sofi is easily one of the best all-around financial tools on the
market right now and while we have looked at this platform from a ton of different angles
today we're going to do a fast-paced review of the newest checking and savings features and
show you how you can get up to 300 for free from sofi all right let's jump right into it
what is going on everyone i hope you were all having a fantastic day so as many of you
probably already know sofi currently offers their checking and savings features which we're going
to focus on in today's video but they do also have their own investing platform a credit card
countless different loan options credit monitoring and budgeting tools and a ton of other financial
tools as well so if you want to learn more about any of those platforms then i will link to my full
extensive sofi playlist down in the description below but like i said today i want to specifically
focus on the brand new banking features from sofi including some new features that were
just launched a few weeks ago so previously the banking side of sofi was referred to as
sofi money and that's because sofi wasn't actually a bank up until recently and that account was kind
of a hybrid between your traditional checking and savings but after receiving their national
banking charter just a few months ago sofi now offers a separate checking and savings accounts
which i actually wasn't a huge fan of at first but after using this for the past few months
i have definitely come around to this new setup now when this feature was first launched they
were advertising a one percent apy which was and still is pretty great compared to many of
the competitors but since then they've actually increased that apy to 1.25 and it's very likely
that these rates will only continue to rise now i know that it's hard to get excited about 1.25
interest but remember that sofi does have a leg up on much of its competition because they are an
actual bank now and therefore have cut out the middleman of their partner banks which much of
their competition still has to deal with so a lot of the competitors are not able to offer interest
rates that are nearly as good as sofis now i do want to clarify that the 1.25 does only apply when
you set up direct deposit which i know is a bummer to a lot of you but if you're going to be using
sofi as your main banking platform then you'll probably set up direct deposit anyways and there's
actually a ton of additional benefits when you do so for example right now they're offering up to
300 when you set up direct deposits which is literally just free money from sofa now your
bonus is evaluated based on a tiered system of how much money is direct deposited into your
accounts within a 30-day period but currently if in your first 30 days you have between one
to two thousand dollars direct deposited you'll get fifty bucks two thousand to five thousand
dollars is one hundred dollars and if you have five thousand dollars or more direct deposited
into your sofa account in your first 30 days you will earn a 300 cash bonus plus with sofa you're
also going to get paid up to two days early which i never really saw the point of but after using it
for the past year or so getting your money early certainly doesn't hurt i should mention that this
video is not sponsored by sofi and i know that i do talk about them a lot but it's because i truly
believe in this platform so if you do want to sign up for their new checking and savings accounts
or check out any of their other products that i mentioned earlier then there is a link down in
the description below that will also help support my channel which i really appreciate all right so
outside of that pretty sweet sign up bonus and the awesome interest rates this account also has
no fees across the board which a lot of fintech companies claim nowadays but when i say no fees i
literally mean no fees at all there are no overdraft fees no minimum balance requirements
no monthly fees or anything like that you have access to 55 000 all point atms you can use for
completely free up to 15 cash back at specific locations when you pay with your sofi debit card
plus again if you use direct deposit with sofi then you also have overdraft coverage up to 50
which is really nice now that you actually have a separate checking and savings accounts since
i know that personally i keep most of my money in my sofi savings vaults which we'll talk more about
in a second so if you do accidentally draw your checking account too low then not only are they
not going to charge you a fee but sofi will even spot you up to 50 bucks to cover that transaction
and then of course you just pay them back going back to the vaults feature this basically gives
you the ability to create mini accounts within your main accounts in order to actively set money
aside for specific financial goals so if you're saving towards a down payment on a house or saving
up for a car or just need to set money aside for taxes then this is the place to do that and i know
that it doesn't sound like that big of a deal but personally i love this feature and use it for all
kinds of financial goals if we go into the sofi app and click on the banking tab at the bottom
of the screen and then select savings you can see that i currently have a vault set up for my
honeymoon another one for my eventual down payment on a house and a third vault for my upcoming
wedding so you could click the transfer button and move money in and out of these vaults or
from different accounts but if you wanted to make a new vault you just click the add vault button
it gives you a few recommended options or you can click the other button at the bottom of the screen
and give it a custom name and then you just set up what your goal amount is and you can set up
automatic transfers from your sofa accounts or even external accounts and essentially put all
of your saving on autopilot plus all of the money in these vaults is going to continue to earn that
1.25 interest which is always an added bonus as i briefly mentioned earlier sofi also offers their
own credit monitoring and budgeting service called sofi relay which does come with your
free sofi checking and savings accounts and both of these features are again completely free which
i love now i've done entire separate videos and step-by-step guides breaking down the sofi relay
platform so again check out that full extensive sofi playlist down in the description below
if you want a deeper dive into this platform but really appears under the exact same app as all of
your other sofi tools which is a large part of the reason why i love this platform as a whole
but it lets you see a big picture of your overall finances by connecting all of your
third-party accounts gives you real-time credit monitoring and the ability to track your spending
and set different financial goals and really do everything that you could possibly need
in terms of a basic budgeting platform so from what we've talked about so far this is a pretty
comparable platform that offers many features that are standard across the industry right
now and a few features that definitely set sofi apart from the crowd but as part of your sofi
money account you also get what feels like an endless list of member benefits including
things like financial planning support from real cfps discounts on estate planning personalized
career advice and unemployment protection and the list goes on again sofi's goal is really
to put all of the personal financial tools that you could possibly need under one app
and they continue to add more and more features as the platform continues to grow in popularity
which by the way currently sits at over three and a half million members i will also mention
here that the sofi app itself is another one of the reasons why i love this platform so much
and it is super sleek and simple in my opinion and i have had a lot of people leave comments saying
that it is too cluttered and there's too many news articles and ads for different sofi products
and i would definitely agree with that however as i've talked about before in previous videos
it's really easy to just click these three dots in the top right hand corner of the menu
and select the show less like this option and with that you can basically customize the entire
sofa home page and other than this home screen once you're actually going into the different
menus for various sofa products it is much less cluttered and is pretty intuitive and easy to use
i know today we are specifically looking at the newest checking and savings features
but as i've mentioned many times before they have a ton of different financial products and the true
benefit of using sofi in my opinion at least is that all of those tools are under one app on your
smartphone so again be sure to check out that full sofi playlist to learn about all of the different
financial tools that they currently offer and the insane advantages of having all of them under
one platform remember to sign up for sofi using the link down in the description below and check
out some of my other favorite financial tools while you're down there and of course be sure to
hit the like button and subscribe to the channel for more content like this in the future thank you
so much for your time i really do appreciate it so much take it easy and i'll see you in the next one
you