10% High Yield Savings Account Bonus (Valid On Sallie Mae Card Purchases)

Sallie Mae offers a high yield savings account, at first glance the product is fairly unremarkable but there is a 10% annual match bonus which makes things interesting. Here are the basic details of the savings account:

  • 0.8% interest rate (subject to change)
  • No monthly or annual fees and no minimum balance required
  • FDIC insured
  • Available to everybody, not only students
  • No hard pull to open, ChexSystems inquiry will be done.

This account also offers a 10% annual match on your Upromise earnings. Upromise is a cash back portal that is free to join. Before using this portal or any other portal it’s always a good idea to see if another portal is offering higher cash back (our favorite site for this is http://www.cashbackmonitor.com/).

To get this 10% annual match you need to do the following:

  • Connect your Sallie Mae HYSA to your uPromise account and within 90 days of setting up your HYSA complete one of the following:
    • Set up a recurring Automatic Savings Plan with a monthly deposit of $25 or more OR
    • Fund the account with $5,000 or more (this must be maintained for the full year to receive the 10% bonus)
  • Funds will be deposited into your HYSA in the February after you have linked and funded your account as described above (both accounts need to be in good standing)

The APR on the Sallie Mae high yield savings account is 0.8%, you’d effectively being forgoing 0.2% by not using a different high yield deposit account. Your best option would be to set up the recurring savings plan which means you’d lose out on a maximum of 5¢ in interest (in reality this would be much lower, as you could withdraw funds and you’d be depositing $25 per month rather than $250 as a lump sum).

You’d also be forgoing interest earned whilst you wait for the annual bonus to post, but again this will be less than the 10% bonus earned. It’s also important to note that whilst your Sallie Mae savings account is FDIC insured, your Upromise account is not. I would think that this risk is extremely low, but worth keeping in mind.

Sallie Mae will pay out this 10% match on Upromise earnings posted as “funded” during the calendar year (January 1st through December 31st). You can read the F.A.Q’s here. It’s also important to note that this 10% annual bonus is considered an interest payment rather than a cash back offer and as such you’ll be required to pay taxes on it.

Transferring Points From Sallie Mae Credit Card To Upromise

I’m a big fan of the Sallie Mae Rewards Credit Card (5% on gas, grocery & bookstore purchases with limits). You can redeem these points through Upromise to get cash back. This means you’ll get an additional 10% on cash back on these rewards, effectively making it a 5.5% cash back card on gas, grocery & bookstore purchases [note: this will be actually be 5% + (0.5% – taxes)].

Source(s) that this correctly posts for Sallie Mae Rewards Credit Card transactions: 1, 2

Massive thanks to somewhat_pragmatic from reddit.com/r/churning for making me aware of this. And this fatwallet thread for the data points.

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Logan
Logan (@guest_185560)
October 14, 2015 14:20

Hey Chuck,

Can you clarify on how to set up a recurring Automatic Savings Plan with a monthly deposit of $25. Would I just do a ACH push or pull from another account for this?

Chucks
Chucks (@guest_184669)
October 12, 2015 17:03

Psychologically satisfying but probably not worth the effort.

Jason
Jason (@guest_89489)
March 17, 2015 22:37

Maybe I’m being dense or its been a long day. But I’m lost as to how you get the $25 in monthly. I have a upromise account but it doesn’t even have $25 in it.

Paul
Paul (@guest_14478)
June 18, 2014 09:37

The bonus is to 10% matching the interest or the deposit?

Thanks