I see many people have questions about the Citibank E-Z checking account that says you get it for free if you have $1500 combined balance (CD's, e-savings, all deposit accounts included), or direct deposit, or 2 bill pays online a month. BTW - if you sign up, look for a code, I used one that will give me $25 after three months of bill pay.
This is what I did and it works in order to have e-savings (5% interest) and e-z checking for free (by the way, they do perform a credit check): 1) Set up a bill pay of $1.00/month to ING from checking. ING works well for next step. 2) Set up automatic $1.00/month from ING to checking. 3) Pay 2nd bill once a month or pay yourself to another account like ING. I pay credit card each month so this is my second bill pay.
You now have a free checking account with no minimum balance and you don't have to have any bills to pay (if you choose to pay two different accounts from checking to yourself at other banks).
Now, call citibank customer service and sign up for thank you rewards and have them send you a Thank You debit card (to earn thank you points - 1 point for every $2 dollars where you sign, 1 point for every $3 dollars when you enter your pin) - 1-800-374-9700 is the phone number
Now you get Thank You points for having multiple products from citibank. The reason I put STEP 2 in was because the $1.00 automatically going back into the citibank account from ING counts as a DIRECT DEPOSIT.
Now, sign up for Checking Plus (another name for Overdraft Protection - be careful though since they do a hard credit pull for this one), it is free if you live in New York or $5/year if you live elsewhere (might not be worth it if you live elsewhere).
So far you have this many services to earn many thank you points: 1) checking account 2) savings account 3) debit card 4) online bill payment 5) direct deposit 6) checking plus
This gives you 225 Thank You Points/month. Open up a CD (5.5% for 6 months, they do perform a credit check) and you get 300 Thank You Points/month.
Now, if you have more cash. Do all this but call customer service (phone number above) and swith to The Citibank Account and get Interest Checking (0.25%) and 600 Thank You Points or 800 Thank You Points if you have a CD.
To get a free The Citibank Account you must meet the combined balance of 6,000 dollars.
Hope this clarifies things. If anyone has any other ways to get more Thank You Points please post.
Does your TY account only show the checking as sponsor account when it gives it TY points? I just signed up for TY but all I see on the TY account are my credit cards.
If you have a citi credit card which do you use? The Citi Dividend with the 1%/5% Cash Back or the credit card with Thank You points and why?
I use Dividend because I feel the CashBack is better than the Thank You Points in the fact that it takes less money spent to get more CashBack with the Dividend then with the Thank You points.
1. checking account 2. savings account 3. debit card 4. direct deposit (ing, paypal, ach push) 5. online bill payment 6. checking plus
i never spend money using the debit card. i do a monthly direct deposit of $1 by paypal/ach push. i send myself $1 monthly using online bill payment. all the other products and services provide monthly points. easy 225 points monthly so far!
by the way timothy86, what you have listed gives you only 150 points monthly since you only have a total of 5 products and services.
Anyone know if Safety Check counts as a service? It would be better than Checking Plus since they don't do a hard credit pull to sign up for this service. It just transfers money from your savings if your checking account is overdrawn for a $5.00 fee each time, but if you don't overdraw your account (I know I never have) then if it counts for the rewards it is a good deal.
timothy86 said:Anyone know if Safety Check counts as a service? It would be better than Checking Plus since they don't do a hard credit pull to sign up for this service. It just transfers money from your savings if your checking account is overdrawn for a $5.00 fee each time, but if you don't overdraw your account (I know I never have) then if it counts for the rewards it is a good deal.
I use this website as the gold standard for qualifying for points....Safety Check is not listed as something that earns points. Sorry I can't get the link to work right on FWF but it works for me if you copy and paste.
According to the Citi EZ-checking $200 signup thread, there is still an active $200 bonus offer for signing up for the Citi checking account. I believe the deal now is that you must do 2 billpays per month for 12 months or something of that sort.
Am i just lucky or do they deposit allot for verifying accounts? I just had a deposit into my other checking to verify linkage and it was for a total for $1.05! Thats like free money =D!
I know most of this info has been said, but I found it mostly mixed in many different threads. So I just wanted to compile everything in one thread and I'll constantly update with current information.
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