SoFi has a lot of amazing features some of which are fairly hidden and not that well
known so today let's breakdown the top five best hidden features of the SoFi platform.
What is going on everyone I hope you are all having a fantastic day. So we've got some pretty
awesome features to talk about today that I use all the time so let's start with the more surface
level features that some of you may already know about and work our way up to the most hidden SoFi
features that I didnt learn about until making this video. Also this is not sponsored by SoFi
but if you do want to sign up and get some free cash then I will leave a link for that down below
but first up we've got the automated bill pay feature which is accessed by going to the banking
tab and selecting pay bills. From here you can either pay a company electronically as long as
they are registered as a biller within these SoFi platform or you can send a physical check to any
US address if you want to pay an individual. So if we select company and click next you can then
search for your billing account from a list of thousands of different companies and in my
experience I’ve always found the company I needed. Next you just give this bill a name, enter your
account number for that particular account so in this case we're setting up my gas bill and from
there you just input the amount when you'd like to send this payment and if this is one time or a
monthly recurring bill and once you click confirm bill everything is set up and ready to go and SoFi
will now automatically pay that bill automatically each month. You’ll also see this show up under
scheduled transactions and if you click on the transaction and Scroll down you can edit the
payment details or cancel the payment altogether. Like I said there are thousands of billers within
here so you could set up your credit cards, gas bills, rent, electricity, phone bill,
and basically anything you can think of on autopay so that you never pay a bill late and avoid any
interest or fees plus paying bills on time is good for your credit score. But this automatic bill
pay is just the tip of thes iceberg with these hidden features. This next feature is another one
that I personally use all the time and that is the ability to send peer-to-peer payments to literally
any U.S. bank account right from the SoFi app. This means you don't really need platforms like
Venmo or Zelle because the features of those platforms are already built into SoFi with some
additional advantages as well. So first of all again you're going to head over to the banking tab
and select the transfers option and from here you can transfer and send money in and out of accounts
in a number of different ways but we're going to select send money to a friend. Now as is the case
with many other banking platforms you of course can instantly send money 2 any individual who has
a SoFi account as well. All you do is input their e-mail that is dissociated with their SoFi account
and they will instantly receive that money without any fees. But one of the huge hidden advantages of
this feature for SoFi that I just leanred about is you can also send money to anyone else as long
as they have a U.S. bank account of some kind. The way this works is you're just going to input their
e-mail or phone number type in the amount you want to send them and whether it's a one time
or recurring transfer, and then they are simply going to receive an e-mail to claim that money
where they will be prompted to either open their own SoFi account or they can also just input their
own routing and account number to easily send that money directly to their bank account without
the need for any third party app and again it's completely free. Plus unlike Venmo or zelle, as
long as the transaction is pending you are able to cancel that transaction. Like I said
I use that feature all the time but this next feature is one that I've only used a handful of
times but could be a huge advantage since this is a fully online bank and that is the ability
to deposit cash. Now considering SoFi has zero brick and mortar locations, the inability to
walk into a bank and deposit cash is obviously a huge disadvantage. However SoFi and several other
online banks have come up with a creative work around using a system called green dot. If you
head into your SoFi account select banking select more and choose deposit cash it'll bring you to a
screen explaining this feature and you can see on the screen that you are able to deposit cash into
your SoFi account at over 90,000 retail locations including places like Walmart, CVS, 711, and many
others. Now one important thing to note is that some of their partners do impose a small fee of
up to $4.95 so you will want to keep that in mind if you plan on using this feature however that is
the standard fee for every single bank that uses the green dot system and in my experience the few
times I've used this feature the fee is typically nothing. So if we click the find a location button
you'll be brought to a map showing you all of the different places near you where you're able
to deposit cash and even if you're in a more rural area most likely you have a Walmart or
one of these popular pharmacies near you and therefore you'll have the ability to deposit
cash into your SoFi account. Alright so those first three features are really great tools that
you may have not known about previously but these last two are some of my favorite features of the
entire platform and ones that you definitely want to be using. So the 4th hidden feature that we'll
be looking at today is the goal based savings through Vaults. Now the vaults feature itself
isn't that hidden and is one that I use frequently but the ability to set savings goals within these
vaults is a feature that I wish I had known about a long time ago. Once again within the SoFi app
you're going to select the banking tab and at the top of the screen you'll see your separate
checking and savings accounts so you wanna click savings and then if you currently have a vault
setup you'll see all of them appear here and you can also select the add vault button to create a
new savings vault. You can see there's lots of different options or you can create a custom
option by clicking other but let's say you wanted to create a house down payment vault. Click on the
House option you can change the name to whatever you want and let's say our goal amount is to save
$50,000 for a down payment. From here you'll be prompted to move money into your vault as a one
time transfer or set up recurring transfers And once you do that you'll be brought back out to the
savings menu and if you click on your savings vault you now see your goal amounts and your
percentage progress at the top of the screen along with the total balance. So again vaults are a
pretty well known feature but setting that savings goal makes it even easier to track your progress
and stay motivated. But in the middle here you can see three different options under the autopilot
menu and that actually brings us to the 5th and final hidden feature that takes automated finance
to the next level and that is the autopilot feature. There's a lot of unpack with this one but
this is a newer feature from SoFi that essentially allows you to automate all of your recurring money
moves by saving part of your paycheck towards your different goals including those vaults that
we just talked about, making recurring transfers into one or several vaults, activating your round
up savings tools with your SoFi debit card, and even managing your direct deposits, safe dollar
settings, automated investment purchases and everything in between. So if we go back out to the
banking menu and select auto pilot you'll see that the first option is to set up split your paycheck
which essentially ensures that you are paying yourself first. So when you’re direct deposited
paycheck comes in, let's say that that is $1000 for the sake of simplicity. Well using autopilot
you can automatically have 30% of that paycheck set aside for taxes if you're self-employed,
take 10% to put towards your emergency fund, take 15% and transfer it to your investments and really
the options here are limitless. The important point is that this is a set it and forget it
approach to your finances which is statistically proven to help you save more, spend less,
and prepare financially for your future. Like I said you can also set up recurring transfers each
month into any of your vaults, activate roundups which is a common feature nowadays where every
time you swipe your SoFi debit card it will round up that purchase to the nearest whole dollar and
automatically deposit that extra change into one of your savings vaults. You're also now able to
automatically purchase crypto currencies as soon as you get paid and while I would like
to see them add an option for purchasing ETF's or other mainstream investments from your paycheck,
I do like the notion of automatically setting money aside into investments. And then lastly
at the bottom of the screen you can view your recent direct deposit transactions,
set up overdraft coverage and overdraft protection, and also activate safe dollars
where SoFi will automatically pause your various autopilot transfers if your account balance falls
below a specific number that you set. As you can imagine you could spend a lot of time setting
up every automated transfer under the sun and honestly I highly recommend that because that
one-timeone time effort is going to serve you really well in the long term future and also
save you a lot of time and headaches. So those are my five favorite hidden features of the SoFi
platform and ones that I wish I had known about a long time ago when I first started using SoFi.
But I'm sure there's things that I left off of this list so I'd love to know what your favorite
features are of this platform and remember if you do want to learn more & sign up for SoFi
then I will leave a link for that down below the like button. As always 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!