog is rotting my brain.

And my credit union gave us a $50 bonus for setting up direct deposit, which also got us free everything.

So I think there are freebies, but I’ve only seen them in the form of cash!

I signed up for a credit card for a gift card. It’s a rewards card with an equivalent to 1%, but in the form of Disney Dollars. I’m going to use them to help pay for our 2015 trip to Disneyland. I wouldn’t have signed up if not for the gift card.

Interpret that however you like.

*blink*

I did not know that!!!

For laughs: Google “Only 318 days of crap left” or “Trent Hamm’s funniest post.” It appears that not everyone in the PF blogosphere is sitting around singing Kumbaya.