$400 For a New Citigold Checking Account

I was in the Citibank branch earlier this week paying some bills and noticed again a promotion I had seen around.

• Open a new checking account in the Citigold Account Package by 10/31/2014.
• Within 60 days after account opening, deposit a minimum of $50,000 in new-to-Citibank funds into the new checking account and complete a qualifying bill payment for two consecutive months.
• The cash bonus will be credited to your new checking account within 90 days from the end of the month in which you complete all offer requirements.

In the fine print, it says you must be at least 18 to qualify for the offer and anyone who has received a bonus for opening a new Citibank account in the past two years is not eligible.

The Citigold account is Citibank’s premium account and it does have a few benefits. Among these are occasional reduced credit card fees (as an example, the Citi ThankYou Prestige Card only charges $350 to Citigold customers vs. $450 to regular customers). Citigold customers are also eligible for occasional increased credit card offers, though I’ve not seen anything spectacular yet. The catch is, after your $400, you do have to maintain a pretty hefty minimum balance to waive a $30 monthly service fee. This includes:

• $50,000 or more in eligible linked deposit and retirement balances OR
• $100,000 13 or more in eligible linked deposits, retirement balances, investments18 credit cards and loans/lines of credit excluding first mortgage OR
• $250,000* 13 or more All of the above including first mortgage

That said, if you do have $50,000 sitting around not invested elsewhere, $400 is a pretty quick automatic return of about 0.8% in a few months. On the other hand, it may be too much leg work to move it all over to Citi just for the $400. The way I look at it: If you were thinking of at some point banking with Citibank and opening a Citigold checking account, now may be the time to do it.