Offer at a glance
- Maximum bonus amount:Â $750
- Availability:Â Nationwide
- Deposit required: Up to $50,000
- APY: 3%
- Hard/soft pull: Soft pull
- ChexSystems: Unknown
- Credit card funding: Up to $50
- Monthly fees:Â None
- Early account termination fee:Â None
- Household limit:Â None listed
- Expiration date:Â 12/30/23
Contents
The Offer
- PenFed is offering a savings bonus of up to $750. Must make deposits on or before 12/30/23 and balance must be maintained from 12/30/23 to 4/30/24.
- Receive a bonus of $150 for every $10,000 deposited
The Fine Print
- Offer is valid for all PenFed Premium Online Savings account holders.
- Offer Details: During the Offer Period or before 12/30/2023, make deposits of up to $50,000 from an external account into your PenFed Premium Online Savings account External funds are considered any new money deposited into your account from an account not affiliated with PenFed. Funds transferred internally within PenFed accounts do not qualify for this offer. The new money plus your existing balance must remain in the PenFed Premium Online Savings account from 12/30/23 to 4/30/24 to be eligible for the Bonus Offer.
- Your total balances at PenFed must increase by the end of the promo period. Upon meeting the Offer qualifications, you will receive a $150 bonus for every $10,000 deposited into your account. Maximum bonus received is $750 per member.
- Your promotional bonus will be reported in your year-end Form 1099-INT as taxable income. Bonus will be credited to the account in the form of a statement credit.
- Your account must stay open and be in good standing when bonus is credited to your account. Please allow up to 60 days for the Bonus to appear in your account.
- We reserve the right to modify or revoke this Offer at any time, without notice. If we determine that abuse or gaming has occurred in connection with this Offer, your eligibility and bonus may be null and void.
- All bank account bonuses are treated as income/interest and as such you have to pay taxes on them
Avoiding Fees
Monthly Fees
This account has no monthly fees to worry about.
Early Account Termination Fee
There is no EATF but funds need to be in account until 4/30/24
Our Verdict
Funds need to be in the account for four months, account earns a base rate of 3%. With the bonus this works out to be 7.5% APY. That’s better than current basic savings account rates and worth considering if you have lots of spare funds in cash currently. We will add this to our list of best saving bonuses.
Useful posts regarding bank bonuses:
- A Beginners Guide To Bank Account Bonuses
- Bank Account Quick Reference Table (Spreadsheet) (very useful for sorting bonuses by different parameters)
- PSA: Don’t Call The Bank
- Introduction To ChexSystems
- Banks & Credit Unions That Are ChexSystems Inquiry Sensitive
- What Banks & Credit Unions Do/Don’t Pull ChexSystems?
- How To Use Our Direct Deposit Page For Bank Bonuses Page
- Common Bank Bonus Misconceptions + Why You Should Give Them A Go
- How Many Bank Accounts Can I Safely Open Within A Year For Bank Bonus Purposes?
- Affiliate Links & Bank Bonuses – We Won’t Be Using Them
- Complete List Of Ways To Close Bank Accounts At Each Bank
- Banks That Allow/Don’t Allow Out Of State Checking Applications
- Bank Bonus Posting Times
PenFed only allows adding one external account and there is no option to change it online. I haven’t tried the app yet. I think it may require calling to change the external account. It is unreasonable to only allow one external account. Also, Plaid will not link to PenFed because it’s not supported. If I had known this before applying, I would not have opened an account.
You have to delete the existing one in order to add a new one. I called in and the rep said it’s supposed to be two but she wasn’t able to add the 2nd one.
Why not just link with your external account(s) instead and send the money that way?
External banks that use Plaid to link won’t work. For example, Huntington, Discover, SoFi and Juno won’t work.
I’ve linked my PenFed share account successfully in the past using AA, Orion, Connexus and Heritage. You may not have any of those but I am sure there are many others that link by test deposits also.
how is this a good deal when banks are providing 5.2% interest rate?
