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July 05, 2005
$200 from Citibank
Citibank sure keeps rolling out the offers. Since I started this website a few years ago, I can't remember a time when they didn't offer sign up money for opening a bank account or applying for a credit card.
Now they have a dedicated website just for the sign up money offers: offer.citibank.com. The best current one I could find one looks pretty good (enter the code CJ22 in the window at the website above).
If you open an EZChecking account with $1500 and keep $1500 in the account to avoid maintenance fees, you get:
- $50 after three months of paying two bills a month
- $50 more after three more months
- $50 more after three more months
- $50 more after three more months, for a total of $200 after 12 months
That's equivalent to $200/$1500 x 100% = 13.3% in guaranteed, risk-free interest.
I've had a Citibank account before and found citibankonline.com to be pretty easy to use. I also remember Citibank as having good customer service reps that responded quickly to email questions. The bill paying is nice too because they have a ton of merchants already set up in their system, so the set-up required is really minimal. The only thing I didn't like was having to maintain a high balance to avoid monthly service charges, so I eventually closed the account and switched to NetBank, where I can keep $1 in checking without any fees.
Still, if you want to get $200 for trying them out, this sounds like a great offer. You can also avoid the monthly service charge with two or more electronic bill payments from, or a direct deposit to, a Regular Checking account during the monthly statement period.
Posted by brian at July 5, 2005 11:03 PM