[Targeted]Bank Of The West Checking Bonuses $600 [AZ, CA, CO, ID, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, NV, NM, ND, OK, OR, SD, UT, WA, WI, WY only]

Offer at a glance

Maximum bonus amount: $600
Availability: AZ, CA, CO, ID, IA, KS, MN, MO, NE, NV, NM, ND, OK, OR, SD, UT, WA, WI, WY
Direct deposit required: No
Additional requirements: Maintain an average monthly balance of $50,000 for first two full calendar months
Hard/soft pull: Soft
Credit card funding: $500 max, Visa/MC only
Monthly fees: Yes, waiveable
Early account termination fee: $25, 91 days
Expiration date: August 19th, 2016

Contents

1 The Offers
2 The Fine Print
3 Avoiding Fees
4 Interest Rates
5 Our Verdict

The Offers

Receive a sign up bonus of $600 when you open a new Bank of the West Premier checking acocunt at a branch between July 9th and August 19th with a minimum opening deposit of $500 or more.
You must also maintain a minimum of $50,000 in combined average monthly balances for each of the first two full calendar months immediately following the month in which the opening deposit posts to the account. (Includes other linked personal checking, savings, money market accounts, non-IRA CDs and eligible BancWest Investment Services accounts)

The Fine Print

Opening deposit must be received and posted to the account no later than August 26th, 2016
Account must be in open status and have a positive balance as of October 31st, 2016
Bonus will be credited by November 30th, 2016
Only available to the recipient of this mailer
Limit of one consumer checking bonus per individual and mailing address.
All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them

Avoiding Fees

The Premier checking account has a $30 monthly fee, this is waived if you maintain at least $50,000 in combined balances (same requirement as the bonus).

Interest Rates

Checking rate has an interest rate of 0.01 – 0.04 APY, best savings APY is 0.22%. To get over a 1% APY with their CD accounts, they need to be for 24 months at a minimum.

Our Verdict

$600 is a massive bonus, but let’s see if it actually makes sense to sign up or not. Your best bet would be to apply for this promotion towards the end, that way you need to keep the account open for less time. Let’s say you apply for the account in Mid August and time things perfectly so you have $50,000 in the account on September 1st. You’ll need to keep that money in the account for two full months at minimum to trigger the bonus requirements. If you had that $50,000 in just a 1% APY account you’d be earning ~$40 per month. So you’ve already lost $80 in value there.

It’d be cheaper to just pay the $30 monthly fee than losing out on that $40 per month in interest after the first two months (you’d need to keep it open for another one or maybe two months so that is another $30-$60). In the end you’re losing about $140 in value just from lost interest compared to a 1% APY account, obviously you can earn more than this.

This isn’t a terrible bonus if you have a spare $50,000 sitting around earning a low rate of interest. But I’d say that their previous promotions for up to $300 have been far better. You can view the bonuses we do recommend by clicking here.

Big thanks to reader, David who let us know. Please consider sharing bank bonuses with this site so we can make it even better.

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