Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-27649740-20160308125651/@comment-26715739-20160308135053

I find it safest to save after every race. But at the least you should be saving every time before you exit.

The "daily bonus" is (in my experience) triggered by the game trying to connect to the time servers.

This can be "forced" by
 * opening the game (with connectivity) for the first time in the day
 * finishing a race with internet connectivity for the first time in the day (ie I usually see this for the first race after midnight if I'm racing late at night)

So, in your case (since you always seem to lose progress on re-open) you should simply run a race (my personal favourite is the autocross at brands hatch).

In future, if you open the game with progress maintained, and you get the daily bonus then you should look to immediately save. However, note that cloud save will not let you save unless you've made a change. You can force it to to let you save by
 * finishing a race
 * servicing a car
 * purchasing a car/upgrade

Obviously if the daily bonus is one you actually want to make use in a race then you don't want to use the first option. So I try to keep a couple of low-end cars permanently with a little bit of service required (again autocross at brands hatch in the very first career series is your friend because it has cheap, quick to service cars). So you service that car and it will let you save.

Hope this helps.