← The Side Hustle Show
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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
We just got back from this family trip and it's always great to unplug and spark some creativity by getting outside of your normal routines. But there's a part of me that doesn't love the house just sitting empty while we're gone. Like, here's an asset that could be making us money, maybe even offsetting the cost to the trip. This is where Airbnb's Co host network comes in. Whether you're working remotely or you're constantly on the road for your 9 to 5, or you're splitting time between homes, your house doesn't have to sit empty. Instead of letting it drain your wallet, you're still paying for it. Let it fill your wallet with a little help from a professional local co host. Extra income without the extra stress. That's the side Hustle dream, right? The key is finding the right support to help make it happen. Airbnb co hosts handle everything from creating a standout listing to managing reservations to communicating with guests, even helping you style the space. They take care of the details so you don't have to be on call all the time. If you're ready to make your space work for you, take the next step and find a great co host for your property. Just head over to Airbnb.com host and now onto the show. 200 bucks an hour. Opening new bank accounts now. If you've ever been curious about the side hustle of bank bonuses, Dylan is your guy. Dylan's bonuses.com Dylan, welcome to the side Hustle Show.
- [01:13]
Dylan
Hi Nick, pleasure to meet you.
- [01:15]
Nick Loper
Likewise. Now, you've been doing this three years on the side of your day job. This is the podcast where we've been helping people make extra money since 2013. But if memory serves, we've never really done a dedicated conversation about bank bonuses. So let me try and summarize it. Or this is my understanding. Now banks are hungry for new customers, so they'll actually pay you to join and set up an account. Sometimes hundreds of dollars because they know it's kind of a pain, or at least perceived to be kind of a pain to switch banks. Now, do you recall your first bank bonus? Or maybe a recent one that comes to mind? You're doing this consistently I think is really interesting, not just as a one off thing.
- [01:54]
Dylan
I do remember the first one when I when I first moved to Connecticut three years ago, I needed new bank, Citizens Bank. When I got my new address in Connecticut, they emailed me a little flyer that said $300 for a new checking account. $300 for a new savings account. And I read the, I flipped it over. What kind of scam is this? Usually junk mail is like a million. Well, you know, why are they only promising me? But I read the terms of service, I looked it up. It's like Citizens is a real bank in Connecticut. I don't think we have that in Texas. It's like five steps. You open an account, you move your direct deposit there.
- [02:26]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [02:26]
Dylan
And it has to be like a minimum of 500amonth or whatever it was. And three to six months later you get 300 for the checking account in cash in the account. And then you get 300 in the savings account in cash in the account. No phone calls, nothing complicated. All you got to do is move your direct deposit over there and keep the account open and you get the money.
- [02:48]
Nick Loper
Okay? So that's the one challenge, if you're doing this consistently is keeping the accounts open and juggling all of the different offers that you have going on, but not a huge barrier or burden. And since in this case it sounds like you were moving and they're like, oh, I was going to switch banks anyways because I'm moving, you can open.
- [03:05]
Dylan
More than one new account as long as you're able to meet the requirements. I do one a week every week. I've done that consistently for almost six months. And any problem I've encountered has been small and it's been solvable.
- [03:17]
Nick Loper
Okay, where do you find these deals? It sounds like, okay, the first one, they sent me a postcard or they sent me a letter in the mail. Where else do you recommend people look for sign up bonuses like this if they want to dabble?
- [03:31]
Dylan
The premier resource is doctorofcredit.com okay. That's where you find anything. Any questions you have, they're going to have frequently asked questions about bank bonuses. They're going to. Any, any problem you have, there's going to be a brief answer for you.
- [03:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I've been on the site before for something else. No, this is definitely a familiar domain. And so I'm on best bank account bonuses for March 2025. And the little scroll bar is so small he must have hundreds listed here.
- [04:01]
Dylan
At any given time there's going to be like 150 or so.
- [04:04]
Nick Loper
Do you just work your way down the list? Do you sort by most lucrative? Like how do you go about what makes, what's something worth going after?
