How We Made $275 in 30 Minutes

I am usually quite wary of free money.  I come by it honestly.  My parents always taught me that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.  As a result, I don't click on ads offering me $500 a day working from home.  I don't respond to newspaper ads that tell me I can earn $50 an hour stuffing envelopes.  I always anticipate that there is going to be some awful string attached anytime someone wants to give me money for very little effort on my part.


My thoughts on easy money were challenged however, when I came across an ad from ING offering me $100 to open an account and have something direct deposited into it.  The $100 really grabbed my attention as that's nearly two days of maternity leave pay! I'm much more used to the offer of a free book for opening an account or an extra percent of interest for a period of time.  The only time that I've seen a Canadian bank offer as much as $100 for opening an account in the last while was attached to a condition of a $100,000 opening balance! No joke!

I googled around the interweb looking for the drawbacks to the ING promotion.  I was convinced there would be something horrible like an enormous opening balance, a condition that I would have to keep a large sum of money in the account for a period of time- I figured there had to be something!  I couldn't find anything though.  There didn't seem to be any drawbacks.  All the reviews of ING that I read were positive and ING seemed very straightforward on the requirements.  All I had to do to get my $100 was open a Thrive chequing account and have a payment direct deposited into the account by a certain date.

I hesitantly started the process of opening the account all the while expecting to run into some huge dealbreaker at any moment.  To my surprise the whole process only took a few minutes and everything went exactly as it was supposed to.  I filled out the online form in a couple of minutes and wrote out a cheque to mail to ING to open the account.  I received my bank card and pin within a week and had my maternity leave benefits directly deposited into the account.  I received my $100 bonus within the next month.

Once I had signed up for my account, I noticed that ING had a referral program that offered myself and anyone I referred a $25 bonus as long as the referred person opened their account with a $100 initial deposit.  The wheels started turning and I decided my husband needed an ING account opened with my referral code.  Once his $100 deposit cheque landed at ING we were immediately credited $25 in each of our accounts.  We switched his direct deposit to his account and he got the $100 bonus too.

A little bit later I noticed an ad when I was logging into my ING account that offered a $25 bonus for opening new children's savings accounts. Wouldn't you know- I had a kid that needed a savings account! A few minutes later, we had another $25 and a shiny new savings account that earns 2% interest.

I hadn't planned to keep the ING accounts but I have changed my mind for a couple of reasons.  First, they are very easy to use and they are linked to all of my other accounts so I can easily and quickly move money between my accounts (Manulife and ING).  Secondly, (this really was the clincher) they do not charge a fee when we deposit US$ cheques.  We have a side gig that results in a US$ cheque every month but the earnings fluctuate widely between summer and winter.  All of the other banks that we use charge anywhere from $8-10 to process a US$ cheque and hold it for up to a month as well.  A fee like that would sometimes take a quarter of our cheque!! ING cashes the cheque free of charge and doesn't hold the money any longer than a Canadian dollar cheque.

We are very happy customers of ING now and I would recommend their products to anyone.  Anytime I have called their customer service with questions I have gotten excellent help and not had to sit on hold forever to get it! Opening the accounts was an incredibly easy process and when I said all this took 30 minutes, I probably overestimated!! In the end, we all got what we wanted: I got a great product and a chunk of 'free' cash and ING got 2 and a half new clients and a great review!!

If you would like to make $25 in a few minutes, follow this link and use our Orange Key when opening your account:   36090948S1    For an extra $100, have your paycheque or government benefits directly deposited into the account by Feb. 29.  If you are not able to make the direct deposit by that timeframe I would keep an eye on the ING site as I have seen them extend/ reoffer this promotion about four times since we originally took advantage of it.