Transportation Federal Credit Union

Close Call On Funding Promotional CD

Starting in February of 2016, this credit union had a promotional 3 year CD with an APY of 2.50%. Since they insisted on having you submit your membership application via snail mail, that slowed the process down considerably. Once they got the papework, the customer service people at the credit union were great. However, their marketing department that sets and rescinds the promotional CD rates left a lot to be desired. I say this because on February 16th, they cut the rate for the CD to 1.2%! Luckily, I received the promotional rate. However, this is a cautionary tale with regards to promotional CD's. Most of them have some sort of "subject to change at any time" caveats. This is the first time that I've experience a financial institution exercising that option in such a short amount of time. 16 days? I never would have gotten an IRA set-up and funded in that amount of time. Luckily, the CD that I created was for a taxable account and other than the membership application there wasn't any other paperwork involved. Whenever I pop for one of these "promotional" CD's, I alway fund a savings account first. Once that's cleared, I verify that the promotional CD rate still exists. If it does, I have them create the CD. If it doesn't this gives me the option of taking the money back out of the institution without incurring some sort of early withdrawal penalty. So far, I've never had to yank money right back out of a new account. However, it was a close call on this one.