Citi Double Cash Credit Card Review 

Citi double cash card a cashback card with a winning formula that surprisingly none of the other big banks has decided to just simply copy this card hasn't changed a whole lot since it was first introduced a few changes that we're going to look at 

none of the other big banks has said hey look what they're doing and kind of jumped in to compete directly with it so it hasn't changed too much however we are going to look at what it offers and kind of where it sits in the market who it competes with and what else is out there that you might look at 

so the city double cash card is a no annual fee card that essentially gives you two per cent cashback on everything that you purchase with the card 

now i say essentially because the way citi structures its rewards you earn the first one percent when you make the purchase with the card you earn that second one percent 

when you have paid off that purchase so if you are someone that always pays off your credit card purchases every month in full you're essentially going to realize you're two percent the full two percent that you're going to get back on this card every month you're not going to have really much lag time here 

it's going to feel like a two percent card like i just said however if you are someone that revolves a balance you're gonna get that one percent on the front end but you may not get that other one percent for a little while because until you have paid off the purchase you're not getting the other one percent 

it's kind of ingenious in a way because citi knows that you are going to have some motivation to pay off your credit card purchases because you want that second one percent in reward so you have some incentive to pay it and they know they don't have to give you that second one percent rewards until you actually do make the payment 

so you're motivated to pay and they've got a little protection on the back end if you don't pay so you're getting that two percent across the board no categories to think about as long as you've paid off your purchases you're gonna get that full two percent by the way you don't get two percent on any interest that you pay 

so there's no incentive for you to revolve the balance on that end but this is what has made the card very popular it's super easy to understand it's two percent on everything which is fairly generous you don't have to think too much about it and if you're someone that doesn't want to think too much about your credit cards this one fits the bill 

now if you're someone that likes to shop around for credit cards and in particular you like to shop around for credit card bonuses while there's nothing to see here because this card does not offer an upfront bonus on very rare occasions you might see one 

but in general there's not any bonus on this card so what they give you in everyday rewards they sort of don't give you in terms of a new card holder bonus and there are plenty of cards out there that'll give you 150 bucks 200 bucks or airline miles or hotel points or whatever in order to get you into their card 

so those cards sort of pay you on the front and this card sort of pays you over the long haul so it's really your decision which is better a lot of people love the you know sort of psychology of two percent on everything but in some cases getting that big upfront bonus on a different credit card might actually work out better for you financially

now there's a number of ways to actually redeem the cash that you have earned from this card you can get a statement credit which means they subtract it from the balance on your credit card statement you can get an actual paper check sent to you you can have it direct deposited into your bank account 

any of those three options are going to require you to have earned at least 25 dollars in cashback before they are going to give you that statement credit or the check or the direct deposit 

the fourth option is to take the cashback that you have earned and convert it into city thank you points at a penny a point now when it first happened that they sort of changed this card and made it 

so that you could change your cashback into citi's thank you point some people were pretty excited because citi had the city premiere card where you could potentially take the money and make it into points and then you could even get a little boost on it 

if you used those points toward travel through city's travel portal but that card has taken that away so now turning your cash back into points off of this card there's a lot less incentive to do so 

yes you can use it for other things like gift cards or other uh rewards but none of those are really giving you any better than just straight cash back wood 

so that's not nearly as attractive as it seemed when citi first made this an option in terms of rates and fees on this card as I've said already it is a no annual fee card interest rate that could be anywhere from 13.99 to 23.99 

Those are the interest rates that are posted if you have a very good credit history you could get down by that 13.99 if you don't have as good of credit history but they're willing to accept you you could get that 23.99 rates or somewhere in between now there's no zero per cent offer on new purchases 

so you're going to be having that interest rate from the beginning now there is a zero per cent offer on balance transfers on this card at least as 

so as I make this video you can transfer a balance onto this card and get a zero per cent interest rate on those transferred balances for 18 months the downside to this well there are actually two downsides to it 

the first downside is that you'll have to pay a three per cent balance transfer fee upfront in order to move the balance from another card onto this one to get that zero per cent rate but the second downside is

the fact that the way city structures it any new purchases that you make on this card if there is a balance sitting there that you transferred from another card they're going to start charging you interest on those new purchases from the date you make them 

so they're not going to give you any grace period if you have a balance sitting on the card from a balanced transfer 

so you might be getting zero per cent on the transferred balance but you're going to be getting the regular interest rate on the purchases you make and that is going to happen immediately or at least 

it's going to happen after the first month that you have the card unless you pay everything off all at once including the balance that you have transferred 

