Can I make money doing this from the Bank of America Keep the Change Program?
by admin on May.29, 2009, under Personal Finance
As many of you may know, Bank of America offers a “keep the change.” program. The catch is it only lasts for 3 months after you enroll in it, and i BELIEVE the only second catch is a $250 cap
As you may know it works like this: You buy something for $2.50, they credit your checking account by (-$3.00) and they debit your savings account with (+$.50) and then later in the year they will AGAIN debit you w9th (+$.50) as they match the change for 3 months after you enroll
My question is if i can just go to like a grocery store and keep ringing up individual items, say in the self checkout line and make money this way up to the $250 cap. Suppose i want to buy 5 items at the store, and i just ring up one item at a time so i keep getting seperate purchases. Would this work or does Bank of America also have like a limit on the number of purchases per day with the program? I can’t find anything in their terms for something of such, and it almost sounds too good to be true; is it?
Edit to response #1: Yes, that is true, but *not* prior to three (3) months under their program. Before the 3 month limit, they match 100% of your change- this is the key point. After the 3 months, you are generally correct- they only match 5% of your change. So if you buy something for $1.50 it costs you $2 and they match 5% of $.50 which is only $.025 (2 and a half cents) which is basically negligible.
Apple- Actually, it wouldn’t be a waste of time really if you did it in a method or a similar method to the one that I described. Consider my example again: Many grocery stores like stop and shop have self-checkout lines without a sales clerk. All youde do is ring up one item at a time. Many times i will buy 30 or more items at a grocery store, if the 30 items have an average of 50 cents above or below the nearest dollar, i’d make $15 doing this for the first three months of the program, if there are no daily limits (after 3 months, it’d be only a $.75 cent savings, not worth the effort).
You can really only do this at a store with self-checkouts if this is correct because a cashier who is a person most likely wouldn’t do this for you…
James
May 30th, 2009 on 7:18 am
Yvonne
Why would you do that? They are not giving you money, they just deduct your own money from your account. You could save a lot of trouble by just transfering the same amount of money to a savings account.
June 1st, 2009 on 3:50 pm
Arnold
ask a BofA rep the questions you have here.
June 2nd, 2009 on 8:09 am
Audrey
Technically it works but I’m sure you have better use of your time.
I’ve heard that you can accumulate quite a bit by saving the change from cash purchases and periodically dumping it into a savings account.
Better yet, how about direct depositing some dollar amount you won’t miss from your checking account to a money market savings account that gives good returns, like ING Direct?
June 5th, 2009 on 1:56 am
Jo
I enrolled into the Keep the Change Program. It works good for me. You’re not charged anything. I usually don’t touch my savings account and I use my check card a lot so it works great for me. Of course you are not gonna get rich quick with this but it’s cool. I average about an additional $30 added to my savings account every month. It doesn’t hurt anything. Give it a shot. It is taken out of your account by the next business day. If you use online banking, its easy to see how much is taken out. I like it.