New cards from Citi with good sign up bonuses

From the start of 2015, Citi seems to be very intent in coming up with new and creative offers. The marketing strategy has been to use big bang offers to attract the new as well as veteran crowd. Like last year, when they came up with a 100,000 bonus offer for a Citi American Executive card, this year they did something similar with the Citi Prestige card. Note that both cards have very high annual fees, about $450 which is not waived for the first year. Yet, note the high degree of interest and applications that these two cards have generated implying that if you put a really good product out there, people might come out to buy. I am still on the fence as to whether to quantify this as a good card. I did apply for the Citi American Executive card last year and have more or less used this 100k points in various travel related activities.

Citi Prestige is a different ballgame altogether. My skeptical reviews are here. However, Citi seems to be going aggressive and released better bonus offers for two more cards.

All in all, here are the links sans any sponsorship and direct link to citi website:

1. Citi Prestige card: $450 annual fee, $200 statement credit per calendar year, 50k Thankyou points and that's pretty much it apart from some fringe benefits. Minimum spend is 3k.

2. Citi Thank you premier card: 50k bonus points after you spend 3k on the card. Annual fee waived for the first year.

3. Citi AT&T card: Now this card is interesting. There is an annual fee of $95, a free unlocked phone worth up to $650 from AT&T is awaiting once you spend $2k on it within the standard 3 months. It is pretty interesting card. I would give it that. I am not a big smart phone user but this card is too hard to resist. A 2k spend is pretty average for  most US households - rent, gas, groceries simply add up to that amount quickly in a month or two. If you are living in big coastal cities, then this is an easy task. It is as if you are going to get an unlocked Apple iPhone 6 or Samsung S6 for under 100 bucks. Not at all a bad deal if you have to get a smart phone quickly.

My order of recommendation remains the above three in the numbered order. Given that there is virtually no other provider right now with any exciting offers, it is rather obvious that most people, new and veterans are applying for one of the cards from Citi. In the first quarter of 2015, given the slow pace of the sign up bonuses, this seems a decent start and no harm in applying for one or two cards that Citi seems to limit per user.

Some better bonuses in the horizon..

After a really long drought (! .. not like the california water one :D ), it seems some banks are finally rolling off their sleeves and giving some real bonuses to the new customers.

While Chase has the official Southwest card at 25k points, one can easily get referred by friends to snag a 50k bonus points. If you need me to send you an invite offer, just put your email in the comment section or subscribe or just message me privately and I would be glad to offer you the deal. Read my review of this card here.

Citi started with the Citi Prestige card. I was not a big fan of it to begin with but all said and done, it is not a great card nor a totally worthless card. If you have a travelling itinerary lined up, this card could be a good addition. Just when I was thinking about this, Citi came up with another surprise. They improved the bonus terms in the Citi Premier card.

Non affiliate link is here. I do not get paid or am affiliated with any marketing companies or Citi or any other banks for that matter. This card was pretty good back in the day until Citi decided to split its 50,000 bonus points to two different years by spending $3000 on each. Now this offer is a return to the old strategy and seems like this is pretty nice in terms of attracting customers. From a customer point of view, this is pretty neat as this card does not carry any annual bonus for the first year. So I would highly recommend to apply this card anyway.

As you might be aware, the best airline cards to apply these days are the Barclays US Airways and the Citi American who are slugging it out. Remaining all airline cards are on holding pattern at the moment. The hotel cards have not given much incentive and the Chase IHG card is the way to go for best points at this moment. Given that there is finally some rustle in the credit card landscape, it seems that finally some big companies like Amex or Bank of America might wake up to catch up to Citi or Chase and come up with a big offer.

Base Minimum Credit card and other accounts

Someone that I know who is not interested in anything related to the world of finance, asked me what is the base minimum of accounts and credit cards which also serve as quite optimal in terms of getting rewards and points. Obviously, this person is simply not interested or has time for the bonus points. She much rather prefers to earn cash and spend them as per need. Not interested in having to juggle with having a big stash of credit cards in wallets or for that matter having multiple accounts, she tasked me with designing a very basic package of accounts. Now she is also with Bank of America and has been disillusioned with their fees and banking account structures in general. This task is quite easy. No bank - regional or national - is going to come close to your good old friendly neighborhood credit union. So the best way to have a good checking and savings account would be to have a nice credit union. A simple online search or using the maps such as Bing or Google would give you the nearest credit union. There are also sites dedicated to finding the nearest credit union near you or your zip code. To have this basic account is a no brainer. Sometimes it is also good to have a national level checking or savings account mainly due to access to the customer service when you are involved in international travel or to have a global banking presence. Though bank of america is good, Chase is another bank that came to my mind. Mainly, due to the fact that having a good Chase banking relationship is often an entry way to their credit card world which is often the best out there in terms of the rewards along with American Express. So it was a no brainer to recommend Chase. For savings account, nothing is beating the online savings account. A quick check in bankrate.com gives a lot of results such as Synchrony, GE Capital Bank or the Ally Bank or Ever Bank etc. I prefer going with the two known names such as Discover Bank or the American Express Savings bank. Both have good customer service and are quite fast in terms of incorporating the latest technology in their banking sites. Not that the other banks such as Ally are any behind. The rate differences are almost minimal from 0.90% APR to about 1.05% APR. This is anyway for emergency funds parking only.

