diddlydudette said:Ok, how do you apply for this particular card? Is there some site online to read about it. I'd be interested. Thanks!

call 1-800-479-1183 by 9/15/06 to apply

XeroK00L said:vickh said:any online link to apply for it or can current diamond members switch to it?The ad says this deal is for "new cardmembers only". I wonder if this means existing diamond preferred card holders or even holders of *any* Citibank credit cards are doomed.

Not valid for existing diamond preferred card holders only

sloth911 said:Can you share your numbers/calculations with us?

Sure, I just plugged some numbers into my quicken savings calculator: $850/month(increasing by 3% annually) in savings over the 5 years and 5 months this 0% offer is good for at 5%. I didn't correct for the effect of required monthly minimum payments, so the net will be slightly less(and of course money will be arguably worth less years from now due to inflation, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. ).

cameron2003 said:This offer, though interesting and unique, doesn't seem worth doing. I would rather have 5% CashBack. It would take a long time to spend enough in grocery stores to make deposits worthwhile. With this plan, what, every time I spend $100 at a grocery store, I need to remember to deposit $100 into an interest bearing account. I supposed you could make more than 5%, but hassle factor must be considered.??? Why isn't your $100 that you would have used to pay off the card ALREADY in a ~5% interest bearing che king account?!? (aka Presidential Internet Checking)

By the way, if one has a family of 4 & 90 miles of combined commutes a day, it (lamentably!) won't take long at all to run up the balance on this! I think we easily charge over $5k/yr in these three categories.

I do caution people to be careful with Citibank though -- I had a 1.9%/life BT I'd been milking with them for a couple years, & then inexplicably last month my minimum payment online didn't go through (don't know if it was my screwup or what). They jacked the interest rate to 29.9% immediately and hit me with almost $500 of interest charges & fees! Fortunately, I had the liquid cash assets around to pay the $15k blance off off completely the same day I discovered this (see Presidential mention above) or it would've been even worse. Caveat holder! If you can be more careful than me though, this is definitely an attractive deal.

MarkM said:cameron2003 said:This offer, though interesting and unique, doesn't seem worth doing. I would rather have 5% CashBack. It would take a long time to spend enough in grocery stores to make deposits worthwhile. With this plan, what, every time I spend $100 at a grocery store, I need to remember to deposit $100 into an interest bearing account. I supposed you could make more than 5%, but hassle factor must be considered.??? Why isn't your $100 that you would have used to pay off the card ALREADY in a ~5% interest bearing che king account?!? (aka Presidential Internet Checking)

By the way, if one has a family of 4 & 90 miles of combined commutes a day, it (lamentably!) won't take long at all to run up the balance on this! I think we easily charge over $5k/yr in these three categories.

I do caution people to be careful with Citibank though -- I had a 1.9%/life BT I'd been milking with them for a couple years, & then inexplicably last month my minimum payment online didn't go through (don't know if it was my screwup or what). They jacked the interest rate to 29.9% immediately and hit me with almost $500 of interest charges & fees! Fortunately, I had the liquid cash assets around to pay the $15k blance off off completely the same day I discovered this (see Presidential mention above) or it would've been even worse. Caveat holder! If you can be more careful than me though, this is definitely an attractive deal.

OK good point but what about this one? I would rather use my finite credit resources to maximize balance transfers PLUS add rewards on top of it. By not taking advantage of 5% rewards I am adding to my 0% amounts without using the rewards. It would be better to just get another 0% balance transfer card and continue with the 5% rewards instead of this.

I saw this ad this morning and was going to post it but original poster beat me to it. At first, I thought the offer sounded awesome. But then thinking about it, I realized that it was not nearly as great as it sounded. First off, as others have mentioned you could go to a supermarket, Drugstore, or gas station, that you thought was categorized as such but really wasn't. Then suddenly that purchase will start accruing interest immediately. Not to mention the fact that you lose the 5% casback you would earn on other cards. Also, you still have to make minimum payments, and it is unlikely that your credit line will support as large of a balance as many are talking about. I mean I know I spend over $5,000 per year on these categories. At that rate I would need a credit line of least $25,000 to maximize the benefit. Not only that, but if you reached your credit limit you would have maxed out your card which will hurt your fico score and possibly result in raised interest rates or reduced credit lines with other companies. To me, there are just to many variables to worry about to make it worth my time. To me, this is a smart move on citibank's part because they will get many average customers to signup for the card thinking that they are using their card at a qualifying store and are not and the interest just starts racking up. Plus many of these people will probably not pay off their balance after 2011 meaning even more revenue for Citibank. For some this might work and they can maximize revenue for me I am a little more conservative and thus would stick with things that don't have as many intricacies as this offer. Using my calculator I could probably net about an extra $1500 - $2000 over 5 years versus a straight 5% card. This is not chump change by any means but $400 per year for all of the hassle doesn't seem worth it to me not to mention that I would need a $30,000 credit line which would be maxed out or a $60,000 credit line to not significantly damage my fico score.

what happens if interest rates go up to say 10%? Is there some way they could force you to close your account?

