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CitiBusiness ThankYou Card Review

This article was written by in Credit. 1 comment.


Citibank wants to lure more business owners away from American Express and Chase with a credit card that cribs from its competitors’ playbooks. Like the original Platinum Card, the CitiBusiness ThankYou Card streamlines expense reporting and adds significant purchase protection benefits. While its APR and rewards offers don’t stack up to Ink from Chase, strong service features could make the difference for professionals who don’t intend to carry a balance.

Small spending plateau triggers Citi’s signup bonus

According to Citi’s website, a new CitiBusiness ThankYou cardholder can trade their 15,000 bonus points for $150 in merchant gift cards after spending just $3,000 with the card over 90 days. New Chase Ink Cash members have to spend $5,000 to qualify for a bonus $150 cash rebate, but Chase also offers an extra $100 credit upon first purchase.

CitibankLike Chase, Citi offers its ThankYou members bonus points for purchases in a variety of rotating, seasonal categories. Qualifying purchases earn three ThankYou Points per dollar spent at eligible merchants that include computer stores, advertising companies, airlines, restaurants, and phone companies. You’ll earn one ThankYou Point for every dollar you spend elsewhere on the card. Citi also kicks in bonus rewards for managing your account online and registering for paperless statements.

Earning awards gets easier if you share your personal ThankYou balance

ThankYou points carry the most value when you redeem them for merchandise or for gift cards. For instance, at a penny per point, an Amazon.com gift card reward can let you earn the equivalent of a 3 percent rebate on featured category purchases. Because every employee using CitiBusiness cards earns points, your company’s balance can grow fast.

Chase and American Express both offer stronger redemption rates on their business rewards cards. However, Citi offers a feature that can make the ThankYou program more appealing. Carry both a CitiBusiness card and a personal Citi credit card, and the bank will let you swap points between your accounts at no charge. If you choose to keep all your points for yourself, merging your earnings can help you reach higher rewards levels faster.

Citi makes up for average account terms with extraordinary protection

At the moment, the CitiBusiness ThankYou Card offers a six month, no interest teaser, followed by an APR above 13 percent. There’s no balance transfer teaser in effect, either. With no annual fee and no charge for issuing employees their own cards, CitiBusiness makes a decent card for cash flow management. This card really shines for companies that take advantage of money-saving features, including:

  • Extended warranty. Add one year to the manufacturer’s standard warranty on each purchase.
  • Retail purchase protection. You’re covered for up to $10,000 in loss or damage for 90 days after each transaction.
  • Auto rental insurance. Never pay for a collision damage waiver again.
  • Travel accident insurance and assistance services. Automatic coverage, and a round-the-clock help desk to keep you safe.
  • While frequent flyers may prefer AmEx’s Platinum Card’s airport perks, the CitiBusiness ThankYou Card replicates many of its competitors’ most compelling benefits.

Personal Business Assistant

Concierge services have quickly become the must-have benefit for elite business credit cards. Citi skews the trend with its team of Personal Business Assistants, specialized service professionals who can perform high level tasks on behalf of companies instead of cardholders. Like other cards’ concierge desks, the Citi PBA team can book you a reservation at a hot restaurant or confirm your next travel itinerary.

These assistants add even more value by researching supplier costs, sourcing vendors, and handling more complex requests related to meetings and conferences. Issuing a CitiBusiness ThankYou Card to each employee on your team gives them the power to offload routine tasks and busywork via a secure, online portal. That could be the signature feature keeping this card in the competition for space in your wallet.

If the above features appeal to you, apply for a CitiBusiness ThankYou Card today to receive the 15,000 bonus points opportunity.

Photo: Kien Wai

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Podcast 160: The Rich and the Rest of Us

This article was written by in Podcast. 2 comments.

Today on the Consumerism Commentary Podcast, Jay Frosting and Luke Landes talk with Tavis Smiley, host of Tavis Smiley on PBS. With Dr. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley is the co-author of The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. The interview in today’s podcast was scheduled to include Cornel West as well, but a court appearance prevented him from participating.

