Bankdirect: The best kept secret to getting AA miles?

IS this a trick to make MONEY?
FInd a ATM that has no charges and make as many withdrawals to make $2.50 on each transaction.

I thought I saw posted on 4 ATM credits per month? That's $10/mo on 4 transactions at a no fee ATM.
Now need to find a no fee ATM and lowest amount to withdraw and number of times you can withdraw at same machine in one day.

Easy money?

Consider this math scenario:
1. $100,000 - deposited in BD for one year rrsults in 120,000 AA Miles
2. Interest earned $50/yr.
3. 100,000 AA business class ticket US-Europe.....worth $4000 and tax free

So, depositing $100,000 for one year results in $50 taxed and $4000(biz ticket reward) untaxed.

How hard is it to just send $50 to each of three credit cards per month for 12 months? That's the safe bet, to me.

it's not hard, of course. But since I don't plan to use BD as my primary checking account I would rather not deplete it by $1,800 a year.

OK - so $10 to each should work also, for the net depletion of $360/year.

My point is, why not at least have an arguably legit series of payments, in case it comes to that? To spend a year on three $1 payments per month and then be denied would be painful, and who knows, the program could change by then.

I agree. You can also pay bills in another person's name. If you are only going to keep $2500 in the account, it can't hurt to keep an extra $200-400 in there and setup a recurring $5-10 billpay. It takes about 10 minutes to do this.

Right - funny enough, my problem is that I don't want to set up recurring payments, because I'm always changing around my credit card habits to comply with some new bonus. So I never know where I'll need the cash.

So maybe the payments shouldn't be to credit cards but to utilities. Say $10 to the electric company each month, $10 to the cell phone, cable, etc.

Yeah - I hate to use bill pay for anything where I could use a credit card, so that rules out those three for me. My gas company, though, doesn't take credit cards.

I like paying bills in small dollar increments using debit cards from reward checking accounts. Diverting $15-30 of those payments to BD each month doesn't really hurt much.

I wish my electric co would take credit cards!!!

Set up an auto pay bill via check to yourself each month.

I wish I could pay my mortgage with a credit card.

Mine does (Los Angeles) and I recently found out that I can make up to three partial payments per day. So all of those gift cards with odd balances can finally get used up easily, plus I can make my 12 BankDirect bank card purchases per month pretty easily.

Did they get it posted to your account eventually? I am thinking abt hving my miles post to my husband so he can get to lifetime gold faster.

Yes, although I have to admit that my contact at BankDirect -- Henry -- is no longer with the bank. And I wasn't terribly impressed with his replacement during a brief, unproductive phone conversation last week.

Wow, Henry was my contact as well and my last email went unanswered I believe. may hv to call in to get the chan
ges made.

Hey there!!!

I'm new on here but i really liked the BD investment and would like to know if you want to send me a referral.
Thanks!

Yes - I'll send one now - check your conversations!

I signed up for a BD account 2 months ago and started direct deposit last month before receiving the letter about the changed limits/bonuses. Since I haven't received a bonus for direct deposit yet, I'm wondering if I would be able to get the 10k bonus instead of the old 5k bonus? Has anyone in this situation called to ask about this? I'm thinking I should wait a month or two before calling them.

They're pretty reasonable and lenient over there. I'll bet they honor the higher number.

Did anybody ever sort out the "full" direct deposit thing? How do they know it's a full DD anyway? Just wondering if anybody set up a partial disbursement from their employer and does that qualify?

The ATM fee rebate is "up to $2.50". Checking my account, when I withdrew $200 with a $2 fee, it showed a $202 withdrawal and a rebate of $2 (not $2.50). I think the post you replied to was specific to foreign currency ATMs, where BD might get confused on the fee amount.

It seems that BD doesn't know what fees are charged. If your total ATM transaction is $x, you will get a refund of Maximum(2.5, remainder when x is divided by 5). You can make money if your ATM gives you coins/$1/$2 bills. You can also get better-than-interbank exchange rates when you use the card abroad at ATM's with low fees.

You've got a conversation!