Citibank $100 Deal - Last 2 days

Here is the offer (click image to enlarge)

Terms and Conditions (click image to enlarge)Offer home page

Additional Info
1. You must not have a citiback checking or savings account already.
2. The offer says you need to open both e-savings and EZ checking accounts 'together', which is what you do when you use the offer code CS2P.

Drawbacks
1. It requires you make initial deposite of $5000.
2. There is no 'minimum balance' requirement. BUT the fine print says 'your account must be in good standing'. So you should not withdraw everything and expect to get $100.
3. Citibank does a hard credit inquiry on you to check your credit worthiness, although they are not really offering you a credit account.

Workarounds
1. They dont need the $5000 rightaway. You just need to mention ur checking/savings account details. They would send you some documents within 7 business days. You need to sign one of them (authorization) and fax it over before 04/30/07. Only on receipt of the fax would they withdraw money from your bank account.
It gives you approx 30 days to arrange for funds.

2. There is no restriction on how you should split the $5000 between checking and savings account. The best deal is keep high amount in savings and only about $200-300 in checking.
You get 4.75% APY on savings, which is less than what Emigrant Direct offers, but 0.30% (the difference) of APY for 3 months won't earn you $100.
You can also keep about $1000 in this savings account after it becomes operative and that is still fair enough i believe (this is not confirmed, as no one can really quantify what is 'in good standing').
And keep you checking accout active, by doing minor transactions like pay for coffee, withdrawing $5-10 from ATM, depositing $5-10 and so on. (It was told that you need to keep it active, and there should be some transactions. It didnt sound like hard n fast rule but there isn't a documented way to confirm).

Credit Cards and Balance Transfers

I've very recently acquired interest in this credit/finance line. Thanks mostly to two of my close friends, one being Golbguru and the other a colleague of mine.

Today for the first time i received a cheque(check) of the money that doesn't belong to me and i hv to pay it back in interest free monthly installments. It may sound weird to few but this is how the 'credit' thing works in US.
The cheque amt is meager $350, which by no parlance is something to brag about, but a start nevertheless.

I am strictly a novice in this, but let me tell you how it works.

0% APR on balance transfers - This is something you will never find in India. Normally the interest rates are 2-3% per month = 24-36% per annum (Annual Percentage Rate). In US you might get a credit card with absolutely NO interest on the money you transfer from you existing credit accounts. What a way to pull your competitors' customers.
But as the credit companies are no fools to loan you interest free money, they wud do a 'hard' credit-check on you before approving you a credit card (which happens for all credit cards that you apply for).
If you qualify you transfer your outstandings from other cred cards to this and enjoy interest-free minimum payments per month. Normally the offer would expire after 6-12-15 months and this is the time when you look for another such offer, from their competitors.
(caution : There might be a transaction charge for balance transfers, in that case, you just ignore that offer. Stay put and wait for next offer).

So now in all this, how can you make money ?
Simple - Transfer your non-existing outstandings from an earlier credit card to this card.
eg. You hold card A already without any outstanding amt and card B is the new card with 0% offer. Lets say your credit limit on card A = $5000 and on Card B you qualify for $3000 balance transfer credit.
So now transfer $3000 to your new card B from card A. The credit card company B will send a cheque of $3000 to credit card company A. Soon your acct A will show a 'credit' of $3000.
Then you call up company A and ask them to send a cheque of $3000 as on their records, you've paid excess money to this card. They would happily issue a cheque free of cost and you get the $3000 - cash (in 2-5 days) which you never owned.
Keep paying the minimum amt due every month on card B with 0% interest. This is a MUST else you lose your 0% interest luxury.

Invest $3000 into whatever options (FD/CD/stocks etc) you feel suitable, and enjoy the returns.

P.S. The colleague & friend i mentioned earlier enjoys about $20,000 credit in revolving balance at 0% APR. At 5% APY (annual percentage yield), he can make about $1000 in a year if he invests the money in fixed deposits.

