One of the golden rules of side hustles is “don’t poop where you eat.” Alliant’s ACH speed seems to be key to many of your transfers so it would seem that you want to keep the membership at all costs.
My suggestion to you would be to seek out a different card and see what the opportunity cost is. I don’t know how much money you funnel through this side hustle, but Citi’s new custom cash card gives you 5% back, up to a $500 monthly spending limit, on your most frequently charged category with 1% on the remainder. You might be able to get a blended rate that rivals the 2.5% back on the Alliant card.
Alternatively, there’s the SDFCU Visa or Fidelity Visa at 2%, or if you want to play the BoA game of moving investments over to ML, you can get 2.625% back on their Premium Rewards or Travel Rewards cards.
Just one data point here… My transfers to/from Ally to KeyBank are now done overnight. Don’t know whether it’s because I’ve been with Ally and KeyBank for eons though.
That’s a meaningless gesture to make yourself feel better. If they take issue with your activity, it’ll be with the large, and repeating purchases from a bank merchant. There’s no way to avoid it, if they’re going to care they’re going to care no matter what you do. Slowing or stopping such activity altogether is the only way to stay on the safe list, and even then you have no way to know if it’s too late anyways.
Actually I already have a dozen cards in the arsenal. But Alliant is close to the best of the bunch. Am gonna milk it for as long as I’m able. If they get me, they get me. But I have been doing this for a while and so far so good. Still, no sense making it easy for them to shoot me down.
Alliant definitely cares about this. They have shut down accounts in the past that they suspect of manufactured spending, although with the $10k cap maybe they care less now than they did in the past. Combined with their ACH hub shutdowns, I would proceed with great amounts of caution as this situation is a double whammy of sorts.
My question for Shinobi though is - why do you care about ACH’ing the money to your Alliant account specifically? If it’s to pay off the credit card bill, why not pay that through Ally bill pay instead? That avoids the red flags of using Alliant as a hub.
This is a very fair and intelligent question. I wish I had an intelligent answer:
I’m old, so inertia certainly plays a role. I have that “Alliant is my hub” thinking because this has been the case for the past many years, fourteen at least, and because “so far so good”. Reevaluation and the making of smarter decisions is something I need to address. The Ally thing might turn out to be only a first step.
For whatever help it might be to others:
I lost two credit cards in the past because I made purchases of very large CDs using them. This is documented up thread if you care. Point is, that was then and this is now. Circumstances today do not allow me to buy such large CDs within this side hustle. There is no financial institution remaining, of which I’m aware, willing to sell them to me.
The smaller CDs I’m forced to purchase today, generally limited to $2500 each with exceptions, might be less apt to set off alarms than the $10000 and $20000 CDs that got me into hot water in the past. I really do not know where the trigger points are, and they probably vary from card to card. But $20000 is a lot more than $2500.
When your CD matures, it gets dumped into your savings or checking at that bank, right? Simply use that banks bill pay to pay off the credit card. There’s zero reason to involve Alliant deposit accounts.
I suppose that would work. I’m more comfortable, though, centralizing my bill payments at Alliant. I have used the Alliant bill payer service a long time with zero problems and with reliable overnight payments. Perhaps I should. But I do not take that high level of service for granted.
I agree with this - a lot of these one-off CD deals are at dinky credit unions that don’t necessarily have a robust Bill Payer. I think funneling to Ally and using their bill payer (which I believe is operated by Fiserv/CheckFree) to pay Alliant is the way to go rather than relying on Timbuktu Federal Credit Union to have a reliable, robust system.
Does anyone have any data points on using the Bank of America Cash Rewards Visa to purchase CDs? I’m wondering if it will count as an online retail purchase (3% category).
Most banks use one of the same 2-3 billpay service providers. The smaller they are, the more likely this is true. Is there any tiny bank actually trying to operate their own in-house billpay service?
At least in my experience, credit union IT departments aren’t exactly crackerjack organizations. They outsource their online banking platforms to third parties and quality varies widely. Certain institutions (First Tech FCU and Keesler FCU come to mind) are more fickle than others.
You are correct that bill pay is outsourced to the same group of vendors, but the individual deployments of each banking platform still need to talk to them. As APIs are deprecated or as breaking changes are made to these platforms, are these smaller banks telling their vendors to test and update their individual deployments?
