zoym said:thx, op.

just apply one and trans from uma
I hate how citi keeps switching this around on us though. First I had e-savings, then USA came out at a higher rate, then UMA came out at a higher rate. Annoying.

Anyone else get the promo in the mail today about a $100 bonus if you deposit $15k of new money and keep it there until 1/31/09? Works out to be 2.6% rate bonus if you hold it there for the minimum of 3 months (10/31-1/31) - $100/($15k*(3/12 months)). Must convert to Everything Counts, the Citibank Acct, or Citigold if you aren't already one of those levels. On top of 3.5% thats not a bad deal, but I would like to know which acct will have a higher rate for those 3 months.

This is on top of a similar promo I got from them 3 months ago for 16k TY points for a $15k deposit, but that had no hold time requirement so I pulled it out after 2 months. (Similar relationship conversion/level required though)

mmyk72 said:thanks for pointing out that transfer out of Citi is limited to $2000 per day (standard) / $1000(Next day). There is also a $10000 monthly limit for standard.

Does it mean you can only take out $2000 Standard 5x per month?Yes, with respect to ACH (electronic, but not "wire") transfers. On top of that, their fraud department will almost always interpret consecutive $2,000 withdrawals to justify locking your account.

Meanwhile, Citi is very pleased to sit on your money which you could be earning better interest on elsewhere.

I opened the Ultimate Savings account. I am already a citi customer so it just appeared in my online banking and I transferred all my money to the account. I have to say it is odd that the rate for this is higher than for the "Ultimate Money Account". Most people don't check the rates a lot so they probably figure most people have the Ultimate Money Account. Now they can switch the higher rate to the Ultimate Savings Account so they don't have to pay a lot of interest back.

I checked and all the promos are expired and/or point the the Ultimate Money Account. Anyone want to prove me wrong?

Ultimate Money Account
To receive the 3.00% Rate, all you need to do is make at least two online bill payments each calendar month from your linked checking account in a qualifying relationship package.1

hpmoon said:The problem with all Citi bank accounts is that they have a moronic (profit-motivated) $2,000 limitation per day on ACH transfers to external bank accounts. In other words, Citi makes it extremely difficult for you to withdraw your money, and they are very happy to collect interest while you dribble the balance out, $2,000 at a time. (At that, they issue a fraud alert and lock out transfers based on the "suspicious" behavior of making consecutive $2,000 withdrawals. I still haven't gotten the lock lifted, after numerous assurances that it would be.)

I have a checking account with them. I go into a branch, transfer all the money from savings to checking that I want to transfer (having a branch do this transfer does not count against your six monthly outbound transactions). Then I write a personal check from the checking account to my other account. How much interest do I lose?

25k x 3.5% APY = $875 in interest. That comes to about $17 lost in interest if youw rite a check and your funds are in non-interest bearing state for approx 7 days.

It is crappy, but you can also use a cashier's check if you want to make sure the funds are a bit more expidited. Or suck it up and do a wire transfer.

tuffghost said:Wow this is awesome, prior to now it was 2.26% APY. I have several of these accounts Now I don't feel as bad using them. (I'm assuming the rate will be applied to existing accounts as well.)

Funny thing is the Ultimate Money Account is still at 3%... it used to be that the UMA earned a higher rate than the USA.


ETA: 6 month CD is also now up to 4% APY.

eh. citi plays game. when ultimate savings came out, it was the highest. a couple months after that, UMA debuted and that was higher than the savings. Glad I didn't close my Ultimate Savings when I moved everything but $0.85 over to UMA.

I had the checking, e-savings, and the UMA account with Citi and I did an online opening for the USA (Ultimate Savings Account). They did a hard on Transunion; wasn't expecting this as I never got a hard for opening online other than with my first account opened.

Xeon852 said:zoym said:thx, op.

just apply one and trans from uma
I hate how citi keeps switching this around on us though. First I had e-savings, then USA came out at a higher rate, then UMA came out at a higher rate. Annoying.

Anyone else get the promo in the mail today about a $100 bonus if you deposit $15k of new money and keep it there until 1/31/09? Works out to be 2.6% rate bonus if you hold it there for the minimum of 3 months (10/31-1/31) - $100/($15k*(3/12 months)). Must convert to Everything Counts, the Citibank Acct, or Citigold if you aren't already one of those levels. On top of 3.5% thats not a bad deal, but I would like to know which acct will have a higher rate for those 3 months.

This is on top of a similar promo I got from them 3 months ago for 16k TY points for a $15k deposit, but that had no hold time requirement so I pulled it out after 2 months. (Similar relationship conversion/level required though)

Yes, that seems to be the pattern with them, they invent a new type of savings acc't with a higher rate, slowly lower rates across the board, lather, rinse, repeat. But in this case it doesn't appear to be a new account, or if it is they didn't bother to change the name. That leads me to believe that the rate is increased for everybody.

One of my big gripes about Citi's online system is that you can't click on an account and see what rate you're currently getting on that account. I still have no idea what my "Money Market Plus" account (with all of $5.75 in it) is paying. It would be nice to click on the "Ultimate Savings" account link and see my balance and "3.5%" somewhere on the page.

I'll have to call tomorrow and see if my CSR can tell me the rate.

ninas said:I had the checking, e-savings, and the UMA account with Citi and I did an online opening for the USA (Ultimate Savings Account). They did a hard on Transunion; wasn't expecting this as I never got a hard for opening online other than with my first account opened.

Odd... I opened online yesterday, and the hard pull hasn't appeared on my credit report yet; I'm using CreditSecure via AMEX. Did you make sure to sign in first, and then use your citibank account screen navigation to 'open new account' and open the USA from there? That's how I did it.