Ohio CollegeAdvantage $25 Systematic Savings Incentive

Along with the $25 “Refer a Friend” bonus for new members (possibly more if you have more than one child), the Ohio CollegeAdvantage 529 plan is giving out an additional $25 “Systematic Savings Incentive” if you start a new automatic transfer from your bank account or payroll deduction. Here is the fine print, but the major points are below.

To earn the $25 bonus, the electronic funds transfer (EFT) or payroll deduction must be started between September 1, 2009 and January 31, 2010. The bonus will be applied to your CollegeAdvantage account 90 days after you start the EFT or payroll deduction and meet the following requirements:

• A minimum of $25 must be deducted per month.
• The EFT and payroll deduction must still be active at the 90-day mark.
• For EFT only, a minimum of three EFT pulls must have occurred within the 90 days.
• For payroll deduction only, at least one payroll check must be applied within the 90 days.

Got two 529 contributors? You can get $50:

More than one Systematic Savings Incentive bonus may be awarded per account in the case where the Account Owner and other Contributors sign up for a recurring EFT or payroll deduction for the same account. For example, the Account Owner could start a recurring EFT and the spouse could also start a recurring EFT or payroll deduction as a Contributor for the same account. In that case, the account would receive a total of $50 if all other criteria for the bonus are met.

If you are like me and already have an automatic transfer in place:

CollegeAdvantage direct accounts with a current recurring EFT or payroll deduction are eligible for the bonus offer if a “new” recurring EFT or payroll deduction is started for the Account by either the Account Owner or Contributor, provided they are not the party currently responsible for the current recurring EFT or payroll deduction. For example, if the current recurring EFT was established by the Account Owner, a Contributor could also start a recurring EFT or payroll deduction and potentially qualify for the bonus as a “new” recurring EFT or payroll deduction. In this case a $25 bonus would be applied for the new recurring EFT or payroll deduction. The Systematic Savings Incentive bonus is intended to reward new systematic savers. The account will not qualify for the bonus if a current recurring EFT or payroll deduction is stopped and a new one started between September 1, 2009 and January 31, 2010.

By this, I read that my wife could start contributing an automatic amount as well, and we could get one $25 bonus. However, stopping and re-starting an existing automatic transfer won’t work.