- [04:11]
Dylan
This is kind of sorted straight away for you. Okay. Like section one is going to be mostly nationwide or it's going to be all Nationwide bonuses. You look at the top there right now at the time of this recording, it's a $900 checking savings bonus from Chase. And then you go 1, 2, 3, 4, 18 down before you get to like, you know, 150 bucks for this bank. 100 bucks. 50 bucks. So you can tell at a glance that the best bonuses are at the top.
- [04:36]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [04:37]
Dylan
Then you go to the second section. Savings account bonuses are slightly more complicated than checking account bonuses. Nothing you can't handle. But just so you know, business bank bonuses usually have to have an ein, but sometimes they just let you open with your social. Very rarely they make you have an llc. But again, that' you don't need to worry about that because there's going to be plenty of bonuses that are not complicated at all.
- [04:59]
Nick Loper
Okay. And many side Hustle show listeners are going to have a business account that they could open. So does that double your chances or is that just adding more complexity to it?
- [05:08]
Dylan
Opening a business account, it might take. Sometimes you have to go in branch. Most of this stuff you can do online in your underwear, like I said. Okay. Business account bonuses, sometimes you have to go in branch. So that does add to my stated goal time here of an hour a week. That's how long it should take you or less to open one account. Yeah, okay. And I'm giving a pretty good cushion there. So a business account can be a little complicated, but you actually want one business, if you don't have one already. And you, you can get one with the bonus here if you don't have one already. Because the reason why that has a utility is that gives you a flexibility to where you don't have to move your direct deposit from your Payroll or your W2 income or however you get your checks. If you have a business account and you have cash in that, usually you can pay yourself to the other account, your new bonus account from your business account, and that counts to meet the direct deposit requirements because it's an ach pay.
- [06:05]
Nick Loper
Oh, okay. So instead of doing it through your employer, you can your your own business, your side hustle could be your employer of record for to meet those direct deposit requirements. Okay.
- [06:15]
Dylan
And that's how I do it too, because my employer has been myself for at least six months. And that's how I've gotten all my bonuses. And that's how a lot of people do it too.
- [06:23]
Nick Loper
Okay, interesting. Because that's always like, well, you know, what does the HR department think if you're calling them up every week, being like, hey, can you Change my routing number. Can you change the direct deposit? Like, what is this guy doing? Just pick a bank and stick with it. But that makes more sense.
- [06:35]
Dylan
When I did have a steady paycheck, there was. I could go on the computer at work or at my old job. There was an ADP app, but maybe in other apps as well, there's going to be an option to go in and change the account without having to call. You don't have to call your boss, you don't have to call hr. You go into the app, you change, you put the routing number and the account number of your new bank, and your next check is going to go there. And that's how you get your bonus. So that's an easy way to do it without having to open a business account.
- [07:02]
Nick Loper
Got it. So I'm seeing, like on example, this Chase $900 checking savings bonus. I'm assuming this is for people who don't already have. You can't already have a Chase account or is like, you guys have to open a new one and meet these minimum requirements.
- [07:17]
Dylan
One of the questions that she asked me was, can you do this forever? Are you going to run out of bank accounts eventually? So here's. You know how credit cards. You're familiar with the credit card game, right? And your listeners are going to be mostly familiar with that, Right? Okay. So the credit card game, usually the way it works is they say in their terms of service, you can't have had a bonus in the past 12 months or 24 months or something like that.
- [07:40]
Nick Loper
Yeah, usually like a couple years. Sure.
- [07:41]
Dylan
If we look in the fine print, I don't want to read through the whole thing, but on doctor of credit for each bonus, and when you click on the website to actually go to chase.com or go to citizensorbankofamerica.com and you see their bonus in their terms of service, it's going to say not eligible if. And it's usually going to be one of two things. One, if you have had an account in the last six months or 12 months, or two, if you've been the receiver of a bonus in the past six or 12 months. So basically what that means is let's say I open the account today at chase and then 90 days later I get my bonus. Okay. 90 days after that, I close the account. We're at six months now. Okay. You have to wait another six months or a year and then you can open another Chase account.
