Before the days of free trades for everyone, brokers dangled them as promotional offers. If you signed up for Broker X, you could get unlimited trades for 60 days or 300 commission-free trades.
When Charles Schwab announced free trades and was soon followed by E*Trade and TDAmeritrade, offering free trades wasn't enough because free trades have become standard.
So what is a broker to do?
Offer the only thing left – big stacks of cash.
TDAmeritrade has one of the juiciest offers available with up to $2,500 in cash.
Let's see how it's set up.
TDAmeritrade New Brokerage Account Offer
The offer is really simple, just open an account and deposit money to get the bonus.
The bonus amount depends on how much you deposit within 60 days of opening the account:
- $2,500 Cash when you deposit $1 million
- $1,200 Cash when you deposit $500,000
- $600 Cash when you deposit $250,000
- $300 Cash when you deposit $100,000
- $100 Cash when you deposit $25,000
The beauty of this offer is that it's valid for one new Individual, Joint, or IRA account. For many folks, the $1 million bonus will be difficult but if you've been working for some time, it's not difficult to find a 401(k) that you can rollover or an IRA to move around.
The only other restriction is that you have to keep the balance in the account for at least 12 months. The rules don't count any losses due to trading or the market, it's just the net deposits have to be positive. The 12 month period is a pretty fair time period.
If you search online, you will find similar offers (or this exact one) but this is the best one I know of. There is one that just has the $300/$600/$1200 bonuses, with no $2,500 level, which will work just as well if those were the tiers you were going to hit anyway.
Refer a Friend Offer
Do you have a friend who already has a TDAmeritrade offer?
They can refer you for a better promotional structure (depending on how much you have):
- $1,000 Cash when you deposit $250,000
- $300 Cash when you deposit $100,000
- $100 Cash when you deposit $25,000
We can refer you but you'll have to email me at . (I'm sorry you can't cut and paste this, it's to prevent bots but I think it's easy to remember!)
When we refer you, we do so on the TDAmeritrade website. Their systems then email you with the offer details, which match what I mentioned above.
And here's a recent email I received from a reader who successfully received the promotion:
Just a heads up if you want to pursue this route.
How Does This Offer Compare?
A lot of brokers are now offering cash bonuses, so naturally the next question has to be how does this promotional offer compare with others?
Honestly, their offer is ever so slightly below average. Let's take a look at a few alternatives to see what I mean.
For example, You Invest by J.P. Morgan also offers a cash bonus on this schedule (you also get 100 free trades because they still charge for trades):
- $625 Cash when you deposit $250,000
- $300 Cash when you deposit $100,000
- $200 Cash when you deposit $25,000
If you have $25,000 – you get more with You Invest. If you have $250,000, you get about the same (You Invest gives you $25 more). But You Invest doesn't have a $500,000 or $1,000,000 bonus tier. For most people, that won't matter, which is why I say the TDAmeritrade offer is average.
Ally Invest has a bigger schedule for its bonus (Ally Invest offers free trades):
- $3,500 Cash when you deposit $2 million
- $2,500 Cash when you deposit $1 million
- $1,200 Cash when you deposit $500,000
- $600 Cash when you deposit $250,000
- $300 Cash when you deposit $100,000
- $200 Cash when you deposit $25,000
- $50 Cash when you deposit $10,000
As you can see, this much larger schedule matches TDAmeritrade while adding both a lower tier ($50 for a $10k deposit) and a higher tier ($3,500 for a $2mm deposit).
Lastly, I want to point out one last offer from SoFi Invest. If you are at the low end of investable assets (under $25k, which is a sizable sum just not for the purposes of a brokerage offer), you can get $50 from SoFi Invest as long as you deposit $25. Heck, you can do this anyway if you have $50 sitting around and want to get a 50% ROI in one go.
If it's all the same to you, I'd go with the one you like more.
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