_TJ_I wondered if anyone else was told the same or if anyone has seen that in writing.
everyone on doc and reddit has been told the same.
Also there’s this page:
Look for “IRA Annual Fee waived”. It appears that having a combined $50K balance is enough for this. What’s not clear is whether this is the bank-side IRA or investment-side IRA, because my understanding is that they’re different products.
I just realized you mentioned “investment account” and not IRA specifically, but all data points I’ve seen so far suggest that 100k investment should be enough to avoid the annual fee.
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I am confused as to how to determine what rebate rate you will earn on the credit card. It appears it is set near the start of each month. The averaging procedure is complex, but it appears to be a 3 month average unless the account is new, when it is over the period the account has been opened. This implies don’t open an account (notably a brokerage account) until you are ready to fund it, possibly by transferring securities in. It would be unfortunate if a period of a zero balance was averaged with a larger say $100,000 balance, and you did not qualify for the 4% rate for a while.
I stumbled on a statement of my qualifying balances average, which showed less than $250 as of Dec. 31, 2024, due to having funded the savings account with a credit card for $250. That will presumably be averaged with much larger amounts now in saving, to give a new average in Feb. 2025 of perhaps $40,000.
As near as I can understand, they then average the averages of the separate accounts to get a total qualifying balance.
I also noticed that even though they sent me a Smarty card from a conversion of a Go card, the web still shows the card as a Go card and the link to the rewards is to the Go rewards, not the Smarty one.
They sent me a E-mail saying there would soon be a message regarding my account. Logging on there was no message, but on later day, I could see that they had received the transfer of stock to bring my account over $100,000. A better run operation would not tell you to look for a message until the transfer was shown. (I never found a message confirming the transfer had occurred).
Overall, the web site does not seem well designed.
“If your daily Combined Qualifying Balances qualify you for a tier upgrade, you will be moved to the higher tier (within 5 business days). You will remain in that tier until you qualify for a higher tier based on your daily Combined Qualifying Balances, or the calculated monthly Combined Qualifying Balance qualifies you for a higher or lower tier.”
If you meet the daily balance requirement, I don’t think you need to worry about the monthly averages.
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They sure don’t update the tiers you qualify for very quickly.
Are you referring to the 5 business days? That sounds quickly enough to me.
I just applied for the card last night, without instant decision.
They took 3 business days from day funds arrived onto my account to update tier for the Savings account rate (from 2% to 3.5%) but then took another 3 business days (so more than a week combined) to propagate to the credit card cashback.
And they took a week to respond to my application for self-directed investment account. That’s just too slow service for any decent broker and by far the slowest among all the brokers I’ve opened accounts with (arguably only 5).
Thanks for the datapoint. I’m going in with low expectations. 
If you’re referring to the 2%/ 2.5% 3% / 4%, they definitely seem to update that quickly and I believe it’s just the rewards section of the CC where it shows that.
However, the Smart Rewards tiers seme to only check monthly. They’ve sent me multiple letters about erroneously giving less cash back than they are supposed to. I see they gave me extra points for a 12/4 transaction which I think was actually before I brought the $100k in. (It says “rewards adjustment” with a date of 1/23)
That’s possible. Although I’m not too worried about the Smart Rewards part. Unless I missed something critical, these perks are mostly irrelevant for my planned use of their accounts. As long as I get 4% cashback on all purchases for keeping $100k in low-cost index fund or short-term treasuries, all without any annual fees, I’ll ignore the quirkiness.
Ugh… The opportunity cost of USB just keeps going up 
You missed that they offer better more general cashback offers if you are in the higher Smart tier. People got 15% off groceries, for example.
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Eh, anyone who would be interested in that Firstrade offer probably has another 4 years stuck at Robinhood.
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Just got my Smartly card approved in < 3 days. Then I opened the investment account with instant approval.
Except those doing 401k conversions, mega-backdoors, and similar shenanigans 
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Assuming one transferred an IRA there yeah.
That aside, isn’t the Firstrade offer very similar to Robinhood for contributions and 1% lower for transfers? Both having a 5-yr hold period is definitely an opportunity cost.
The other issue with Firstrade is the $20k bonus cap (so transfer of more than $1M).
The offer is the same. It’s 1% lower than last year. When I posted the Firsttrade offer there was no RH bonus for transferring, but now there is one and it is also 2% (requires Gold).
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The USBank website has changed the terms on new issues of their Smarty card. See U.S. Bank Smartly Visa Signature Credit Card.
The $100,000 on deposit no longer includes investments.The 4% back excludes education and taxes among other things, and is limited to $10,000 on purchases. It may still be useful for charitable donations (such as via the PayPal Giving fund where PayPal absorbs credit card fees.)
I presume those of us who have the card will retain it on the old very nice terms, but will probably find them reduced at some time.
My son had picked up postings that they were not processing new applications for the card with the old terms. I tried to request a credit line increase via their online button Saturday, but it had a “bug” and prevented me from selecting a source of income, and that prevented the request from being submitted. I suspected this was a quick fix on their part to prevent having more spending that would earn 4% back. With taxes and a college payment on expenses (almost $15,000) I reached almost $25,000, and knew this limit would be a problem, I had delayed the request till I was close to my limit, since it would be clear that my usage of the card would be restrained if the limit was not increased.
I did a phone request, but do not expect it to go through.
I did an experiment and a transfer from their savings to the card immediately freed up credit.Sending about $6,000 from another bank produced new spending power on one business day later. (I had a car at a body shop and wanted to be able to use the Smarty card to pay for it), and to know if they would be slow in free up credit when I paid. (I had earlier discovered for the Paypal credit card, that big payments had an about 18 day hold before freeing up credit that could be used on charitable donations and federal taxes.)
I also discovered their extend pay plan could provide 0% interest for a year, but the offers were limited to about $2500 loaned. I never saw this advertised, but it may still be available (presumably as a way to acquaint you with this feature). Normally this plan while advertised as no interest has fees that appear to be roughly a 13% loan (useful since this is lower than their usual interest rates). They advertise it as “Pay over time with a U.S. Bank ExtendPay® Plan.”
“Receive a new cardmember 0% offer
on ExtendPay Plans opened in the first 60 days after account opening.”
Their advertising now offers 0% interest on purchases for the first year.
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CITI bank has again made their quarterly offers, which can provide up to $5,000 for a new $2,000,000 in IRA in regular brokerage funds, with a short holding period.
Webull seems to have a generous offer. The terms seem complex and pay out in monthly amounts which must be claimed on a tight deadline, or are lost.
$12,000 5,000,000 12
$8,000 1,000,000 12
$5,000 500,000 12
$3,750 250,000 12
$1,500 100,000 12
$750 25,000 12
$100 5,000 12
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