- [08:27]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [08:28]
Dylan
Okay. So you can only hit each bank once every one to two years. The thing is there's 52 weeks in a year. There's 150 bonuses on Doctor of Credit.com right now. You can do one bonus a week and not run out of them. So while you're waiting on your Chase Bonus, week two, you open up. I don't know what's the next best one on here? Wells Fargo. I've gotten them twice. I've gotten citizens for 300 and 300 a couple years ago. And then three months ago, I got them again. They gave me another 300, and they know who I am. There's no fraud in this, okay? They just love paying you extra money to open up accounts, and you close it a little later. And then two years later, you open another one, they give you another 3, 4, 500 bucks.
- [09:12]
Nick Loper
Yeah. I was going to ask if it becomes like, I'm picturing the back room at the casino with your posters up on the wall. Hey, don't. Don't let this guy play blackjack anymore.
- [09:20]
Dylan
There are people that have been doing this for 15 years. And if you go to the secondary resource I wanted to tell you about was Bank Bonus 102 on Facebook, and those are basically the only resources you're going to need for months and months. And you can search around if you want. If you can find other resources, you can use my website. I'm going to, you know, because I know, I know how to do this. Hopefully I can accelerate your learning, like, implement it into your life, like, a little better, just in case you have any misgivings or you have a few extra questions. But mostly you're going to want to use drofcredit.com and Bank Bonus 102 on Facebook.
- [09:54]
Nick Loper
Now, the other potential hang up here is the. So the direct deposit, if you can set that up, sometimes that's going to have a minimum, right? Where it's like, it's got to be a minimum 500. If I'm sprinkling that out from my business account into 10 different places, like, all of a sudden it's like, well, do I have that much cash to draw from? The other piece of it is the minimum balance requirements. Where that Chase one, I think is like $15,000 deposit. This Wells Fargo one was like a quarter million to make the highest tier bonus. And so it's like, now if I have my funds spread out, I have to, like, maintain certain minimums. That may become another bottleneck in the process.
- [10:33]
Dylan
What if I don't have $250,000? How am I going to get these? Well, I'll tell You what? You don't need $250,000 to get. You only need that for this Wells Fargo bonus and maybe a couple other premier brokerage bonuses. But that's 1% or 2% of the bonuses that you have available to you. Most of the bonuses you have available to you are going to be checking accounts with very basic requirements that you can meet if you have either $500 in cash or a steady paycheck. Any steady paycheck. It doesn't matter if you're making 500 a week or 5,000 a week. If you have one steady paycheck, you can get at least a couple bank accounts a month or if you have $500 in cash.
- [11:13]
Nick Loper
Okay, okay.
- [11:14]
Dylan
And if you have more than that, that makes it a little easier, but it's still possible with very little cash.
- [11:19]
Nick Loper
Yeah, just search or filter by the ones that have lower requirements. That makes sense. For a while, like, Robinhood was doing like, a huge match on, you know, transfer your brokerage stuff over to us and we'll pay you, like, a 1 or 2% bonus. So if you were transferring, you know, half a billion dollars worth of assets, like, oh, shoot, it was a huge, huge, relatively speaking bonus for not a lot of work.
- [11:42]
Dylan
Yeah, I saw that. The thing that dissuaded me from that was from transferring my IRA over to them was I noticed that you weren't fully vested in it for something like 36 months, so you had to keep.
- [11:52]
Nick Loper
It open for three years.
- [11:54]
Dylan
In that case, it was almost like, don't quote me on this, but there was something where it might have been where you couldn't move it for several months also. So it's like, number one, you don't. You don't get the 1 or 2% for 36 months. So it's like, that's first off. It's. If it's 2% on a significant amount of money, then sure, okay, maybe. But I mean, do your financial planning. I don't have a billion dollars, so I.2% of my IRA is not worth locking it up for a long time. No.
- [12:24]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And that's kind of what has dissuaded me from really pursuing these. It's like, okay, open a new credit card, beat the minimum spend, get this bonus relatively easy, relatively low lift. But it's like I've had the same bank account for 25 years. I don't know. It's like, been a long time since switching banks. It's like with all the direct deposit or all the auto pay, all of, you know, so Many different things are tied to that where it's like, it's a pain to switch it, switch it over. And so your setup is to have like, like the business bank account as, like, your primary inflow. How do you, like, minimize the, the work required to do all the switching?
- [13:00]
Dylan
You know, that's a good problem for me to remember, Nick, that if you have like a bunch of autopay, you don't have to close your other bank account. You don't have to close whatever your bank. Who's your, who's your primary bank right now?