Cell phones, sleep and Mr Murphy

Adaptation of Murphy's law to sleep n cell phones, i never really found any so thought i may contribute myself, based on experience.

Law: Your cell phone will ring when you are right in the middle of the heavenly bliss of a weekend siesta, long and loud enough to wake you up completely.

Corollary : Your cell phone will be lying far enough to seize from you the privilege of swatting it by your left hand shutting it off, resulting into you having to get up and out of the bed, walking all the way to reach out for the phone only to find that the ringer turns off right at the moment you finally pick it up to answer.

Corollary 2: After you call names the person who'd called, you'd try to sleep again. The moment you feel you are in the crossover n sleep is about to smile, the (bloody) cell phone would ring again and .. ..

Corollary 3: If you sleep like a corpse, there will be someone else (parents/ spouse/ friend/ to-be-spouse/ to-be-parents) inside the house who would be up or would wake up and carry the dreadful instrument in as-ringing state to your bedroom and knock u out of ur sleep.

Updated (03/15/07 12.25 am)
Corollary 4: You will invariably forget to switch off your cell phone or put it into silent mode.

Due to the following Comments. Sort of 'not leaving anything to chance'

id it is said...

Interesting corollaries, but another option may be to change the setting to 'vibrate only', hehe, and then slumber prevails.

Golbguru said...

Yep, I have had that experience many times. I simple solution is to switch it off. :) If the person who is calling has something important to say, he/she will leave a message. Nobody has complained yet...so I guess that's how it will be always.

Finally onto the *New Blogger*

At last !!
why - cos blogger didnt act a sport in letting me keep my old template, old settings, old customizations, carry forward old quirks and continue to use old link lists.

Huh - what's the problem in moving to a better set of things?
Absolutely none, the only slight concern is that it would mean i need to copy all my links (i wud rather move to Blogroll than adding each n every link), add chatterbox, disclaimers, remove the blogbar from top and wotever else it takes to bring it close to the one i had.

The most important of these are the links to your blogs, which r now missing, so join me in condemning blogger, if u will and at the same time, bear with me till i add them.

The old template was over worked up anyway, so i have chose a different one, although not really to my taste (two tiny columns in the centre, wasting 50% of the visible screen area, naah ! i cant really admire this. The template designers need to grow up, we are into 1024 + pixels era).

Now the point to mention is now i hv to keep swapping between 2 blogger identities.
When i moved to this new blogger, it asked 'use existing gmail acct' or 'create new'. I chose the latter n it asked for 'an existing mail id', i used my yahoo id 'altruist_m@yahoo.com' thinking it wud let me create another gmail acct, but it dint !! It rather added this yahoo acct to its 'google accts' including a google homepage and from then i use rather i hv to use this yahoo id to sign on to google services. Strange eh !!

So, all in all, my first step into the new world.

See you guys.

Addendum (03/12/2007, 11 am)
The harbor template is back and so are 'links to your blogs'.
*Sigh*

Addendum 2 (03/12/07, 7.45 pm)
I've cleansed the blog off all the unnecessary 'uppercase' lettering inherent to the harbor template.
Most of the links are back in the side bar, with different titles/vebiage/positions.

I miss..

Me..
I miss those VBMs where (crazy) ppl all over the world would chip in with their keystrokes n static filled voices.
I miss singing Jana Gana Mana in VBMs, i miss singing B'day songs in VBMs. I miss singing any sort of songs. I miss antakshari. I miss those unknown faces singing in melodious voices.
I miss those silly games. I miss the introduction rounds. I miss pulling each others' legs. I miss the peppy talks. I miss ..........

This Blog..

I miss those b'day dedications
I miss those accounts of VBMs/blogger meets
I miss the influx of readers, i miss those myriad comments
I miss the humor, i miss the life.

x-----x-----x

It's been more than a year that i last attended a VBM. It's been a year that i last let out an unrestrained smile on this blog.
I did make a few attempts at restoring the life back on this blog but i cudnt really pull it off.

This is another such attempt.