The Offer
- Citibank is offering a savings bonus of up to $400 for existing Citigold checking customers. Here is what you need to do to receive the bonus:
- Enroll and upgrade to The Citigold® Account Package (if you already have one, you’re a step ahead!)
- Fund a new or existing Citibank Savings Plus Account with a minimum of $25,000
new to bank funds by 8/31/15 - Maintain a minimum balance of $25,000 or more throughout the next 3 monthly statement periods, and you’ll earn up to $400 in bonus interest
This offer is actually exceptionally misleading, because you don’t receive a bonus of $400 for depositing $25,000. You actually only receive 3x the interest. The interest rates that Citi offers are incredibly low (0.03% on under $50,000, which means you’d be earning 0.09% APY)
The Fine Print
- The bonus interest will be credited to the Citibank® Savings Plus Account within 90 days from the end of the statement period in which the customer completes the qualifying requirements stated in this offer
Our Verdict
Don’t do this offer under any circumstances, it’s trivial to earn at least 1% APY on a checking account, which is 12x higher than the ‘bonus rate’ Citi is offering here. The reason I decided to post this offer is because I imagine a lot of readers will receive an e-mail about this bonus, considering so many of you signed up for the 30,000 AA/40,000 TYP checking deals.
Citi has been pretty good recently, but this is a terrible deal and quite misleading. As such I’ve decided to not list it on our savings account bonus page and obviously it hasn’t made the best of page either.
Citi’s run this deal periodically for years. It was ok when the base interest on that account was .4% (I did it a couple times back then) but now it’s too low.
Interesting also that the cap used to be $250, now they have raised it to $400 and use it as the focus of the promo.
Here’s a pretty dangerous idea that I hope I can articulate well and get some good advice from you guys about. CitiGold can be funded with a card up to $100,000. I know that I put $4k on a mastercard with my cash advance at a $0 cap. It went through; and ive got the points and the bank account is now closed. Now, put together, I can combine the cards from a specific bank to have a pretty high limit and if I use a card that’ll give me 1% or 1.5% (C1), I can get about $500-$1000 JUST in points. Then I can take the cash, and get 1% (÷12=$82) interest with my bank, pay the bill in a month and 3 weeks. When it’s due, duh. Now, assuming I can find a way to transfer such an amount from the account IN <30 days(or simply forgo the interest and pay the bill from the bank account itself), what's wrong with the idea? And please, scaring me about the amount or telling me (us) how to not be stupid with the banks is NOT the idea of my question. I really want to hear what people who think like I, think of this idea, and I'm pretty sure it can be beneficial for us like-minded individuals. Even if its a bad idea to you, WHY do you think so? If you think it's a good idea, just like that, please reread my post. S.L.O.W.LY.
I'll keep checking back for questions.
In case you missed the page here that lists which bank accounts can be funded with a credit card, it’s in the drop down menu under ‘bank accounts’. There are a lot of data points for that part of your plan, including for Citi accounts. If you’re looking for input on part two, the mini-arbitrage, I would think that timing the transfer(s)/billpay so as not to pay fees (Citi) or interest (C1) are your biggest obstacles. The date of interest calculated, and paid out, by the other deposit account would also have to be figured. This only seems worth the effort if you can actually consolidate CL above say 50k, and on a card that doesn’t post ‘financial’ transactions as a CA. Good luck.
This is sad. Doing the math, you literally have to put in half a million dollars to qualify for the maximum “bonus” (0.12% APR X 2 X (3/12)yr X $500,000), when it is trivial to find 1% APY savings accounts with no limit (although you should never keep more than the FDIC maximum insured amount).
Correction – $666,667 for the $400 bonus. Even worse (and only for those states that pay 0.12% interest on Savings Plus).
This is just amazing how they dare to advertise this shitty deal this way.
Shame on you Citibank!
Any fee for this gold checking account? I am now using student account for free. Just wonder after 3 months what should I do with this account? Can I degrade it?
Since this is Citi we are talking about I’m assuming this bonus will be taxable
All bank bonuses are taxable
What about using it to fund with a credit card? Does the savings account allow that?