- [13:10]
Nick Loper
Chase.
- [13:11]
Dylan
Chase. Okay. The only reason you would need to close your account is if you want to open another one 18 months later and get a bonus. That's. You can leave that open. I leave. My Chase business account is going to stay open forever.
- [13:22]
Nick Loper
Okay. No, that's, that's a good, that's a good reframe. Right? You don't have to, you don't, you have to close it. And if you're doing this, you don't necessarily have to like, permanently switch in your mind. Like, it's just a game, A game that you're playing. Okay.
- [13:33]
Dylan
No, no, no, no. You don't have. No. Thank you for asking that. That's a good. That's important point.
- [13:37]
Nick Loper
No, no, no, that's, that's, that's helpful for me because I always would frame it as like, oh, is it worthwhile switching? It's like, no, the switching costs are too high. But, oh, if I'm just playing a bonus game, then sure, no, you just open a new.
- [13:48]
Dylan
You don't have to move anything there except put some money in there. And you can just. Sometimes you can shoot it from your account, but usually you're going to need to make sure you're either meeting it with a direct deposit or shooting it from a business account.
- [13:59]
Nick Loper
More with Dylan in just a moment, including the potential impact on your credit score and other risks associated with going after bank bonuses. Right after this. In the next 60 seconds, 23 entrepreneurs are going to hire their next team member on Indeed. I'm excited to partner with Indeed for this episode because when you need to find amazing candidates fast, you need the powerful matching tech and unmatched reach of our sponsor, Indeed. Plus, Indeed's sponsored jobs help you stand out and hire even faster. It'll make your job post jump to the top of the page for your relevant candidates. And the proof is in the results. Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed get 45% more applications. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. That's why for my next hire, I'm using Indeed. And there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to Indeed.com SidehustlesHow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. On the side Hustle show. We spend a lot of time on generating ideas and the marketing tactics that drive traffic and make sales, and intentionally less time on the behind the scenes mechanics of how those sales actually happen. And the reason for that is for tons of side Hustle show guests like Randall Pulfer, Mike Ettenberg, Becky Beach, Lou Rice and more, the business behind the business is all the same. It's Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify and that's why it's the number one checkout on the planet. Plus, when you use Shopify, you'll be giving your customers access to shop pay, which boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning a lot less abandoned carts and a whole lot more sales going. Shopify is the commerce platform that helps you sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling online, in person, in their feed, and everywhere in between. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout used by dozens of successful side Hustle show guests. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comsidehustle all lowercase go to shopify.com side hustle to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comsidehustle okay, the other thing that I've noticed on this Doctor of Credit list is they say opening this account is a soft credit pull. Can you speak to the impacts on your credit report of doing this consistently?
- [16:37]
Dylan
There's not one as far as I know. There's there's a soft pull doesn't that doesn't lower your score. I don't think lenders care about that. Hard pulls are what you need to worry about. Okay. And when I say worry I just mean you just need to be aware.
- [16:49]
Nick Loper
If you have too many inquiries in a short period of time like that can be that can make an impact a hard pull.
- [16:56]
Dylan
But there's going to be maybe four on this list that are a hard pull. But doctor of Credit is going to tell you they're going to say when you click on it and you're going to you're going to need to give them permission when you're set. So if you don't want a hard pull on your credit right now, it's not worth it because it's. They're going to give you the same 2, 3, $400 as the next account. So skip the ones that are hard pulls.
- [17:16]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And then you keep it open long enough, usually like you said, 30, 60, 90 days, however long you have to do it. And then. Did I hear you say you kept it open another three months, another period.
- [17:26]
Dylan
Beyond that, Best practice is to leave the account open past when you get the bonus. Okay. Now if you. The optimal way to do things, you would think, theoretically, as soon as you get the bonus, close the account. The thing is, the bank might notice.
- [17:41]
Nick Loper
It to reset your clock or whatever. Yeah.
- [17:43]
Dylan
Yes. So you might think you want to close the account straight away so that instead of keeping it open the full six months, the thing is, banks might take notice of that and maybe they won't let you open another account next time.