Our Verdict
Funds need to be in the account for four months, account earns a base rate of 3%. With the bonus this works out to be 7.5% APY.
Question: There’s two $750 bonuses. One for NEW customers, that seems to be a targeted email link (so I’m guessing they know if they sent it or not), and one for EXISTING customers (non-targeted?)
If the existing one is non-targeted, couldn’t one simply open a new premium account, and then X days later use the link for existing customers to get the bonus?
About a week ago it did say you could share the offer to friends and family (under FAQs). But now they changed the language saying it is only available to those who got the email. What was odd was a few days after this original post, clicking on premium savings account from main page showed the same bonus offer (without being logged in and no code in website address).
You are right, T. Wonder when they changed the language.
William Charles may like to warn readers.
Thanks! I’m going to just open a new account and then wait until next week to do the “for existing accounts” one. We’ll see how it goes.
Last time I did the “targeted email” one it was for US Bank and they didn’t pay the bonus (as I wasn’t targeted) and lost out on a rather lucrative one instead (due to the 24 month rule for US Bank). Learned my lesson after that
I opened the account on November 30th (yesterday) and at that time it did say “Can I share/forward this offer to a friend or family member?
Yes, this offer is open to everyone. Maximum bonus received is $750 per member.” in the FAQ, and “Offer is valid for all PenFed Premium Online Savings account holders” in the disclosures. I didn’t save screenshots but I did copy and paste into my notes when I opened the account. Now I clicked on the same offer link, the language did change to “non-transferable”. It seems they just changed it today.
I called and spoke to a rep and they said the offer was open to new and existing accounts for the premium savings and my account was eligible. They did specify the same terms with only external money and hold until April 30th, 2024.
The language with two different offer pages makes me a bit hesitant to lock up money for that long though in case they did intend on it being targeted.
I just called twice. I’m an existing customer but don’t have the premium online savings acct. (I just opened one)
CSR #1 said I couldn’t fund with a cc.
And the bonus would “attach automatically” once I open the premium online savings acct.
CSR #2 said I couldn’t fund with a cc.
And the promo is now over, unless I received an email, which I didn’t.
Should I fund the account? Call again? Do people get a confirmation about the promo, once opened and funded?
How do you fund with a cc?
Why did you call again if you liked the answers from the 1st rep?
Actually, I was looking for different answers.
I want to fund with a credit card, and don’t know how.
And I want some reassurance that the promo will attach to the account.
At this point, still not sure how to fund with a cc, or whether the promo is active.
Will noted in this post that it is only $50 of credit card funding. Is $50 of funding really that important to you even if it does work?
In my previous comment, I figured that having the promo attached would be much more important than the credit card funding but to each their own.
Were you emailed the offer? If not, there’s a good chance that you won’t qualify based on recent comments in this post. I saw people note that it now requires receiving the offer by email.
The existing customer link did not have a code nor language saying “making deposit through this link”, the only qualifying requirement is to “add new fund in the promotion period from 11/15/23 to 12/30/23. So it seems the newly added targeted language in the new customer link doesn’t really make any difference, anyone who has an account would still qualify as long as new fund is added
“During the Offer Period or before 12/30/2023, make deposits of up to $50,000 from an external account into your PenFed Premium Online Savings account…Your total balances at PenFed must increase by the end of the promo period.”
Does it mean that the balance in the savings account must increase beyond what you have deposited by 12/30/2023? Clearly, the “promo period” is not the same as the “offer period,” which is on or before 12/30/2023.
Good catch. It seems they do not allow withdrawal after the fund is deposited in the promotion period. It is like a 4-month CD and the money is locked. If part of the fund is withdrawn, instead of earning a lower-tier bonus, no bonus at all.
I chatted with them and they confirmed that if you withdraw and drop to a lower amount you would still get the lower bonus.
Great to know! Thanks
CSF for clarifying!
Let’s say you already have 4.25% APY on your savings.
