- My Dollar Plan - https://www.mydollarplan.com -

5% Certificates at Pentagon Federal

Posted By Madison On In Roundups | Comments Disabled

I just reserved a 5% CD at Pentagon Federal Credit Union [1], aka Penfed.

Ironically, last week, I also refinanced our mortgage (again) to 3.625% at Penfed. It’s a little funny that they’re loaning money cheaper than they are borrowing it, but they’ve been known to do so, so it’s a double win for us.

They’re currently letting people reserve $240,000,000 worth of CDs at this rate; as of this morning, there was $207,000,000 left… and it usually goes fast!

How to Get a 5% CD

To reserve your CD, you need to login to your account. Select account actions, then select certificate options. On the right, you’ll see a certificate reservations box to reserve a CD.

The 5% APY CD rate is for the 10 year CD. They also have a 7 year for 4.25%, and a 5 year at 3.5%. However, going with the 10 year rate is probably going to be your best bet, no matter when you withdraw the money. The Bank Deals Guy put together a chart showing what percent you’ll get each year [2] with the early withdrawal rates factored in.

How to Get the Promotion Box

The promotion is only supposed to work for select current CD holders. However, I discovered a glitch, and accidentally determined a way to become one of the selected few to qualify for the promotion.

Here’s what I did: If you don’t currently have a CD (which I didn’t), I set up a new CD, but stopped short of funding it. When I got to the funding part, I just hit cancel. Then I was able to login again to the certificate options and I saw the reservations promo on the right hand side! I got a confirmation email a little while later, so we’ll hope it works. Let me know if it works for you too!

The certificates will be funded in January, and you can change your mind anytime before that. Here’s what it looked like when I reserved my certificate yesterday:

Investing

Debt

By the Numbers

And More!