Now comes the big question of which credit card to choose. After going thru the list of credit cards in this site, which is pretty much a filtered and sorted list, I thought I would go with the below:

Barclays arrival+  card( 89 ): Good ongoing bonus with annual fee of $89 waived for the first year was the main thing other than the 2% bonus which is pretty much the maximum for all-purpose rewards card. Mainly, this card is hard to get once you have a good amount of credit history. So better to get it immediately. See my other post about the order in which to get the credit cards.

Close Second would be American express blue cash preferred: Simply one of the best cards around from an awesome customer service team, there is a 6% cash back for groceries and 3% gas which are among the highest out there. There is an annual fee of $75 which could also be offset by the high rewards structure. There is a blue cash counterpart as well as everyday card which is simply not the cup of tea for many users out there who do not want to be bothered with going to various stores and loading money.

Bottomline:

Credit card: Barclays Arrival+ and then the American Express Blue Cash Preferred.

As an aside, I would recommend to apply cards with Chase though no need to carry them in your wallet on day-to-day basis. Cards such as the Freedom card or the Southwest card are always good to have.

Savings account: American Express Savings

Credit Union: Find your local one using the online tool.

Checking Account: Chase Total Checking

Citi Prestige Card - worth the hype?

Going contra is sometimes cool but going contra with logic is sometimes a solid perspective on the scheme of things that happen in the credit card world. Recently, Citi came up with the Citi Prestige card and upped the bonus to 50,000 Thank you points which are generally okay and if you redeem in American then you are supposed to get $800 worth of flights. Now travelling in American, getting flights and seats on them.. that itself is a pain. There is also $250 annual credit that can be used if you buy airfare and other incidentals such as baggage fees or inflight entertainment and meals. The $450 annual fee is offset by this is what the claim of many a blogger out there. Of course, the high referral fees is another hidden reason why all blogs are promoting this credit card left right and center. Do I think this is a good card? It is decent. It gives you access to American Express lounges. If you are like the majority of travellers like me, I would like to keep the transit time as short as possible and get home rather than sit near a juice bar and wilt away time in some lounge in some airport. There is a global entry permit of $100 or so. Again, a common feature with many cards and in the grand scheme of things, not really making too much of a difference. A few lines here and there is not going to break you. So it all boils down to $450 annual fee that gives you 50k Thank you points and $250 * 2 airline credit. If you have planned travel coming up, by all means go ahead and get a card but if not, is there a reason to invent travel and go just for the sake of miles and points?

Remember: 450 Annual fee. That is not waived for the year. You could close it on time before they bill you for next year. But still. 450. That is not chump change. In the world of regular 500 reloads, people become sensitized to 450 or anything under $500. Ha, I would recover that in a few reloads. But that is not the point. $450 is no chump change for a huge number of people. You are putting that as a fee. There are folks out there who are regular business travelers and get reimbursed by their companies. Many of course, do not have the time or necessity for such point accumulation. For the rest who do not have access to such travels and would rather prefer the short and sweet world of point accumulation, where does one draw the line? This does look highly commoditized and calculated. But more importantly, it is leading to real and perceivable change in consumer behavior of people like you and me. Remember the monkey is taught to do the tricks of buying stuff online and act in a certain way and after some time, it pretty much does that on its own. The whole credit card bonus points and cash back is just geared towards that. Make you use the credit cards more and  more so much that you don't even think about using cash and would rather just pay extra and return to your default of being "credit card nirvana" state. It is stunning to see how many otherwise reasonable bloggers are doing credit mile runs, going to china for a weekend just because of some few extra points or a $500 "mistake" fare while the capitalist producers simply laugh at the way the humans can be manipulated into relative action and minor changes in behavior. So maybe I might rethink my line on this particular card but I wanted to take a moment and recognize this aspect of having to simply pay huge fees so that there is an "offset" of some invented travel in future. Something that may well be avoided and instead, one can go visit the local library or local zoo or just sit in a beach or a park somewhere nearby!