If you have $30K real gain 325$.
If you have $50K real gain 550$.
(Assuming only 120 days on their accounts but have to remove 1$ for each day you transfer before and after the door for a $30K and 1.75$ for every day if you have 50K$ (3% apy vs 4.25%)).
OH I FORGOT you can deposit 500$ from your credit cars so 2% cash back is 10$ more. To compensate the fact you have to transfer the money on 26/27th December and withdraw money on 2/3 May 2024.
I would add about 15 days of slip time which makes it about 7% APY. Compared to 6.4% effective APY for T-bills (for me in CA) it’s not that hot. Even compared to flat 5.5% T-bills it’s not that great.
The question is where can you do better than guaranteed 7% for those four months? An extra $100 just for moving $50k back and forth not worth it?
is it a *guaranteed* ???
APY (Annual Percentage Yield) is accurate as of November 1, 2023 and is subject to change at any time.
Ok conceded about the base APY, however how likely do we think it is for rates to fall before 4/30/23?
Nothing is guaranteed in life, but I’d be (very) surprised if there’s a reduction in the base interest rate in the 4 months you need to keep a balance for this promotion. YMMV, etc. It’s all just a game.
not rly worth it if you value your time and potential headache
slip time? Never heard of that. Suppose you mean the “hold time thru 4/30/24?” But you still get 3% plus the bonus. As others state, its better than a 5.25% acct at some banks (UFB/Republic of Chicago/Laurel Road/ etc.)
15 days of slip time is very sloppy for this kind of game. Wire transfer into the account, ACH out. Max of 2-3 days. Rookie!
For me personally the upside is 0.6% on $50k over 4m = $100. I would need to open new account, move money in, move money out, etc. That’s what I call not a great deal. I may still do it. For others the upside is higher.
I’m in CA, as well, but I’m not seeing as high as 6.4% for T-Bills. Would you mind sharing where you are?
calculated by tax break…
you do not get taxed..by your CA taxes…
Thanks 🙂
Is this offer about to be the same as far as earnings go with 50k deposited as CIBC ?
I never heard back from CIBC after applying; and reading the comments for last 4 days i don’t think I even want to deal with them..
I am long time capital one customer, so can’t go for bonuses there..
The CIBC is the better offer. However, the PenFed is a good offer also.
CIBC has base 5.01 APY on the account, so total yield will be $1115 after 90-day holding. This Pen Fed account has base 3.00 APY, and total yields $1245 after 120-day holding. Being there are many HYSAs with APY 5.00+, you face at least a $331 opportunity cost for the Pen Fed offer. That puts your net gain at $914 or so.
Well, my calculations almost all in agreement with your numbers with one exception of the very last one (the 914)… the opportunity cost is 333-ish.
However, the opportunity gain is 250 (extra bonus 750 vs 500).
In my calculations CIBC better by about 83.00
Assuming 4 months comparison vs CIBC earning 5% for the 4th month and money being available for anything else for this extra month.
Existing customer. Took 3 attempts but got the new account to open. First 2 were back to back “Can’t do it at this time.” Tried again ~5 hrs later and successful. Did not call in at all.
Getting “We are unable to complete your request at this time. Please call 1-800-247-5626 to speak to a Member Service Representative.”
I did this exact targeted offer ending 10/31/23. I also got another email regarding an offer identical to this one except for a new offer period 11/15-12/30/23. My question is that if I deposit another 50K from an outside institution and keep the funds of 100K until the end of April, then I should get $1500 for doing both offers, assuming they are different offers. The old offer requires that I keep the fund there until the end of February. Unfortunately if I sign up for this offer, then I cannot withdraw any fund in this account until May 1st. Still a good deal. Anyone in a similar situation?
Does say in one of the FAQ’s
“Can I open multiple Premium Online Savings accounts and receive a bonus for each?
No, this offer is limited to one bonus and one new Premium Online Savings account per member”.
So doubt you can combine two different offers at the same time.