Weekly Rate Deal - Citizens State Bank of TX Offering 2.85% IRA CD

This week we travel to Buffalo, TX to recognize Citizen State Bank and their extremely awesome 2.85% Fixed rate IRA (FIRA also known as IRA CDs). How good is that? Very good. According to BestCashCow data (based on data from thousands of banks and credit unions) the best 5-year CD rate is 2.78% APY. So that means the Citizen State's retirement CD beats the best regular CD regardless of term. Now, this is a retirement product so it's a bit different, but still, the rate is very good.

What makes it even better is that the product and term are flexible. You can invest the money into either a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA. If you invest in a Roth, then you can choose terms of 3, 12, or 60 months. If you invest in a Traditional IRA, then the terms are 3, 12, 18, 30. That means you could invest money into your IRA for three months and receive 2.85%. Or you could invest in an 12 month FIRA and receive the same rate. Where can you earn 2.85% annual return for a three month term?

I spoke to Citizens State and they confimed this. The nice woman on the phone also told me that she didn't expect they would be lowering rates anytime soon.

So, who is Citizens State Bank? The bank, founded in 1925 operates five branches spread out south of Dallas. You can view the bank's branches here. This is important because you can only open a FIRA with Citizens State by walking into one of their branches. They don't accept applications via the phone or Internet. That's the biggest negative about this product - it's not available to those outside of the bank's region.

The bank has an extremely low Texas Ratio of 1.96% (low is good) and has aggressivily grown their assets over the last five years from $205 million in 2006 to $458 million today.

If you don't live near a Citizens State branch, check out the Fixed IRA rates from banks and credit unions in your local area. If you do open an FIRA there, let us know how the process went. We'd love to hear your experiences cashing in on some of these weekly rate deals.

Previous Weekly Rate Deals

• December 5, 2011 - Digital Federal Credit Union Offering 2.86% APY CD - Nationally Available
• November 29, 2011 - Community First Bank Offering 2.78% APY 60-Month CD
• November 21, 2011 - Premier Federal Credit Union Offering 2% APY on 24-Month CD
• November 14, 2011 - Institution for Savings of Newburyport Offering 3 Year CD at 2.50% APY
• November 7, 2011 - State Savings Bank of Rake, IA Offering 3.82% APY FIRA
• October 31, 2011 - First Choice Bank Offering 2.80% APY 5-Year CD
• October 24, 2011 - First National Bank of St. Ignace Offering 12-Month Flex CD at 1.51% APY
• Oct 17, 2011 - Weekly Rate Deal - Navy Federal Credit Union Offering 3% APY 12-Month CD
• Oct 7, 2011 - Farmers & Traders Bank Takes Weekly Rate Deal for 3% APY 60-Month CD

Check back next Monday for a new bank deal. Email any deals you know about to ratedeal (at) bestcashcow.com. Feel free to also share them below. If you're a bank and have a great deal not listed on BestCashCow, register for access and add the deal to the site.