Personal Finance (Not Investing) • US Bank 4% Smartly Visa Credit Card

So unless there is an annual fee for the credit card the only potential fee is $50 a year on an IRA balance under $250k which could be offset by a credit card sign up bonus (if it has one) or a new account bonus.

IRA fee should be waived with the Smartly Plus Tier ($50K+ average balance).

https://www.usbank.com/bank-accounts/ch ... wards.html

That’s awesome! Thank you!

Just wanted to point out the footnote and see if anyone can interpret it better than me...

Maintaining an open U.S. Bank Smartly® Checking account enrolled in the Smart Rewards® Plus tier, at a minimum, is required to waive the IRA annual fee. The IRA annual fee waiver does not apply to Personal Trust IRAs.

I'm not certain if this means the Checking account itself needs to be at the Plus level, or if the balance is the IRA would meet this qualification...

Especially since another link states that a balance > $250k is required... https://www.usbank.com/investing/online ... -fees.html

Annual account/IRA fees may be waived for clients with a statement household balance > $250k.

My working theory is you either need > $50k in Checking/Savings and/or a combined balance (including IRA/Brokerage) > $250k. But $50k in IRA/Brokerage alone isn't enough... But maybe I'm reading it wrong.

I think it's complicated, since there's several different US Bank products with different fees, and fee waivers, and balance requirements.

Let's look at them:
4% Smartly Visa: Need Smartly Savings Account and "a qualifying balance of $100,000 or more" in "U.S. Bank deposit, trust or investment accounts".
IRA fee waiver: Need Smartly Checking and Smart Rewards Plus Tier
Smartly Checking: Required for IRA fee waiver. Monthly fee waived with any Smart Rewards tier.
Smart Rewards tier: Can combine balances of different account types to meet balance requirements, including Checking account(s), Savings and Money Market account(s), Certificates of deposit (CDs) and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), U.S. Bancorp Investments (an affiliate of U.S. Bank) and Personal Trust Accounts.
Smartly Savings: Fee waived with Smartly Checking

There's a separate fee waiver for IRA and Brokerage accounts if your combined household balance is over $250,000. Note that the Smart Rewards tiers only totals accounts where you are an owner.


So, if you plan to use only an IRA with at least $50K/$100K to meet the requirement for 3%/4% on the Smartly Visa, you should be able to do so without any fees, since at the $50K Smart Rewards tier, the monthly/annual fees for IRA and the Smartly Checking should be waived.

If you need a taxable brokerage account, you'll pay $50/year until you get to $250K in household balances to have brokerage annual fees waived. You'd also need $50K/$100K in qualifying accounts where you are an owner to get the Smart Rewards tier with 3%/4% back on the Visa card.

Statistics: Posted by Lyrrad — Wed Sep 11, 2024 2:01 am — Replies 46 — Views 4623

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