The Citigroup Bailout and Your Finances

We’ve seen the government step up and bailout a slew of companies and their most recent endeavor, the bailout of Citigroup, might just be hitting closer to home than the previous few.  The question, however, is how that might be affecting your own finances.  This is especially true for those of you who have a bank account with Citibank.

As Gerri Willis over at CNN/Money reports, “the government is guaranteeing some of Citigroup’s bad investments and injecting another $20 billion on top of the $25 billion it’s already put into the company from the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress last month.”  This means you’ll see no real changes to your checking account, but you might want to verify your FDIC-coverage limits.  The limits are now $250,000 for a single account, or for joint account, $250,000 per account owner.

A change you might see, however, is a rise in interest rates on Citi’s credit cards as well as an increase in banking fees. Willis reports that Citi is going to raise interest rates on about 20% of its 54 million credit card holders by 2-3%.  And fees for such items such as ATM charges and bounces checks are going up across the board at all banks, not just Citibank.

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