I know there are some other credit card nerds who post on this board so I thought I would post this here.

I have recently read that if you hold enough with BOA they will give you a 75% bonus in rewards on their credit cards. If I understand this correctly that will take the 3% category card up to 5.25% (3*1.75=5.25)and their 1.5% catch all card up to 2.625% (1.5*1.75=2.625)

Apparently you can hold the money in a linked Merrill Edge free brokerage to reach this tier. I'm tempted to roll some money over there to go this route. It looks like I'll also need to open a BOA checking account to run this setup.

Is anyone else running this setup?

Interesting. We are currently in the unlimited 2% Wells Fargo program but the wife has her retirement account and linked bank account at BOA/ML that would seem to make us eligible for the 2.625%.

I did a little more research on it today and I'll think I start getting the ball rolling. It sounds like if I open a joint account and get it over 100k for 3 months I will hit the tier with the 75% points bonus and it will apply to credit cards that I apply for as well as my wife.

I'll start by getting the edge account first then opening the BOA account once I transfer some assets.

I use it and basically only to pay my federal taxes. 1.9% fee (marginally deductible too, I believe, if you itemize) and get 2.625% cash back.

5000 post thread on Bogleheads

Anything you might ever want to know on BOA/ME.

We have this card. I've got around $150k parked in my Merrill Edge account, but to get the full benefits, you have to have at least $100K at Merrill Lynch.

It's a great card. On most things we get 2.6 percent cash back and on some things we get back up to 3.5 percent. Not only that, but you get up to 50bps off your interest rate it you refinance through BofA or buy a car and they finance it. We've been pleased. Most of our money left Merrill Lynch when the Chappell Group left ML, but we did keep the Edge account with enough in it to unlock the full benefits of the card.

If you have an ML FA call up his assistant, they know this stuff because the FA isn't really interested but needs the bank biz to hit bonus. He can do $1mm in production and zero out the bonus if he doesn't do any bank business. That's why you see big teams leaving BTW. $250K gets you an FA and you get a lot of perks. My favorite is reimbursed outside ATM fees, if you use a non-BoA ATM for cash from your BA account the fee is put on your checking account. I lived in Weatherford for 8 years, used 3-4 different banks for cash, Merrill essentially paid me about $25 a month to have a checking account. Not really but it felt that way.

I know you're right on the cash back card. Not sure on the categories card. I use ML, but use the Chase Sapphire or my AMEX Bonvoy Brilliant instead as I feel like I get more than 2.65%.

QBCade said:

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I know you're right on the cash back card. Not sure on the categories card. I use ML, but use the Chase Sapphire or my AMEX Bonvoy Brilliant instead as I feel like I get more than 2.65%.

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If you're going for best cash back, the BOA cards are excellent if you have Preferred Rewards. OP's statement about 2.625%+ cash back is absolutely true.

If you're going for travel benefits, Chase and AMEX are the best for travel (both have great transfer partner options), and Chase's Hyatt partnership can't be beat. I currently have a Chase Sapphire Preferred and a Chase Freedom Unlimited and between the two am getting a significant amount of Chase points per month. When I signed up for the Chase Freedom Unlimited last year, the sign up bonus was 20,000 points almost immediately, plus 5x points for grocery spend in your first card year (up to $12,000, which works out to 60,000 points), which has been immensely valuable. If that sign up bonus comes back, pounce if you are interested.

I want to say the half percentage off refi is actually on home equity line of credit or something. I qualified last go around when we did our refinance and it didn't count for it.


I could be wrong or it may have changed.

You may be right. Last time we refinanced we went with Ameriprise because their rate was lower regardless of the 50bps reduction. We did finance my truck through them and they did knock off 50 bps.

hypeiv said:

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I know there are some other credit card nerds who post on this board so I thought I would post this here.

I have recently read that if you hold enough with BOA they will give you a 75% bonus in rewards on their credit cards. If I understand this correctly that will take the 3% category card up to 5.25% (3*1.75=5.25)and their 1.5% catch all card up to 2.625% (1.5*1.75=2.625)

Apparently you can hold the money in a linked Merrill Edge free brokerage to reach this tier. I'm tempted to roll some money over there to go this route. It looks like I'll also need to open a BOA checking account to run this setup.

Is anyone else running this setup?

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I was actually in this program back in mid 2019 before I moved to Israel. at the time it was something like $100,000 total assets in the different accounts

once covid hit I took much of the cash and invested in equities and bought a new house so lost this program

now that I sold the house last week, I may go back into it.

it's also a good program to automatically set up payments from your BOA Savings into your BOA credit cards each month.

Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate the great discussion.

I'm thinking about setting this up, but I won't be jumping on it right away because my wife just got approved for a Chase Sapphire Preferred in branch. We need to hit the minimum spend on that card first, which takes three months to accomplish. I'll plan ahead and figure out when I want to start using the BOA cash back cards.

For now, I'm still focusing on churning through sign-up offers, but eventually, that will slow down and the BOA setup will become a long-term strategy.

Ask your ML Advisor about the preferred deposit if you're only maintaining a balance to get preferred rewards.

I was planning to go through the Merrill Edge platform to avoid having an advisor. I am not ready to hand things over to a managed account yet.

Preferred deposit has to be in brokerage, i.e non-fee based as it's just their money market fund. Current annualized yield is 4.5%

I was just at Bank of America today in Virginia Beach setting up for my trip

incredibly- the same program that they gave me three years ago is now gone

1. the advisors can't actually do anything for you- you have to set up everything yourself including buying CDs/Bonds and setting up auto pays

2. the best rates are now for "NEW MONEY" whatever that is- so the fact that a lot of money came from the sale of my home 10 days ago into my account at BOA, and now I want to set up a Savings account to benefit- well I'm out of luck.

3. I still have the same Merrill Savings account, so the advisor walked me through buying FDIC protected CDs at 6 and 9 month rates- even though these may be Goldman Sachs bonds he stated it is still FDIC ensured.

only potential downside risk is that if you want to sell before maturity, you have to go to the open market and get a lower rate

I am now considering just taking 10K and buying IBonds at 6.78% and just keeping the rest of the cash available to add to my equity positions in my Fidelity brokerage if/when the market has another inevitable correction

You could just as easily take 10k and buy a brokered CDs at 5% in the account you have. If the extra $200 a year you would earn in the ibonds is worth your time to set up a treasury account go with that, but at some point having everything in one account is worth that lost opportunity cost.

That is why I am thinking about starting to transition to this setup. I have 3 or four cards I juggle to get the most points back but at some point I will graduate to just have two BOA cards. One for the category I spend the most in and one for everything else.

Sorry I'm just seeing this thread. I've had platinum honors and the black travel rewards and the Merrill edge account and it feels pretty great. We funnel all our autopay monthly bills and other expenses through the card and rack up a lot of points and get $400-$500 cash back every couple months, it feels like winning against the banks. I do recommend it.

The thing some people don't know is, the $100k balance is only required for 3 continuous average monthly balances then the platinum honors status lasts 12 months, so I tend to hold that amount for a while then move a some of the cash into a brokerage account and repeat next bonus cycle.