- [17:54]
Nick Loper
Okay?
- [17:55]
Dylan
So that's if, even if you're selfishly concerned, don't close the account straight away. Leave it open a couple months. Just keep opening other accounts in the meantime and just let that one cool down after you get your bonus. If you want, put a little activity on it. Put a little debit card purchase here or there. Don't. No need to complicate things. But you don't want to, like, make it obvious that they're not making a lot of money off of you because they want good customers. Right. So don't stand out, right. As somebody who's just gonna hit them for some money and leave. Don't make yourself a target.
- [18:25]
Nick Loper
Got it. How many accounts do you have open right now?
- [18:28]
Dylan
I have 20 open right now.
- [18:30]
Nick Loper
And so you're having to spread direct deposits, so to speak, you know, across a dozen or more different places.
- [18:35]
Dylan
You just do it once or twice. Usually. Usually you just have to do that once for each account. You just. You just. They just have to get one.
- [18:42]
Nick Loper
Okay. One direct deposit checks the box. Like, okay, he set it up.
- [18:45]
Dylan
And then you can forget. Basically, you can almost forget about it until you get the bonus three months later.
- [18:50]
Nick Loper
Okay, got it. How do you keep track of all that? That's what's more intimidating, like, working on 20 at a time. I mean, I guess there are more complex problems in the world to solve, but, like picturing like a Gantt chart of, like, the timeline to the bonus and like, the requirements, like, how do you. Is there an app for that, like, how do you do it?
- [19:06]
Dylan
Yes. You want a spreadsheet. Here's the fields that I have and I'll show you a picture of this later or something. If you want to put it on whatever bank name is your field one and that's where you put Chase, Wells Fargo, US Bank, Chime bank, bank of. That's the name of the bank. My second field I have there is account type. I want to remember if it's a checking account, a savings account, a business account, or a portal. Okay. Because that, that helps me know at a glance whether I'm eligible for the next checking account or savings account. So next thing is reward amount. That's the cash money you're going to get for each account. So at Chase, reward amount I have up there $900 Wells Fargo 2,501 Bank $250 PSECU $300. So that's, that's your third field. You got bank account type, bonus amount.
- [19:55]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [19:55]
Dylan
Then you want to have your open date. When you open the account, then you want to have your close date. And obviously that's not going to be filled out straight away. You're going to fill that out later when you close it so that you know next time when, if, if you need to wait 12 months. Yeah.
- [20:07]
Nick Loper
When you could reopen.
- [20:09]
Dylan
Next thing you want to know is fees. Okay. Now that's one thing that you're going to. This is part of why tracking is important. And when I, when I say tracking, I just mean having a spreadsheet and knowing what you need to do. You sometimes half the accounts, there's no fees. Okay. But some of the accounts, you know, they might charge you a five dollar maintenance fee or a $12 maintenance fee. I saw one crazy bank, bank of Hawaii was like a $25. But that's, you know, that's crazy. You want to put in one of your fields, your fees, and you don't need to know what the fee is. I just put for Chase, $2,000. D. And what that means is I need to make sure that in my bank account once a month there needs to be at least $2,000 going into that account in order to avoid the maintenance fee. And usually it's not that much. Usually it's something like, okay, citizens is like make one transaction. And I chatted. What is one? Well, you know, I have a citizen's checking and a citizen saving. Move a dollar over to savings and then move it back. That satis.
- [21:05]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's a transaction. Okay.
- [21:07]
Dylan
I mean, yeah, yeah. And then Another one is going to be make sure there's like Santander was, make sure there's at least three debit card transactions. And that's easy too. You just, if you use Amazon, do a five dollar reload three times once a month. So that's what you put in, in your fees field so that you can avoid paying a 5$15 maintenance fee, whatever it is.
- [21:25]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [21:25]
Dylan
Next thing on your spreadsheet is paid by.
- [21:28]
Nick Loper
Got it.
- [21:28]
Dylan
So when you read the, the fine print, it's going to say after you meet the requirements, 90 days before you get the bonus. Okay. So you have to meet the requirements usually within 30 days. You have to move your deposit over, make sure they get the 500 bucks and then 90 days later you get the bonus. You don't get the bonus straight away. You have to wait. You have to wait like a few months mostly. Yeah, Chase, they pay you quick, they pay in 25 days or faster. And bank of America is the same thing. So you want to put when you expect to get paid.