so as far as I can remember citi is the only bank I have seen that sort of pulls this what I consider to be a sneaky trick tell you you're going to get a zero per cent rate on your balance transfers but then charge you interest on your new purchases 

if you actually use the card so it doesn't really make any sense to transfer a balance onto this card maybe you could save a few bucks if you had a huge balance on a card with a really terrible interest rate 

but I would say probably you shouldn't fall for it other things to know three per cent foreign transaction fee with this card if you use it outside of the united states 

you're gonna get charged an extra three per cent on those purchases there are plenty of other cards on the market that does charge the same three per cent foreign transaction fee 

but there also are plenty of cards with no annual fee even that don't charge it at all so this is sort of an extra fee that there's not a real point to having other than it makes cities some extra money 

this card has some other benefits to know about you have a free credit score that comes from Equifax once a month it is a bank card score if you think of credit scores and you know that they normally go up to 850 the bank card score actually goes up to 900 

so you're gonna be seeing a little bit different credit score than you might from some other uh services out there so that's something to know you have the option for using virtual credit card numbers which allows you to sort of mask your credit card number 

so whatever merchant you're using it with is seeing a temporary credit card number that gets tied back to your real card and it sort of helps you to you know not to have fraudulent purchases nobody can get your actual credit card number 

if you use that virtual card number uh shop runner membership this is a free membership that you can use to get free shipping with certain merchants that are in the shop runner network 

now this city double cash will come either as a world Mastercard or as a world elite MasterCard and that will depend on your credit history which one they give you at least that's 

how i believe it still works it really doesn't matter because if you know anything about some of the extra benefits that might come as a world or world elite MasterCard holder 

you might know that oftentimes there are certain travel insurances extended manufacturers warranties and things like that that will come with a card that is a world or world elite Mastercard 

but citi stripped all of those benefits out this card used to have them they took them all away about a year to a year and a half ago as I'm making this video much to the chagrin of many people that saw those things get stripped out from them when they had the card 

so you're not gonna get any of those extra benefits for a lot of people that doesn't matter they never use those benefits they barely knew they had them 

but if that's something you're looking for and you see that this card is a world or world elite MasterCard you're not going to get that stuff alright so looking at this card overall specifically with that two per cent flat cashback reward 

it is interesting that none of the other major card companies has matched that flat two per cent rate there are a couple of other cards on the market PayPal cashback MasterCard the fidelity rewards visa and there are some credit union cards out there also that can match 

that two per cent but this is from the major big bank's city here with the double cash has really sort of had this market to themselves 

so it is kind of interesting that nobody else has jumped in now this is a no annual fee card and there are plenty of other no annual fee cards on the market where you can't get that two per cent flat cash back on everything but you can do better in certain categories 

so you could get three per cent four per cent sometimes even five per cent on things like shopping and gas and dining and that sort of thing 

so if you are someone who is willing to carry more than one card this card maybe sort of the bedrock and this is exactly the way that I use this card I kind of use this as my backstop 

if I can get more than two per cent with some other cards that I hold out there on the market well then I will use those other cards for gas or for dining or for shopping 

but if i can't get two percent it goes on here and so that's a way that makes sense to use it there's plenty of other cards like i said don't have an annual fee either 

so you can carry multiple cards and get those extra multiples in those certain categories but this is a great card to have as sort of a foundation of bedrock if you're sort of building a cashback or even 

if you want some cash back and some travel rewards if you're not gonna get what you consider to be at least the equivalent of two per cent on a purchase with some other card this would be the one to go to sometimes people ask me what credit card 

they should get but they don't really tell me much about what their spending is or what their preferences are in terms of what rewards they want they just think 

i'm going to have an answer that is always at the top of my head and that answer that i give them even though it's not necessarily the right answer depending on how they actually would use their credit card 

but I tell them this is the card because I know that that two per cent is going to make the content if they want to do more homework they can find other cards that they could either pair with this 

or maybe get instead of it but this is always going to be a decent starting place no one is going to be unhappy if they have this card and they're getting two per cent back 

so that's it even after a few years on the market city still has a little bit of a monopoly in terms of having the best flat cash back card at least among the big banks they've stripped away the bonus 

they've stripped away some of those extra benefits that some of the other cards give you and they've put all that money into giving you that every day two per cent rate 

until one of the other big banks really comes out strong with their own two per cent card you can imagine that the city double cash is going to continue to be very popular 

So that's it any questions comments put them in the comments section.

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