BTW, somebody thought that CashBack isn't taxable, but it is.

gyagya said:Also, MarkM,

I have a similar worry with Discover 0% for life. Regarding the automatic bill-payment mess-up,I'm just thinking if I have the automatic payments set up thru Discover's payment system (on discover's website) instead of thru my checking account- I can then hold Discover responsible for the mess up and have them re-instate the 0%! I hope I'm right on this one!Yeah, I have a couple Discover 0% lifetime and also a CapOne 1.9% lifetime still going, and this is definitely a wake-up call to make those min payment process more iron-clad. With this deal without a doubt -- I now have proof that Citi is merciless about nailing you (not that I wsn't already pretty sure of that).


Joe1690 said:I saw this ad this morning and was going to post it but original poster beat me to it. At first, I thought the offer sounded awesome. But then thinking about it, I realized that it was not nearly as great as it sounded. First off, as others have mentioned you could go to a supermarket, Drugstore, or gas station, that you thought was categorized as such but really wasn't. Then suddenly that purchase will start accruing interest immediately. Not to mention the fact that you lose the 5% casback you would earn on other cards. Also, you still have to make minimum payments, and it is unlikely that your credit line will support as large of a balance as many are talking about. I mean I know I spend over $5,000 per year on these categories. At that rate I would need a credit line of least $25,000 to maximize the benefit.1) If you have already been using Citi/ATT 5% grocery/gas/drug cards, you would already know how the places you go categorize charges (and if you aren't, why not???) Let's face it, most of us shop at the same set of grocery, drug, and gas places. If you're worried about one you don't normally frequent, then just don't use it in those exceptional cases. If you start going to a new one regularly, try it out on a similiar but separate Citi/AT&T account first -- assuming they didn't just close all your AT&T 5% lines on you :disgust; :( :|

2) I guess you can worry about getting new credit, but if you don't use the best credit terms when you get them, what's the point of even HAVING credit?

3) First, you cn transfer CL between Citi cards. If you are a true FWFer, you should already have ~$25k in creidt lines at Citi -- just transfer CL from another ss attractive line. And as someone who's been milking those 0%/1.9% life deals for over 2 years now ... ytou do realize the minimum payments (3%) on these cards once you get around $20k is $500/mo right? SO I wouldn't worry too much about "maxing out" a line and not being able to use the deal any more. Even if I got it all the way up to $25k, that's going to be $750/mo minimum payment. At that poitn I am probably going to be paying off more than I will be charging.

But, to each their own, yes I guess you have to do the math for your own situation. But I think this works out well for a lot more people than you might think .. again with the caveat that they make ABSOLUTELY SURE they can get those payments in every month. No room for error here.

Regarding the risk of accidently charging a non-promotional purchase to your card or a gas/grocery store not being classified as such by Citibank, there are a couple of things you can do. First is to buy something (different purchases amounts please!) at each gas and grocery store you frequent. When you get your next statement, you should be able to figure out which purchases counted and which didn't - just look at your regular purchase balance and your promotional 0% balance too see which charges ended up where. A regular FW'er might already know which local stores count for Citi's 5% gas/grocery cards and unless Citi is using a different set of rules (possibly but unlikely), this will only take a little time to get straightened out.

I think this is such a good deal (compared to the 5% cash ones) that you could probably even afford to have a minor mistake here and there and still come out considerably ahead. True you could pay off your whole balance in order to stop paying interest if a stray non-qualified purchase sneaks through, but if 95% of your balance is at 0% and 5% is at 20% you're still only paying 1% in annual interest. This ratio would normally get worse over time, but assuming you are putting net charges on your card each month, you are charging more 0% items than minimum payments (which get allocated to the 0% balance), and the ratio will actually improve. Ideally you wouldn't ever let through a non-qualified purchase, but it's good to know from a practical perspective that it won't be a disaster if you do and the deal will still have been worthwhile.

