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Funding Citibank Account with Credit Card

February 10, 2016

I Dragged My Feet & Got Burned: Citibank Kills Funding Bank Accounts With A Credit Card

The big news from yesterday was that you can no longer fund a Citibank bank account with a credit card. I have written about this quite extensively in the past as seen here, here, and here. Some of these posts are still among my most viewed posts on a daily basis – especially funding a Citibank Savings Account with a credit card as I think I was among the first bloggers to blog about that specific deal.

Funding Citibank Savings Account

RIP

With all the time I’ve spent on the topic and recommending it others, you’d think I would make sure to maximize this promotion for my wife and I. While it’s true we both got new Citigold Checking accounts and I got my own Savings Plus account in the past year, I never got around to setting up a Citibank Savings Plus account for my wife. There was no good reason to delay it other than the thought I’ll get around to it next weekend (or the weekend after that) as I (stupidly) thought this “deal” would always be available. I ended up dragging my feet on this and with a newly increased credit line on my Citi Prestige, I could have funded this account up to $25,000. My procrastination is going to cost me at least $400 (based on 1.6 cents a point in value) for at most 10 minutes or so of work. 

I imagine someone will make this argument in the comment section so I’ll head it off now but no, I do not think I killed this deal. My traffic is nowhere near the levels of Million Mile Secrets and other big blogs who posted about this deal in the same level of detail. Their daily traffic levels are over 10x what I receive so I refuse to believe it was my post that killed this deal for anyone.

Over the past year or so, I’m sure Citibank saw a huge increase in both 1) the number of accounts funded with a credit card and 2) accounts closed shortly after opening. It is probably the second point that killed this deal as Citibank was losing on the credit card processing fees but hoped to recoup that customer acquisition cost by having new, long term Citibank customers. I’m quite confident that many of us in this game opened the account with a credit card and then closed it within 6 months to a year – thereby making this quite expensive for Citibank (especially if you opened a Citigold account under the 30,000 to 50,000 American AAdvantage or Thank You point offers).

I want my readers to takeway the following from this post. Within the past year, we have seen many of the easy routes for free and/or cheap manufactured spend disappear, often with no warning like this. The game keeps evolving & combined with the devaluation of frequent flier / hotel loyalty programs things have certainly gotten tougher for many travel hackers as compared to 12 months ago. Please take my advice and don’t procrastinate when a valuable deal is staring you in the face – jump on it and take advantage while the proverbial “iron is still hot”. Additionally, always have backup plan – whether it is to simply to meet a minimum spend requirement or liquidate Visa prepaid gift cards.

Now as Jay Z says, On To The Next One

 

Citibank Funding Citibank Account with Credit Card, Funding Citibank Savings Account with Credit Card 3 Comments
May 19, 2015

Positive Update on the 30,000 American Airlines Miles Offer for Opening a Citigold Account 

I have some good news to share in regards to the 30,000 American Airlines miles promotion that Citibank offered earlier this year for opening a Citigold account. As I’ve mentioned previously, my plan was to wait until the 30,000 AA miles posted and then immediately downgrade my account to a Basic checking account to avoid any fees. In order to waive the $30 monthly fee for a Citigold account, you need to hold $50,000 in the account and that wasn’t an option for me.

The first bit of good news is my 30,000 miles have finally posted to my AA account on 5/14 (though they were backdated to 5/11 as I have been checking daily). I funded the account on 2/11 so it took a little over 3 months for the miles to post.

CitiAAMiles

Since my goal was to get the miles as quickly as possible (again to avoid any fees), I completed the requirements which were $750 in debit card purchases and two months of bill pay pretty quickly. To do this, I loaded $750 to my RedBird card at Target (you can still do this with RedBird) and paid my wife’s car loan for two months. Below is my whole account activity for the 3 months the account has been open. As you can see, I did the bare minimum to meet the requirement for the bonus and I never was charged a monthly service fee. Citibank does automatically waive the fee for the first two months but I have no idea why I wasn’t charged for April.

CitigoldActivity

The other good bit of news I have to share is that I was able to easily downgrade my account to a Basic checking account just days after my miles posted. In fact, I was able to do it in 7 minutes over secure chat with Citibank! I’ve copied my whole conservation (except for the 3 long statements the rep sent me) to show you just how easy it was.

CitiConvo1

CitiConvo2

CitiConvo3

My account is now a Basic account and as long as I keep $1,500 in the account, I will not be charged any monthly fees. Interestingly when I called in with a question on my Prestige card, I was still recognized as a Citigold account holder (which is expected for now per the rep’s comments). From what others have said, reps still see the account as a Citigold account even after this transition period lapses and I hope this remains the case. I’m curious to see what will happen next year when my Prestige is due for renewal as I would love the $100 discount on the annual fee again for being a Citigold account holder.

I’m very happy I took advantage of this deal as for just the tiniest bit of work I was able to score 30,000 AA miles plus another 2,000 Barclay Arrival points for funding this account with a credit card when I opened it. All of this came without any out of pocket costs so these were truly free miles. I plan on taking advantage of the 30k AA offer for my wife when she gets her next AA card (per Doctor of Credit both the 30k AA and 40k TYP offers are currently available so I could go for the 40k TYP now but I’d rather have the AA miles) and I will be much more aggressive in funding the account with a credit card (i.e more than just $1,000).

Have others seen their miles post and downgrade their account successfully?

American Airlines, Citibank Citi 30k AA Citigold Offer, Citibank American Airlines Miles Citigold Offer, Downgrade Citigold Account to Basic Account, Funding Citibank Account with Credit Card 39 Comments

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