I agree with you that Shandril is correct.
As for the other, that is something which is going to be different for everyone. I myself shun bank bonuses because of the confiscatory taxation. OTOH, I am cleaning up with CC rewards. Ahhhh, the wonder ot tax-free income. It is sweet!
For inspiration, would you mind sharing how much you made last year in bank bonuses?
I do them occasionally, but nothing to write about. I’ve done much more in the way of CC bonuses. My expenses have been large as of late and I can’t keep up with applying for cards fast enough or finding ones that are good enough.
$5,825 between accounts opened in my name, my wife’s name, and my side business in 2017. Before taxes.
Wow. I usually don’t sign up for anything < $200 and I haven’t seen enough signups to make THAT much.
I miscounted, it was $6,125.
I did 31 total and was successful with 28. 10 were over $200, the rest were less than or equal to $200. So $197.58 per attempted sign up.
$2,250 was from one bank with very poorly designed controls.
My last payout (not counted in my 2017 numbers) was 1/31 and I don’t currently have any in the pipeline. I’m really missing that high.
The only problem I have is that 28 of them are still open!
I love finding these. Two years ago there was a 1k business bonus. I was able to get 4 of them. They didn’t give me the bonus on the 5th and 6th claiming that they weren’t going to recognize an smllc whose owner (one of the first four business entities) already received the promotion. I didn’t put up a fight and happily walked away with 4k. In my experience, these are rare though, I don’t count on them.
Trick is having addresses in lots of states. And every once in a while adding opening a bank account to a mileage run.
NICE!
I’ve been considering setting up more businesses to take advantage of more bonuses, but there aren’t many data points out there for people doing that, so I haven’t tried yet.
While that definitely helps, and I’m fortunate that I qualified for so many with my one address, the other big trick is timing. I think 2017, especially before that one bank figured out what hit them, was probably the golden year for bank bonuses. I missed out on the golden year of credit card bonuses (when CSR came out), but I’m glad I got in early enough with bank bonuses (started getting serious in March) to capitalize off it.
While not a mileage run, I definitely stopped in a branch several states away, during a trip to visit family, to get a bonus.
Care to elaborate? Do you use a mail service for this?
I always thought this would not work for bank or cc due to identity validation.
Personally I’ve lived in numerous states over the past 10 years and opened up accounts for bonuses while I was living there. Many of these banks offer continuous or frequent bonuses and if you’ve had an account with a bank in the past they will often times waive their footprint requirements for you (some smaller ones won’t, maybe due to state regulations etc, but not sure).
On top of that, I used to practice in a peculiar field of the law that not many people did (probably by choice 
) so I had to travel around and am licensed to practice in many states. The states require(d?) lawyers to have a physical office, so I have legitimate addresses in these states that are actual locations that I may go to if I’m in the state (not just a mail delivery service).
I’m sure you can find a way if you’re creative enough. Maybe start with a bank in a location you’re considering moving to, set up a po box and see if it works. You should be honest if the application asks for both a physical address and mailing address. Don’t use a po box as the physical address, but maybe call once you’re denied and explain your situation.
The fact that the addresses are on my credit report and tied to my name in public records probably doesn’t hurt, but you may be able to convince them into allowing you to open up an account. Then just rinse and repeat with that bank every 18 months or so as you’re looking for others.
One caveat, I’ve only done this with respect to banks opening accounts, not with respect to bonus requirements. In other words, some banks may only open accounts for customers in their footprint and that is the hurdle. Others may be willing to open accounts for people outside their footprint but the bonus states something to the effect of “only customers residing in xx state will be eligible for the bonus.” I’ve never tried opening accounts with the latter hurdle, as I consider only one state to be my residence, and I don’t like to open accounts unless there’s an almost 100% likelihood that I’ll get paid.
I haven’t been able to find many that allow this. Most restrict based on the signer which makes it a lot more difficult (maybe impossible, I haven’t found a way to get around that absent hiring an independent contractor to be a signer, but I’m terrified I’d be running afoul of some AML law that I wouldn’t try it). If you have any other ideas though…
Bank bonuses weren’t a factor in setting up these entities, but it’s nice to get these bonuses on top of the company’s ordinary operations.
That’s pretty impressive if it excludes $1000 broker bonuses. Msybe even then 
If you can believe it, I didn’t do a single brokerage bonus last year. The most I had to deposit for any of the bank bonuses was $20,000.