So I’ve decided to move all my banking to USAA from Bank of America.  The fact that the big BOA still needs money from good old Uncle Sam doesn’t instill confidence in this customer.

So I set up a checking account and several different savings accounts at USAA to replicate the banking structure I had at BoA, and signed up for their USAA World Mastercard as well with the Total Rewards program.  My existing card is held through Citi, who happens to also need another boatload of cash to continue its business.  Since I don’t keep a balance on any of my cards, there’s really nothing to transfer, and I just need to change all of my automatic payments over to the new card.

I’ll probably continue to keep the Citi card active just in case, but I don’t anticipate using it.

No more going to the bank for me!

The other cool thing about USAA banking is the Deposit@Home feature, where you simply scan your deposits directly from your scanner via a Java applet on the website.  The funds are deposited directly to your account and are available immediately.  Kind of cool, and despite the a slight hiccup at first with the Java program, the system works pretty well.

The rewards program is a little different.

As for the rewards program with the Total Rewards card, there are a few differences compared to my Citi Dividend Platinum card.  The first being that you earn one point for every dollar you spend on the card, and one point for every two dollars you spend on your USAA debit card.  You can redeem these points for merchandise, gift cards, charitable contributions, or my favorite, cold hard cash.

With the Citi card, we had a limit of $300 in dividends per year, and by charging all our utilities to that card, plus everyday purchases, we achieved that $300 limit fairly quickly.

The USAA Total Rewards card doesn’t have such a limit, however the program isn’t quite as lucrative as the Citi program.  The Total Rewards program breaks down the rewards in a tiered fashion where you get more cash back the more you spend.  For instance, the first 20,000 points only returns you 0.83% in cash, but after that, you earn 1% cash back.  So the key is to wait until you have accrued more than 20,000 points to redeem for cash back.

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I logged into my Citi Dividend credit card account the other day only to find out that they’ve put a freeze on my account.  Usually when this happens it’s because I’ve made a purchase that is “out of character” based on my historical transactions.  For instance when I went overseas and charged hotel rooms to my credit card.

This time though, the company says they have evidence that my credit card security has been breached, and they’ve reduced access to the account, and taken the liberty of issuing me new cards.  A phone call to Citi Cards revealed that I’m not alone.  It’s not clear how many accounts were affected, but the Citi customer service rep I talked to indicated it was in the hundreds of thousands.

While I appreciate Mastercard proactively resolving this problem, I’m a little peeved that it took almost a year to discover the fraud.  Needless to say, changing all my billing information to utility companies has been fairly straight forward, with the exception of the electric company.  Evidently I can’t change the billing information until after the next billing cycle.  Interesting considering that the account number they have on hand has been closed.

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I’ve had a Citi AAdvantage card for years that gives me American Airlines AAdvantage miles when I use my card. Effectively I get 1 mile for every $1 I spend. It sounds like a great deal, and it would be, if using miles for travel weren’t subject to blackout dates and other restrictions.

I’ve accumulated enough miles to take a nice vacation somewhere, but the restrictions on when I can go make it impractical to use the miles.

So I’m in the market for a new card that will pay me cash back at the end of the year. I’m not too worried about the percentage rate, as I always pay off the card every month. There are very few rewards programs that beat cold, hard cash in my pocket at the end of every year.

Any recommendations?

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