Update 3/4/22: Offer has increased from $50 to $101 (ht mangorunner)
The Offer
Direct Link to offer | Press Release
- Schwab Starter Kit offers new Schwab investors a
$50$101 bonus when they open a new Schwab account and fund it with $50 within 30 days from opening.
Schwab will deposit an additional $101 to invest in fractional shares ($10 in each of the top five S&P 500 companies by market cap) through Schwab Stock Slices. Schwab will automatically make that investment unless you instruct otherwise.
The Fine Print
- The Schwab Starter Kit™ offer is only available to eligible new customers.
- To be eligible to receive the $50 cash bonus, you must be an individual who does not have a Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”) account (other than a Schwab Stock Plan Services account) and who: (1) opens a Schwab One individual taxable retail brokerage account and (2) deposits at least $50 into that account within 30 days of enrolling in the offer (only outside assets new to Schwab qualify; assets transferred from affiliates other than Schwab Retirement Plan Services are excluded).
- The Schwab Starter Kit is intended to help you start investing. So with this offer, when you open your brokerage account, you will instruct Schwab to use the $50 cash bonus to place orders for you in the future to buy $10 fractional shares of each of the top 5 stocks by market capitalization in the S&P 500® Index through Schwab Stock Slices™ (unless the orders are cancelled by you -see details below). The top 5 stocks will change from time-to-time. To see the top 5 stocks at any time, go to www.schwab.com/starterkit.
- After you enroll in the offer, here’s what will happen: Two business days after your account is opened, Schwab will begin checking for qualifying deposits every business day. Once your qualifying deposit has been received, Schwab will credit the $50 cash.
- Schwab will place the 5 orders for you ($10 fractional share orders for each of the top 5 stocks in the S&P 500) at approximately 8:00 pm Eastern Time the day the cash bonus is credited to your account, provided you maintain at least $50 in your brokerage account at that time. You will have a short period of time (from approximately 8:00 pm Eastern Time until approximately 9:25 am the next trading day) to cancel the orders. To cancel the orders, you will need to go to the Order Status page on schwab.com or on any of Schwab’s other trading platforms or call a Schwab representative at 800-435-4000. If you cancel your orders, you will keep the $50 cash bonus and can save or invest it however you want. If you take no action, the orders will be executed shortly after market open the next trading day. You will then see the stocks reflected in your account and Schwab will send you trade confirmations for the trades.
Our Verdict
Nice, easy bonus here, especially for someone interested in opening a Schwab brokerage account. This is only for new Schwab customers and won’t work for existing users.
There’s also a separate Schwab offer for a bonus of between $100 – $1,000; that one requires large deposits to get. I don’t think you’d be able to do both of these offers so you’ll have to choose this easy $101 offer or the capital-intensive $100/$1,000 offer. We’ll add this offer as well to our List of Best Brokerage Bonuses.
Hat tip to reader Ryan
A couple of things, #1, If you turn on the margin call option the bonus isn’t invested but added to your acct balance. Of course I would suggest monitoring the acct as this may have changed, got this bonus mid 2023 or so. Confirmed by a rep after calling.
Second, this offer is for $50 now, idk since when. Cheers ✌️
2/20/25: Opened Charles Schwab account
2/24/25: Deposited $51.00 from Sofi
2/26/25: Received email with subject, “Have some Schwab Stock Slices™ on us.” Canceled order and received $101.00 Promotional Award.
4/16/25: Closed account via chat (fully closed within 24 hours)
I just called and apparatly they discontinued the offer 1 week ago !
Oh – is this confirmed?
now the $50 offer is going on.
I know this is the old thread but was anyone able to cancel order and get $101 into savings/checking?
yes, i cancelled the stock slice order a few days ago, and received the $101
i then transfered the money to my other checking account, plan to close account this week
Churning with different email and same phone number appears to work. If you reuse the same email it will ask you to login instead.
How long did you wait after opening/closing your first account?
*1
linking external bank account and pulling funds from within schwab worked fine as expected. I think if you want to ACH pull from outside schwab, you need to order checks. Otherwise, microdeposit linking will fail (as will all other withdrawals).
Has a former TD customer tried to sign up after TD converted to Schwab? I’m sure that I had them close my acct before I signed up for this offer last year. I got the bonus last year.
I tried to sign up again and it says that I have a TD acct and need to get a Schwab username. I entered my old TD acct numbers and it tells me to fix an error on the page, but doesn’t say what the error is.
Anyone able to get approved with Chex frozen? Or for those that get approved and then schwab says they’ll close it due to financial info (chex). Were you ever able to get in and stay in?
Schwab does not pull Chex for brokerage accounts. They do pull Chex for the checking account.
Can we use this account to make free partial ACAT transfers of cash (let’s say to MooMoo)? Basically partial ACAT transfer of cash initiated from this MooMoo.
confirmed chex frozen no issues
FYI, they are currently paying 0.45% interest on cash balances.
They are able to make it non interest bearing if you call.
I did that, hoping I’ll avoid a 1099 statement entirely (saw some comments saying they only got 1099 for the nominal interest, not for the $101 bonus).
So odd, I received the $101 promo, but it never invested in Stock Slices.
7/15 opened account
7/16 $50 pull posted
7/19 $101 promo credited
8/2 and still all money sitting in cash without going into stock slices (I’ve gotten multiple emails about my $101 stock slices on the way)
Seems there’s no minimum time to hold this account, so I’ll probably just move out the cash and shut it down soon anyway (while keeping my new I401k account that I moved from Vanguard, which was the reason I decided to bank with Schwab altogether).
DP for those interested: I received a 1099-INT for exactly $101.00
No interest earned outside of the bonus.
Same. Though in my case, I didn’t earn a cent of interest. I presume if you did earn any interest, that would be on there too.
Second Starter Kit account. Closed first account11/8/22.
Opened second with new e-mail and number: 6/20/24 and deposited $51
6/27/24: $101 posted to account (can’t transfer out yet). Banner says “It’s happening! You’ll soon get a trade confirmation for every order of Schwab Stock Slices™.”