This started as a spreadsheet at our kitchen table.

A few years ago, we noticed something odd on a bank's website: they would pay a few hundred dollars to anyone who opened a checking account and set up a direct deposit. Not a trick, not a lottery — a published offer, sitting in plain sight. Banks spend real money to win new customers, the same way phone carriers and airlines do. Most people just never collect.

So we tried it. One account, one bonus. Then another. Then we found the fine print — the eligibility windows, the deadlines, the fee traps — and did what any stubborn household does: we built a spreadsheet. Which banks we'd used. When we could go back. Which requirement was due by which date. Whose turn it was, mine or my wife's.

The spreadsheet worked. It also nearly broke us — a missed direct-deposit deadline here, a forgotten early-closure fee there, an hour every Sunday night just keeping the dates straight. The money was real, but so was the overhead. And every time we told friends what we were doing, we heard the same two reactions: “wait, that's a thing?” and “there's no way I could keep track of all that.”

That second reaction is why EarnWithBanks exists. The math of bank bonuses isn't hard — it's just relentless. Eligibility clocks, deposit windows, minimum balances, which offer is worth your limited capital this month. It's exactly the kind of work software should do, so we built the tool we wished we'd had: one that knows the rules, builds your 12-month plan around your real life, and taps you on the shoulder before a deadline — not after.

We're a small, bootstrapped operation — a builder's household, not a bank and not a hedge fund. We don't take commissions from banks to push their offers, because the day our “best offer for you” is secretly our best-paying offer is the day this stops being useful. The plan you see is the plan the math produces. That's the whole promise.

Every bonus our members collect keeps this ball rolling — it funds the weekly offer verification, the next feature, the next late night. If that sounds like a fair trade, we'd love to have you.