Just a 46-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). Well, I am well on my way to tripling our bank interest this year. Without any credit card rewards. Literally, just talking bank interest.
**Chase
I got a direct mail offer form Chase, that I have yet to redeem. I will probably do it this weekend. (The offer expires in July. All I have to do is open an account and I will get $200 in 10 days. The kind of offers they sell on Ebay. Fine print is I have to keep $1500 in the account for 6 months to avoid any fees and to keep the bonus. That works out to a 26% interest rate on my $1500 for 6 months. I will take it!)
So, that *doubles* the bank interest income I expect to receive this year.
**Hanscom Federal Credit Union
This one is a little more complicated, but the timing is kind of perfect for me.
The details are at My Money Blog:
Check out the referral link and read his blog post. He did a fine job summing it up.
The short explanation is that this CU is offering 6% interest for 12 months. It's called a Thrive account. It is kind of like a C.D. The max you can put into this account is $500 per month.
You need to open a savings account and keep $25 in the account to be a CU member. You need to open a checking account and keep $1 in that account, because you have to fund the Thrive account with the checking account. You can then transfer up to $500/month into the Thrive account. No minimums in the Thrive account, but there is a penalty for withdrawals. These are basically no-fee accounts.
There is a $30 sign up bonus if you use a referral. On the flip side, if you don't qualify otherwise, you have to pay $35 to join some organization, to qualify as a CU member. But these two pretty much offset. & you can potentially earn additional $30 referrals.
The interest earned on the Thrive account will be in the realm of $3,000 x 6%. Around $180 total interest. Since you have to fund it slowly throughout the year. This in effect *triples* my total bank interest for the next 12 months.
At the end of 12 months, the Thrive account is swept into your savings account, I believe, and you will get a renewal notice about interest rate. Which is otherwise about 3% right now. You then start over at $0.
If I had any doubts about the PITA factor of this account, there was an extra bonus for me. My kids have a 7% interest account that cap out at a $500 balance. My elder child is well on the way to $500. SO... I figure in one year if the interest rate on this account reverts to 3% or so, it would be an excellent place to save up kids' money. & heck, 3% isn't a bad deal for myself either. But yeah, I expect it to be a long while before the kids have $6,000 ($500 x 12). So, it might be a good place just to pool some of their savings and track it in excel or something like that.
{My kids have been REALLY motivated by the higher interest rate, but are well aware they won't earn much, anywhere, after they hit the $500 cap. So, I think this will help motivate them to keep saving}.
Minors (over age 8) can also open these Thrive accounts. I didn't look into those details.
I wish I had my referral code to share, but I don't think I will receive it before this promo ends. 6% Promo ends Saturday.
May 8th, 2014 at 02:18 pm 1399558733
May 8th, 2014 at 02:21 pm 1399558865
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May 12th, 2014 at 10:37 pm 1399934259
I do Thank You for telling CCFree about the WF AmEx - I got that one(
May 12th, 2014 at 10:39 pm 1399934354
May 20th, 2014 at 01:18 pm 1400591889
http://www.urefer.com/referral/1742/3076468/s/11