- [21:56]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [21:57]
Dylan
Just so that if that date has passed then you know that you either made a mistake or the bank made a mistake. And it's usually you, it's usually you, you messed up meeting one of the eligibility things. Then the last thing is notes. That's where I put random stuff like, like relay. I have a note here for Relay bank that they have some useful services besides just the bonus I got from them. So I'm going to leave the Relay bank open just because they, they have some like helpful like software and stuff. That's it. Bank name, account type, bonus amount, open date, close date, fees paid by and notes. That's it.
- [22:28]
Nick Loper
Okay, what do you see as maybe the biggest risk of somebody starting down this path? I mean, I guess you could dip your toes, do one or two and see how it works, get comfortable with it and then go, go nuts with it. Like you have, like you might think.
- [22:41]
Dylan
The risk is, oh, what if I, what if I lose my money? Or like what if I put money, what if I need the money? Like, like people ask that some like what if I put the money, what if I need the money? Well, it's your money. It's a checking account, you can use it. So that's not a risk. Like moving your direct deposit over to your checking account is not a risk. Now it's possible theoretically. Like let's say the bank detects fraud or something like that. Now I don't know why they would, it's never happened to me. But let's Say you need to pay your bills and you moved your money over to your new bonus account and you get hit with a fraud alert, and your money's locked up, usually. Unless it's the weekend. Even if it is the weekend, because it's fraud. Usually, like, they'll handle that on the weekend, too. Usually you call them up, whatever they need your ID or something, and then you get your money back. So that. That's a slight risk, I guess. One thing that actually did happen to me was Fidelity Bank. And as far as I know, they're the only bank that's done something this egregious and a long. Because a lot of people were talking about it on bank bonus 102 Facebook. I moved something like $5,000 there with an ACH. Pull. Don't. Don't worry about the difference between these. But just, I moved $5,000 there.
- [23:52]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [23:53]
Dylan
That they locked it up for like 25 days. Okay. And that didn't ruin my life or anything. But there was no way to get that $5,000 faster than the 25 days they needed. Okay. But that is one bank. And that. And I'm just telling you the truth. That's the only time anything like that has happened to me. Okay. And it was just Fidelity bank, and everybody was talking about it. And if I paid attention To Bank Bonus 102 Facebook, I would have seen. Don't do an ACH poll to Fidelity bank because they're locking it up for 25 days for some reason.
- [24:28]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [24:28]
Dylan
But most of your banks are not. Not going to do that. And if they do lock it up, it's not going to be for 25 days. It's going to be for a few days or a week while they figure out who you are. But remember, that's very unlikely to happen.
- [24:39]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Then you can just. Yeah. Get to. Get to the bottom of this.
- [24:42]
Dylan
Yes.
- [24:43]
Nick Loper
No, that's fair. Any mistakes that you've made or something you would do differently if you were starting over.
- [24:49]
Dylan
The biggest mistake I made was I learned that you could do this three years ago, and I didn't take it seriously until six months ago because I thought it was too good to be true. They're going to. They're going to catch on to me. I'm not going to be able to open accounts anymore. They're going to send people to break my legs. Okay. But I could have been making an extra 2, 300 bucks a week for two and a half years that I didn't.
- [25:11]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [25:12]
Dylan
Just because I was busy at, you know, busy Working full time. I didn't, I didn't want to take one hour, maybe, maybe two out of my week to just figure out exactly how to do this and do one a week. So not starting sooner would be my biggest mistake. Second mistake, which is not really a mistake, but a problem, since you asked me about problems. Also, the second biggest problem I encountered was because I changed addresses recently. Whenever you go to open an account, you put in your personal information, your address, your social, whatever. Sometimes they want like a picture of your id. And if the, if the information in the form doesn't match your, like, let's say you haven't moved your ID over with the dmv, that could make a problem and they're going to fail. They can just automatically. It's going to. Can't do it because if, you know, their system thinks you're still in Texas or Knoxville or whatever. Okay, so you need to get your ID changed over with the public records with the dmv. Yeah, I had a problem because I had changed addresses twice since coming to Connecticut. Some public records were spitting out that I was still over in New Britain when I've moved elsewhere since then. So you'll know if you get a declination when you go to open an account. Failure to identify. They'll usually tell you that and you'll know that one of the, whatever record that they're pulling, it has the wrong address for you. The wrong phone number was doing it for me one time. Like, like I have two different phone numbers or if they asked me, like, what company I, I gave some, I gave some, some smart alec answer to some company I work for that doesn't. Years ago. And that was getting me a declination from, well, you know, one bank. I, I don't remember which. So you got to make sure your public records are square as well.