They discuss the causes and possible solutions of the growing problem of poverty in America, which Tavis says is a threat to democracy itself. Read this Consumerism Commentary article for more discussion about poverty with Tavis Smiley.

Consumerism Commentary Podcast
The Rich and the Rest of Us: S07E04 / 160

Download – RSS – iTunes

Table of contents

The Rich and the Rest of Us on Amazon[00:00] Introduction from Jay Frosting
[00:33] Interview with Tavis Smiley
– [01:08] How many Americans are affected by poverty
– [04:03] Who poverty affects and why
– [06:55] The social safety net and austerity
– [10:26] The role of education
– [13:58] How to fix poverty
[18:33] End

We always welcome feedback from listeners. If you have any comments for this episode or for any other, or if you have suggestions for future episodes, please leave us comments here or email us at podcast at this domain name.

Theme music by Mindcube.

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Consumers Want Easier Online Payments

This article was written by in Consumer. 9 comments.

Yes, it’s frustrating to need to reach for my wallet and type in my credit card number every time I want to complete a purchase online. According to a recent MasterCard and Harris Interactive survey, 58 percent of consumers agree with me. Consumers even abandon their online shopping carts when the check-out process requires too much effort.

That might be good news for consumers. If a small barrier is all it takes to prevent someone from making a purchase, perhaps that purchase was not a necessity. Leaving more money in the bank rather than spending that money on some product that does not drive enough desire to get through a relatively painless process can only be beneficial to the shopper’s financial condition. Retailers, on the other hand, will obviously see consumers’ lack of purchase consummation as a problem, directly affecting sales and revenue.

The solution is to store the details pertaining to your payment method so it can be automatically retrieved at the point of sale. Amazon.com is certainly a pioneer with this approach. This company’s one-click purchasing process using stored credit card or debit card information makes buying a smooth process, although it created an uprising about patents when this feature was introduced many years ago.

PayPal has a good solution as well. Stores that allow payments through PayPal enable users to associate a credit card and avoid the need to type in a credit or debit card number each time.

Consumers can also use browser add-ons or downloadable programs, like LastPass, to store credit card information retrievable with a click or two.

Purchasing items online is much safer and more secure than being out in the world, carrying a wallet with all your credit cards and cash, and handing your credit cards to a waiter or gas station attendant who disappears for several minutes. Online security, as long as you confirm you are visiting a secure website, is trustworthy. No one is going to intercept my secure internet connection when I’m buying something online, and for the most part, I trust companies not to expose a database of credit card numbers to the public. That exposure is just as likely to happen when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores as when shopping online. The situation is unlikely, and shopping online does not add to that risk.

There is no universal solution, a one-click purchasing experience like that on Amazon.com, available to all retail websites. But there is also no equivalent to the one-click purchasing experience when you shop in store locations, either. Swiping a payment card or transmitting a secure wireless signal from your mobile phone gets close to the experience, but you still need to take out your wallet or your phone.

While retailers want to make it easier for consumers to pay money, consumers should be careful about making this process to automatic. Trading money for an object of some type should involve at least some opportunity to stop and consider the purchase. Technology makes it incredibly easy for consumers to part with their cash or increase their debt burden, and retailers want to make it easier. Consumers should be working against that trend and moving in the opposite direction.

If not, retailers will soon be able to simply reach into consumers’ pockets and take that money. Some companies offer free trial periods for their products and services without making it blatantly obvious that customers will be charged at the end of the trial period. Some create significant barriers to canceling the service in advance of the ending of the trial period. Consumer groups often criticize these policies, and some might be considered scams. If consumers make it increasingly easy to give up money without thought, then we’re just as much to blame.

Photo: Håkan Dahlström
BusinessWire

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Art Is Not a Good Investment

This article was written by in Investing. 10 comments.

