Those of you who come here to learn the best methods to make free money, well I have a special treat today. This ultimate post will help you make $300 from Bank of America’s Keep the Change program (KTC). It is a Bank of America program whereas they will match up to $250 of the change from your debit transactions for the first 3 months. Lets say you buy a coffee drink for $2.25; instead, it will show up as a $3 charge, and the 75 cents goes into your savings account. KTC will also put in another 75 cents to match your savings. In short, you want the charges to be $1.01, $2.01, $3.01, etc to maximize this deal.
Follow these steps:
- Sign up a checking account using Bank of America $50 bonus link.
- For simplicity sake, deposit $500 in your account.
- In order to do keep the change, you must sign up for a savings account(this can be done when opening a checking). **You must set up $25 auto transfer each month from Checking to Savings for Savings account to be free.
- Once you have your checking, savings, and debit card, visit this Keep the Change link to enroll.
- You will have a 3-month window to get the $250 match. Here are a the quickest ways to maximize this offer. 1) Go late at night and pump gas at $1.01 each time. Do this every time you need to fill up your gas tank, so give and take about 253x at $1.01 each time. 2) You could also pay your phone bill, water bill, or electricity bill at $1.01 each time online. Check with your utility company to see the policy on this.
More Tips on this Promotion:
- You want to take a screen shot of each offer just in case you might have to fight them. BOA are notoriously known for not handing out bonus on time.
- You can always take money out of the savings and put it back into your checking account. Watch your balance or deposit more so you won’t over withdraw
- Hard pull will only be done once for your first account, and soft pull everything afterward.
According to their Terms and Conditions, you can have up to 5 Checking Accounts hence 5 Keep the Change participation($250 KTC5x = $1250). At the end of the 3 months, open up another checking account online and enroll again in Keep the Change. You do not have to open another savings account. Simply link the new Checking to the first Savings account. The same rules apply, then do it again after 3 more months until you got 5 total Checking accounts. You should get $250 at each account anniversary. Again, you are following their terms and conditions, and nothing above is illegal. Is it wasting time and money of the merchants? That’s for you to decide. However, you might want to pump gas at a big chain station during the night so you won’t draw attention to yourself.
Find all bank bonuses from our list!
Chase Freedom Visa: This card offers a $200 bonus after $500 in purchases within the first 3 months. This promotional bonus doesn’t come often so apply today before it ends. In addition, you will earn 5% cash back on categories such as gas, groceries, department stores, travel, etc. The categories change every 3 months with 5% cash back up to $1,500 in purchases each quarter. You’ll get 1% cash back on everything else with no minimum purchase or rebate caps.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
bonus is paid at anniversary? is that a 12 month thing? anyone have any experience with this?
Here’s a tip for doing the BofA deal that somebody recommended to me which is helpful. If you are paying a bill in 1.01 type payments (much quicker than pumping gas) than consider getting “roboform” to help fill out long forms with personal information. You enter the information once, and it saves it for you, so with a simple click in the future it fills it all in.
The comcast page does not save your data, so entering that 200+ times can be tedious. With roboform you can save yourself from imputting some 100+ characters each time.
i doubt if it is a soft pull after the first hard one????
Most gas stations in my area won’t allow you to use the car concurrently more than twice. So there goes that idea… looks like $1.01 payments on bills is the way to go.
carlo,
yes bonus is paid about a year later (actually a few weeks after that). So you need to be patient.
Kris gar,
several people have confirmed that only the first one is a hard pull.
I’m on KTC checking #1. This is the first I’ve seen that you don’t need to open up separate savings accounts for each one…I’d like to see some proof that it’s ok.
Carlo,
A few people who have done KTC more than once have confirmed this one Savings account. You can always seek out a banker to see this after you have done the first one. (go something like “hey, me and my wife have one checking each. She wants to do KTC too, but we only have one Savings. I’ve just done KTC. Can she still use the same Savings for KTC for her account?” *wink wink*)
John,
Are you sure? I’m not sure where you are from, but I have no problem doing this at most big chain gas stations. Again, I wouldn’t do this at a mom and pop’s store.
Also, someone over at Fatwallet claims Paypal 1 cent paying also work.
David,
Yeah, that’s a good idea if you are doing the billpay route. Here’s the free version
http://www.roboform.com/download.html
Kris gar,
Yes, only a hard pull once. This is 100% certain.
Greling over at fatwallet has an interesting way setting his $25 transfer for the Savings account to stay fee-free:
”
1.) Every 15th: $25 from BOA MyAccess Checking to BOA Regular Savings (automatic transfer)
2.) Every 20th: $25 from BOA Regular Savings to Alliant Checking (ACH pull)
3.) Every 1st: $25 from Alliant Checking to BOA MyAccess Checking (ACH push)”
So do we know what the limit of 5 means exactly? Is that per household? If this really works and I can get all 5 done and they keep the deal I’d like to assist my g/f in this too. Maybe she could use a different address?
Two huge issues:
1. In the t&c of the KTC program it says: The maximum total match is $250 per year. Limited to five checking accounts.
The way I see it is is that you can’t get more than $250 a year in TOTAL. The limit of 5 accounts is a liftime of 5 account, i.e. you can do it only for five years. I think only one person said he got over 2 years 2-3 KTC bonuses.
2. I doubt one can get the $75 bonus that easily.
The t&c say that
a. Limit one $75 incentive per household every 6 months.
b. Valid only for new MyAccess Checking® accounts. This offer does not apply to current checking customers. If you have one you must wait 3 months before getting a new one.
Don,
1. I think they are talking about for 1 account since the offer said maximum match is $250 for the first 3 months. You could also get 5% after 3 months, and I think that’s why they put the $250 max per year in there. People have confirmed to have gotten more than once, so we know that is possible.
2. Look over my article again over the math part. I stated specifically you could only get the first banking bonus of $75 for new checking and you must have a Boa CC.
You are right about the $75.
As for the muliple accounts, I think I saw only one person confirming that on FW. I think I saw some people mentioning that BoA closed all their accounts. It is a lot of work and a big risk they will close all my BoA accounts. I think I will wait for more data points on that.
Thanks Hustler
I’ve recently finished qualifying for 5 $250 Keep The Change accounts. From November 2011 to early January 2012 is all it took to net $1250 due for disbursement 12 month post accounts opening date.
Key tips to remember.
Open the savings account with over $250 to fund the program as you accumulate the matching funds. I deposited about $300 each time to allow plenty of leeway.
I went to gas stations and utilized the debit function for .03-.05 cent purchases at major chain stations, Shell works very well, especially the company owned ones with the huge car washes. You can do a minimum of 1.2 transactions per minute with about 70 done per hour. Do the math…that’s about $70 per hour into your keep the change account.
Remember there is NO monthly service charges for either accounts (checking or savings) as long as they are opened at the same time AND listed as Keep The Change. So currently I have 10 accounts opened with 8 of them with zero balances. 2 plus months have gone by and I assure you this is true. My other 2 accounts I’m using diligently BTW. Aocounts must be opened for at least 12 months to receive the matching funds. A total bank roll of $300 will do it because as soon as you qualify for the full $250, go to the branch and have your ~$300 rolled over into the next new Keep The Change accounts….repeat 4 more times….
It’s really quite easy to do once you get the hang of it. Standing at a gas pump for about ~4 hours is tedious so spread it out over several days. But it WILL net you $250 each time. Note I did this in the evenings, in freezing Chicago temps. My motivation was thinking about the near $70 per hour benefit that kept me going. For you fair weather savers, NOW is a cinch to do this program. It’s a lot of fun in the end. And a cool grand and some will come in handy huh? Good Luck.