Further, again, many of these smaller banks will have varying rules for funds delivery time, and some charge a fee to use the bill payer. It’s just easier to initiate an ACH pull at a larger institution rather than incur an unexpected fee or risk violating “Argyll’s Rule” because certain banks hold funds for a few days before they forward the cash on to the biller.
Ally is big and predictable. That has its downsides but one of the benefits is that there are plenty of data points on what to expect in terms of their feature set, bill pay included.
I use both the Bank of America Cash Rewards World Mastercard and the Bank of America Cash Rewards Visa card to earn rewards through purchase of CDs. Of course you understand both cards are limited to $2500 (each) of purchases per quarter. Ahhh, if only that were not so . . .
But that limitation does exist so, between the two cards, you end up receiving $600/year in rewards. Some people turn up their noses at $600 and cannot be bothered. I myself am pleased to receive $600/year I would not otherwise have received. Bank of America has been very good to me over the years and I appreciate their largesse.
Another important benefit of the cards about which you inquired is this:
It’s a stand alone deal. There is no requirement further to engage with Bank of America or to purchase any of their other financial products. To me, that feature is as important as any other aspect of their deal.
I actually believe Bank of America may be getting better or at least improving lately. Several years ago I used BofA almost inclusively.
If you kept a larger amount of funds in your accounts they provided a private Rep behind the door that was always available. That person offered special deals that were not available to the man on the street. It was great times!
As usual those good times changed. They dropped all special and personal interest in loyalty. Very soon I dropped my interest at BofA.
I must admit that BoA changed over to special interest in serving folks sending money to foreign countries. Particularly Mexico. I don’t understand completely how the bank makes profit in these dealings.
So far so good on the money laundering workaround using Ally Bank. It remains very early, this is a new way of doing things, so unknowns are possible and ongoing vigilance is needed. But so far so good is better than uh-oh the s*** has hit the fan.
This new situation will reduce the number of transactions I engage in at Alliant, which will in essence become less a hub for me than it was in the past. But as long as Alliant continues to make available that 2.5% reward on their Alliant Visa Signature card . . . well . . . I have to do what I can to guard and protect my relationship with them. And that is accomplished by not being so obvious about my “purchase CDs with a credit card” activity.
Synchrony Bank unilaterally cancelled my PayPal card (2%).
So what did I do to deserve this?
Nothing whatsoever. Synchrony Bank: bunch of hooples.
They repeatedly denied good and legitimate charges to the card, ones I had made prior (same payee) and paid off prior. I would call their fraud department following a denial and they tell me it’s all good, everything has been straightened out, and I may go ahead and re-try the charge. I do so and it once again is denied . . . . after they tell me all clear and go ahead. This bank is FUBAR!
Anyway, after going through this process maybe three times on separate occasions I gave up trying to use my PayPal card. I paid off the balance and the card has been in the sock drawer for maybe five or six months with no activity whatsoever.
Today I receive a letter from these Synchrony incompetents saying they have cancelled my card! And I never did anything wrong. Problem is that their fraud sniffers are way too sensitive and they perceive as fraud transactions which are not.
I have a LOT of cards. Nobody else is this doing this, not even Citi.
This is posted for information only and as a heads up for other PayPal credit card cardholders. Be aware: Synchrony Bank is a messed up bad apple.
Previous experience stopped me from reading further. If you’re out, with no other encumbrances, consider yourself fortunate. Light a candle, and deposit a few bucks in the altar plate. Synchrony ain’t even close to the GE bank that it replaced.
I have remained steadfastly with this program, as documented up thread, for the last (more than) two months. Then, this morning, an unexpected pleasant event:
From the jump Ally had me on an ACH program involving a three day delay. I put up with it. I did not like it. But I put up with it.
So this morning I once again scheduled a routine ACH at Ally with no special expectations whatsoever. Lo and behold, without warning they suddenly are granting me free overnight ACH service!
This is very nice indeed. I never have been able to decipher Ally’s wacky ACH speed rules. But I must, accidentally, have done something right! The enhanced Ally ACH speed helps lubricate this side hustle and is certainly as welcome as it is unexpected.
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