A few months ago, art and money were connected in the news when Andreas Gursky’s “Rhein II,” a photograph depicting a still river and walkway, became the highest-valued photograph sold at auction. The buyer paid $4 million to walk away with the larger-than-life print. Art is in the news again today, with one of Edvard Munch’s renditions of “The Scream.” At a recent Sotheby’s auction, “The Scream” was sold for $119.9 million. This price set a record, making “The Scream” the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction.

For those who have the money to spare, art is a popular investment. Trading masterpieces of art among a small subsection of the population, less than 1 percent, is not without criticism, however. Many artists do not live to see their works become valuable, and do not benefit from the high prices sought for their work. I addressed both the criticisms and the benefits of giving art a significant societal value in the article about “Rhein II.”

The Scream - Edvard MunchWhile it may be good for society to value art highly, is it a good investment for any one individual who has millions of dollars to spare?

Well, first of all, there is art accessible at all levels of investment. With research, you might find works available for $50 that could certainly increase in value over time at a rate better than what financial advisers offer as typical long-term stock market returns. Art is not an investment solely for the 1 percent. And with the right buying choices, your smaller investment in living artists has a more direct effect on the artist community.

Investing in art isn’t going to be right for everyone. While some consider art to be one of the best investments outside of real estate, the economy has seen would-be real estate investors struggling when the market isn’t robust. The same is true with art. The market is subject to bubbles, the latest trends play a significant role in determining prices, and you may not be able to sell your art at the price time you need the proceeds. Artists whose work have proven to appreciate and are highly recognized as masters, like Dali and Picasso, have price appreciation almost guaranteed, but the barrier to entry for investments in proven artists is too high for investors without the desire to risk large sums of money.

Outside of artists whose works have proven worth, it’s risky to invest in art with the goal of making a killing between the purchase date and the sale date. Even the best research won’t guarantee performance. To mitigate the chance of loss, when choosing art, find something you like. As long as you enjoy looking at your art collection, you won’t mind as much holding onto it until it has the ability to fetch the price you desire — which may be never. At the auction where “The Scream” sold for $119.9 million, one fifth of the pieces on the auction block failed to sell because no investors were willing to pay the asking prices.

Another problem with investing in art is the due diligence required to avoid scammers and fraud-minded people in the industry. Even experts can be wrong about forgeries. Investments in art are not subject to the same kinds of regulation that allows investors to feel generally safe and confident when investing in stocks and mutual funds.

Unless you have the financial ability to invest in artists whose names you know from high school or your college’s Art History course, you might be better off staying away from investing in art if your purpose is finding the next Rembrandt.

Photo: br1dotcom

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Government-Reported Inflation

by Flexo
Helium balloon inflation

Over the twelve months ending with March 2012, the increase in the consumer price index (CPI-U) as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, often referred to as the inflation rate, is 2.7 percent (2.3 percent if you exclude food and energy). While these numbers are below the historically-cited norm for inflation, 3 percent, the ... Continue reading this article…

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Money Basics: Investing

by Flexo
Money investing

April is National Financial Literacy Month in the United States. This brings attention to the lack of a financial education young people receive in this country, both from their parents and from the education system. I disagree with most people about how to solve this issue. Many call for mandatory high school courses in personal ... Continue reading this article…

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How to File a Free Income Tax Extension

by Flexo

I finally provided my tax details to my accountant yesterday. As I expected, there won’t be enough time to work out the details before today’s tax filing deadline, so I’ll be filing extensions. In years past, when I filed for myself and my taxes were simpler, I usually waited until the last day. My procrastination ... Continue reading this article…

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How to Handle a Credit Card Data Breach

by Flexo

Last week, Global Payments confirmed a massive security breach involving credit and debit card numbers and information. Global Payments operates a gateway; when you use your credit or debit card to purchase an item — and this could be online or in a brick-and-mortar store — your card information is sent through Global Payments or ... Continue reading this article…

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