How a bank-bonus calendar works

Finding the offers is easy. Running several at once without losing one is a scheduling problem, and the calendar is the schedule.

The problem is concurrency, not information

Everything on every offer page is public. Between Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, BMO, Huntington, KeyBank, U.S. Bank, Capital One, and SoFi, seven or more checking bonuses are live at any given time, and anyone can read the terms.

The difficulty starts when three are open at once. Each has its own deposit window counted from its own day 0, its own fee waiver measured on its own statement cycle, its own payout clock, and its own rule about when closing is safe. The cash that satisfies one requirement is the same cash that has to satisfy the next, so the order matters. A missed detail usually costs the whole bonus, and at a tiered offer it costs a tier.

What one sequence contains

A sequence is one bank's offer, laid out as dated events. The flagship on the front page is one, shown as subscribers receive it.

• The open date, placed so this account's requirement does not collide with another lane's cash.
• The deposit method that bank's system currently counts as a qualifying direct deposit: which sender, sent how. This is the row the calendar withholds on the public page.
• Deposit dates, sized to the requirement and spaced so each one posts and can be checked before the next.
• Fee checks on the bank's statement cycle, so a waiver measured on minimum daily balance is never missed by a day.
• The window close, with a deadline guard two weeks before it.
• The payout expectation, from the terms: 15 days at Chase, up to 60 days after the window at Bank of America, up to day 135 at Capital One.
• The exit date, the earliest day closing is safe, from the terms plus the calendar's own margin.

Each line is an event in your calendar app with a reminder where the app supports one. Twelve months of the calendar is the sequences for your cash track, interleaved so the requirements never overlap the same dollars.

The arithmetic on $25,000

What decides your track

• Idle cash. $10,000 runs the smallest track. $25,000 runs the full multi-lane sequence. $50,000 or more is usually two people's calendars on one household's cash, staggered a few weeks apart.
• Account history. Bank of America locks out anyone who held its checking in the last 12 months. Chase allows one new-checking bonus every two years. Capital One's lockout is a fixed date, January 1, 2024. U.S. Bank waits 12 months. The two questions at checkout are how the calendar knows which lanes are yours.
• Velocity. Banks screen new applicants against deposit-account databases, and a few decline applicants who have opened many accounts recently. The calendar paces openings to stay under those thresholds.

Time cost

About 90 minutes a month once it is running: an account opening or two, a scheduled transfer, an exit. The weekly email lists that week's tasks, which take about twenty minutes. The calendar tells you which day; the tasks themselves are small.

What it is not

• Not passive. The tasks are small, but they are yours, on the days listed.
• Not advice. It is an operating calendar for published bank promotions. Bonuses are taxable interest, and a 1099-INT follows each one.
• Not free of trade-offs. Cash parked in a checking account earns about nothing while it is there. The sequence minimizes park time, but some savings interest is given up to collect multiples more in bonuses.
• Not static. Banks rewrite terms without notice. The calendar is re-verified weekly, and when an offer in your sequence changes you get the amendment and a replacement.

How it arrives

Checkout asks two questions: the cash you can cycle, and which banks you have held checking with in the last 24 months. Your calendar is assembled from those answers. Within the hour you get a welcome email with your first sequences, the method for each, and a feed link that puts every date on your phone. After that it is one short email a week. There is no dashboard and nothing to log into.