SoFi has a compelling set of offers for savers, but it can take a little work to ensure that you're getting the maximum out of your savings with SoFi. We'll walk through the 3 steps we recommend to make sure your savings are making the most they can for you.
- Make sure you can hit the requirements for the $300 welcome bonus
- Have a plan to hit the APY boost of 0.70%
- Hold maximum amount of money in savings
Step 1: Hitting the Full $300 Welcome Offer
Make sure to read the fine print on this one. To get up to that full $300, you need to have a direct deposit or set of direct deposits totaling over $5,000. If you can't hit that, you can still earn a $50 welcome bonus as long as you direct deposit is over $1,000.
One thing to make sure of is that your direct deposit needs to come from an employer or other official payment processor. That means transferring money from a different bank account is not going to help you hit this requirement. Just be mindful of that as you're considering how to hit this welcome offer. It's super attractive if you can, even if it's just for $50, because it really jumps your total first-year earnings off your savings.
Step 2: Getting 0.70% APY Boost
This is another bonus that requires a little work to make sure you're hitting it, and while it might not seem like a massive bonus, keep in mind that 0.70% is still 2x the national average APY on savings.
There are a few paths to get this boost, but our recommendation is to go the direct deposit route. For one thing, you'll already need to have direct deposit in place for the welcome offer, and this direct deposit just needs to happen on a recurring basis (vs having some dollar amount requirement). A key note here is that you need to maintain the direct deposit for 6 months. The direct deposit is also required to get the core APY of 3.60%, so you're going to need it while you're banking with SoFi.
Step 3: Keep Money in Savings
One of the big benefits SoFi offers is an interest rate on checking (0.50% APY), which is a great benefit relative to other banks. The better benefit though is that SoFi will automatically transfer money, without a fee, to your checking account to cover expenses. This means that you should try to keep as much money as possible in your savings account vs holding any amount of money in your checking account.
This is something new to the market generally, because savings accounts used to have restrictions on transactions in and out of them in a given month. That's no longer a factor, and SoFi makes it easy to take advantage.
Wrap-Up
Make sure you're ready to set-up direct deposit, and you should be able to get the most out of your savings with SoFi without much headache. Do the math for yourself on what will work best for you, and always keep in perspective that earning a strong APY on savings and checking is a huge upgrade over the largest banks, where you earn interest of 0.01% and often are subject to fees on your accounts without hitting similar requirements to SoFi's.
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