Attractive Pen Fed CD promotion

[brewer12345]

When I logged into my Pen Fed account this morning I noticed a promotion where they are allowing members to reserve CD accounts at above market rates up to $250MM cumulative at those rates (down to 237MM this morning). Since I have some CDs maturing in January, I reserved these balances to roll over at the new rates. Details below:

Total funds available as of11/23/2009 10:27:16 AM Eastern:
$237,494,910.48

Reserve your Certificate today!

Looking for a high rate certificate? PenFed has a limited time offer which allows you to reserve a certificate and get the highest yield.

What is a Certificate Reservation?

It is a reservation for a future certificate purchase. PenFed has made $250,000,000.00 in certificates available for reservation. When the certificates are made available for purchase yours is purchased for you automatically at your determined funding date. The great thing is that the rate is locked in for you.

How do I reserve my certificate?

Locking in this great rate is simple; just tell us what date you would like to fund the certificate and when the promotion starts your certificate will be purchased automatically. It is that easy. Plus, if you decide to cancel prior to purchasing your certificate, all it takes is one step and there is NO penalty.

This limited time offer expires when the $250,000,000.00 has been reserved or on 1/31/2010 so reserve today.
3-year
3.440%
3.50%
5-year
3.925%
4.00%
7-year
4.170%
4.25%

[Stevewc]

PenFed does some unique things.
I've never heard of any other bank or credit union making future offers like this.
Neat Thing to Know,
Steve

[brewer12345]

I suspect that this is their way of letting members in on the usual January promotion rather than just having a free-for-all with the general public.

[calmloki]

Given that we had a bunch of three year certificates maturing in January I just signed up. Dang me for buying a number of them in $10k increments back then. Has to be done online only and there didn't seem to be a way to buy a larger certificate with a number of smaller ones. There are worse problems to have. This plays right off of SamClem's (?) idea of buying 5 year certs if you need the money any time after 2 years and earning a better return than on 2 year certs. Nice. Thanks for the heads up Brewer!

[cantlogin]

I wonder why that promotion doesn't show up on my account.

[calmloki]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cantlogin I wonder why that promotion doesn't show up on my account.

We only have $ in CDs and after signing up to transfer all the Cds we didn't have the option again. Do you have amounts already in PenFed you can use to fund new Cds?

[cantlogin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki We only have $ in CDs and after signing up to transfer all the Cds we didn't have the option again. Do you have amounts already in PenFed you can use to fund new Cds?

Yes I have but they aren't maturing until 14 months from now. It's reasonable to not make the offer available to me but I wasn't sure of the reason that I couldn't even see the promotion.

I guess the promo isn't viewable unless you qualify to participate. Maybe.

[brewer12345]

cant, I bet if you call and ask they may accomodate you.

[cantlogin]

That's a good suggestion. CAN'T hurt to ask. Right?

[Htown Harry]

I'm not in the market to roll over a CD, but the home page's AMEX offer did catch my eye. Is this new?

* Earn 5 points per dollar spent on airfare purchases.
* $50 annual fee (waived first year)
* 20,000 bonus points after $650 in purchases on the card

Points are worth about 1 cent apiece as $100 gift cards are offered for 10,000 points. The choices in gift cards aren't unlimited by any means, but there were several vendors where I will be spending money anyway, like with rental car companies.

Normally, I don't get much interested in rewards cards. I agree with most posters here that a cash-back card is at least equal in benefits and infinitely more flexible in spending the reward.

But I have a special circumstance - I will be spending $2500-$3000 on plane tickets sometime in the next few months, for a family vacation in Europe.

So, Harry figures, for the modest pain of a hard credit check hitting my credit report (the first in 2009), I can get the card and use it to buy the tickets (which I need to charge somewhere) and get rent-a-car gift certificates worth $350.

The linked web site also says a "Travel Privileges" feature will get me "10% off lowest published airfares". If legit, that would be another $250-$300 in savings. (On this this part, I'm more skeptical.)

Hmmm...this may not be the best deal for maxing out the side benefits on my rare big air ticket purchase, but I can't imagine others beating it by much. AMEX is known for the usual CC company tricks, of course, so I'll need to check it the details. Time for some due diligence!

[Purron]

Thanks for the info Brewer.

[kaneohe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 When I logged into my Pen Fed account this morning I noticed a promotion where they are allowing members to reserve CD accounts at above market rates up to $250MM cumulative at those rates (down to 237MM this morning). Since I have some CDs maturing in January, I reserved these balances to roll over at the new rates.

I called PenFed.........unfortunately it sounds like the offer is only being made to those who have maturing CDs........new $$$ not eligible.

[Gearhead Jim]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaneohe I called PenFed.........unfortunately it sounds like the offer is only being made to those who have maturing CDs........new $$$ not eligible.

I called them yesterday, same answer. The offer only applies to PenFed CD's that are maturing. I have a CD in another institution and PenFed won't give me the good deal if I transfer the money to them.

Maybe we'll get lucky in January, the rates may be open to anyone.

[Dave J]

This offer showed up on my account and my wife's yesterday and tonight it is not there. I wonder what is going on?

[Tadpole]

I went over yesterday and the button was on my account. I filled out the first page for a CD I have rolling over and when I submitted it I received an error. I called and the guy said that they had a message that it had been disabled for the night and more info was forthcoming Wednesday and told me to call back Wednesday or Friday. The deadline was the 23rd or when the money ran out so it could be that the button removal software didn't kick in at the right time when the deadline/money ran out was hit.

[friar1610]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stevewc PenFed does some unique things.

I became a PenFed member about a year ago. I think they are taking market share away from Navy Federal Credit Union (NFCU) to which I also belong. At least they're getting more of my CD money than NFCU because of their better rates.