I received an email this morning from UFB Direct, my current favorite online Bank offering me $10 at Amazon to just download their App and log into Online Banking – who am I to say no to free money? I’ll outline the steps below, but before I do I think I should mention why I use UFB Direct.
My primary bank is Citibank, where I am a Citigold customer; however despite this wonderfully exalted status we were continuing to get hit with non Citi ATM fees – this is such an annoying thing for me, and these fees sometimes actually double up, once from the ATM owner and again from Citibank for daring to use a non Citi ATM!
I opened up a Checking Account with Ally, they have the best reviews in the market and I do like them, however I only keep a low balance between $100-$300 in there purely for the purpose of ATM withdrawals when there is no Citi around (I’ve actually used it in Citi in the past when my Citi ATM card wasn’t handy). You get the fees reimbursed at the end of the month, so no more fees!
UFB is a subsidiary of Bank of Internet (catchy name) and as another online only bank like Ally they don’t have their own bricks and mortar branches and therefore offer the ATM fee reimbursements too. However the big difference between UFB and any other bank out there is Debit… they have Rewards Debit. The partner for this is American Airlines, which is one of my preferred Frequent Flyer programs as they have a great network and redemption rate. UFB Debit gives you 1 AAdvantage mile for every $2 spent. Of course there are a number of Credit cards that offer much better returns than that, so why would I accept 1 mile for $2? Simply, you cannot buy a Money Order with a Credit Card, but you can with the UFB Direct Debit card, and all you do is make it out to yourself, deposit it into Citi or whatever other bank you use (a different bank is a good idea rather than back into UFB) and hey presto you get 500 AAdvatage miles for $1000 deposited, the fee for this at USPS is $1.55 so you are buying points for pennies. Let me put this into perspective for you. 50000 (500 x 100) miles gets you Round Trip from NYC to Tokyo on AA (plus you can add on a one way to Hawaii on your return) and that would cost you a total of $155 ($1.55×100) That is travel hacking right there!
So I highly recommend signing up for an account with them, get a Checking and a Savings, to maximize signup bonuses and get another 1000 AAdvantage miles at signup start off with $1200 in Checking and $100 in Savings, then buy a money order for $998 and put that back into the back you transferred from. Here is the link to sign up http://www.ufbdirect.com/ufbdirect/personal-banking/checking/airline-rewards-checking.aspx
Once you have the account up and running check out this link for the free $10 Amazon Card if it is still running, or just do it now if you already have the bank account:
I did the entire signup process from my iPhone, checked my balance using the App, and $10 Amazon Gift Card is coming my way! Thanks UFB Direct. Let me know if you have any questions on this process, or how to use the miles etc and I would be happy to address them in further posts.
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