My only reservation about this deal is that, like any 0% balance that sits on your card, it will make your credit score somewhat worse depending on the size of the balance and your credit limit. Unlike a 0% BT promo which usually expires within a year, this will be sitting around for 5 years. It's easier to say you don't care about your credit score during the next 6 months, but hard for the next 5 years. Of course you can always pay it off (you were saving the money from those purchases, right?), but doing so early in the promotion's lifetime will make it less attractive than an alternative 5% card.

EricGo said:in 3 or 4 years stop using the card and let the balance sit until due.
Exactly. As was pointed out earlier, it takes more than a year's worth of interest (in light of taxes and the purchases accumulating throughout the first year) before you come out ahead vs a 5% cash card. The same logic applies in year 4, when you were thinking about carding a new purchase on this card vs a 5% one. The 5% card (assuming they are still around) will be the better choice.

EricGo said:I find this deal complicated to think through, compared to a straight 5% card. It is affected by diminishing returns as time goes on due to less time collecting interest and minimum payback amounts, and the ability to pay with inflated dollars down the line.

Qualitatively, I think it makes sense to take now, and in 3 or 4 years stop using the card and let the balance sit until due.Yeah, there are some good points here. I think it is a serious oversight not to consider Citi's min payment is 3%/month, that is not quite 12*3=36% paid back after one year, I can dig up the formula but let's say about 29% of each dollar charged paid back after one year, that's not too far off. I definitely was seeing my balance dropping around that speed on my 1.9%/life deal. Back of the envelope math gives you about .29 of every dollar charged paid off after one year, .50 after two, .64 after three, .75 after four (if someone wants to do the precise math please do!) So there's only going to be 25 cents of every dollar charged today still at 0% four years from now, give or take 5 cents.

Though this definitely dimishes the value, it still does not invalidate the deal. For example, to the person who prefers to "saving their credit" to take advantage of other 0% deals/5% rebates -- besides the valid point made by others, will there still be these deals 5 years from now, after all AT&T just killed their 5% rebate cards for most if not all of us -- this dimishing balance issue is just the same for a new BT transfer as it is for this card. Indeed, I kind of built it into my thinking when I toodk the Citi 1.9% for life deal & committed the "cardianl sin" of taking a 100% BT on it, which is bad for your credit (shouldn't tkae more than 50%). I figured out that I was going to be at 50% of my CL in ~2 years anyway due to min payments, so I didn't see the issue as being all that different than doing my "app-o-ramas" -- when I do those I plan on not using that credit profile (mine or my wife's) for 2 years either, until all the inquiries drop off. And finally, as I point out in my back-of-envelope math above, it may be very unlikely that you'll be tapping much more than 50% of your CL on this deal anyway, if you have high enough limit, or low enough charges.

Taking all this into account, plus taxes on interest, I'll refine EricGo's estimate a little & say it will probably make sense to keep chargin to this card until sometime in mid-2010 -- longer if the 5% rewards cards disappear by then. If there are still 5% rewards cards 4 years from now (big "if" IMO, given recent AT&T action, and history of other rewards programs), it would probably take about 1.5 years to get the same 5% cash benefit that you get out of the box from other Citi cards. But that comes out to the same conclusion as him, mid-2010 is about 4 years of worth.

Finally, another thought: maybe it's worth getting this card even if you don't think the 0% on gas/grocery/drug til '11 is so hot, after all there IS a 0% on BT until 8/1/2007 deal here too, so it is worth looking at even if you don't think you care about the other features. So you can just use it like a normal BT card (no charges at all) until 8/07, charging your gs/grocery/drug to an existing %5 rewards account in that period, then the other til-2001 features are a "freebie" to be re-examined then (or any time in the following few years). If the AT&T action (wihich is run by Citi), plus Discover's & AAA's gas cards before them, and this shift in offers by Citi is an early indication that 5% rewards and 0% deals are going the way of the dodo -- how many rewards programs last more than a few years??? -- by then people may regret not having jumped on this. If Citi & others kil the current crop of rewards programs in mid-2008, this may be a nice card to have "up your sleeeve."

In conclusion, this is how I see using this deal: as a pure 0% BT deal until 8/1/07, then as a likely gas/grocery/drug charge card for about 3 years afer that, til mid-2010. The worth during the final 18 months of the 0% purchase promotion will depend on if the current 5% rewards deals are still extant 4 years from now.