- [26:51]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it was. That's something I kind of forgot to mention. Like the, you know, what would, what would trigger a rejection in the credit card world? It's. Well, you already have too many open accounts with us. You had too many recent inquiries, or we don't like your credit utilization ratio. Like any number of things could cause a rejection on that front. And by the way, you know, they just made a hard poll to tell you that they were rejecting you, but less so in this case.
- [27:15]
Dylan
Yeah, the other big red tape thing that you need to know about is checks, systems and ews. That stands for early warning systems. You need to know about checks and EWS. Okay. And Dr. Credit has a page on this it's not complicated. Basically, checks and early warning systems are. What's the word? Consumer reporting agencies. And they keep track of how many new accounts are opened in your name. And the purpose of this is, let's say Nick Loper. Let's say checks tracks Nick Loper. And nick Loper opened 20 checking accounts today. The bank is going to pull your checks and see, oh, somebody's trying to scam Nick Loper by opening a bunch of accounts in his name.
- [27:59]
Nick Loper
Yeah. It's like an identity theft thing.
- [28:01]
Dylan
Yes. So checks in ews are primarily detecting identity theft. You could get a declination because the bank is checks sensitive and they see you've opened a lot of accounts. Okay. The thing is that's to find fraud. That's part of why you're limiting yourself to one a week is because you don't want to have too high of a velocity or else you're going to trigger fraud.
- [28:27]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [28:28]
Dylan
So that's what banks see automatically. Just what their computers see is if your checks numbers are really high in a short amount of time, you might get declined just because they think that somebody's trying to steal your identity.
- [28:40]
Nick Loper
Got it. But. But you found one a week doesn't run into that issue.
- [28:43]
Dylan
No, it doesn't. And it doesn't for, for most people either. The only biggest problems I had was just because I changed my address.
- [28:48]
Nick Loper
Okay, well, Dylan, this is really interesting stuff. A side hustle I never really considered, but you're, you're making a good case for it. Dylan's bonuses.com is where you can find him. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side hustle nation.
- [29:02]
Dylan
Get started and don't give up. It's real. Make sure to enlist help from me or the community at Doctor of Credit or Bank Bonus 102 Facebook and you'll start seeing gains sooner rather than later. Okay. So don't. I wouldn't put it off if I was you. I wish I had started sooner. And it is real. I have a second number one tip. The second number one tip is be nice to the bank and be nice to your fellow bonus hunters. Don't close accounts early and don't make a scene.
- [29:30]
Nick Loper
Don't make a scene? What would constitute making a scene?
- [29:33]
Dylan
You don't call the bank unless you need to. That's basically it. Don't take up their customer service reps time. Don't make them pay a whole lot more attention to you than they need to.
- [29:43]
Nick Loper
Okay. Yeah. Don't be the squeaky wheel.
- [29:46]
Dylan
Yeah. Exactly.
- [29:47]
Nick Loper
No, it's super interesting. My mentality was always like this full on switch and it's like, yeah, it's $300 to switch my entire financial backing. Like I don't know if it's worthwhile but to open a new separate account and not looking at it necessarily as a one off thing, but something that you can do consistently, just working your way down the list. Is it going to replace your day job? Probably not. But relatively simple, relatively low risk, not a lot of specialized skills required. Dylan mentioned his tracking spreadsheet. If you can keep track of that, you're in good shape and you can use those extra funds to pay down debt, invest seed money for a new side Hustle. Lots of different ways to go about it. So Dylan, appreciate you sharing your insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. And of course we'll link up the resources that Dylan mentioned in this episode as well. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.