Search Results for: citi premier

  1. Citi ThankYou Points added AA as a 1:1 transfer partner for the Citi Prestige, Strata, and Strata Elite cards.

    Don’t worry, I checked so you don’t have to. AA Does fly to Preston Smith International Airport.
  2. The Citi Strata Elite card launched over the weekend with a 100,000 ThankYou Point bonus in branch or an 80,000 ThankYou Point sign-up bonus online after $4,000 spend in three months and a $595 annual fee. The card’s highlights:

    – 6x on restaurants on Friday and Saturday nights (Eastern Time)
    – 3x on restaurants the rest of the time
    – 1.5x elsewhere
    – $300 annual hotel credit through Citi Travel
    – Four AA Admirals Club day passes annually

    There are spend bigger bonuses for booking through the often price-inflated Citi Travel portal, and other, lamer coupons and duplicative features too. Personally, I’d just stick with the $95 annual-fee Strata Premier with better bonus categories and (often) an 80,000 point sign-up bonus.
  3. Existing US Bank Smartly card holders transition to the new Smartly earning scheme on September 15, which only offers boosted cash-back on up to $10,000 spend a month, and excludes categories like education, business, and third party bill payment services from earning.

    This was a smartly move for US Bank and a lamely move for the rest of us. (Sorry, the fruit was just too low hanging, I couldn’t help myself.)
  4. Bilt’s Rent Day promotion for August 1 is a 20%-100% transfer bonus to Avianca LifeMiles depending on your status. Why mention it now? You’ve still got today and maybe tomorrow to earn more Bilt points.

Happy Monday!

The last fire at Preston Smith was Southwest, not AA. So probabilistically speaking …

  1. Citi ThankYou Points has a 25% transfer to Wyndham Rewards through June 21.
  2. Uber One Member Days has two travel related promotions for Uber One subscribers:

    – 3,000 SkyMiles for 10 Uber rides or 10 Uber Eats orders by June 8
    – $25 Marriott Bonvoy gift card with $100 in Premium Uber rides by June 8

    If you have a 7-eleven in your neighborhood, I imagine you’ll find an easy way to earn 3,000 SkyMiles. (Thanks to Tom R)
  3. The Citi Strata Premier’s 1 cent per point cash out option will be reduced to 0.75 cents per point on August 23, though other cash outs aren’t affected.

    It’s unclear how accounts pooled with a Rewards+, Double Cash, or other cards that have a one cent per point value will be affected, but there are other methods.

Happy Tuesday!

Drivers love getting jobs like this, especially 10 of them.

If you’ve read any credit card churning forum or blog in the last 24 hours, you’ve almost certainly heard about the Citi Premier 80,000 point bonus. It’s elevated and fine on the face of it, but nothing to go bananas over so don’t needlessly get sucked in to the hype machine. If you’re going to go for it though, don’t forget that you can get multiple ThankYou Point card sign up bonuses back-to-back even though it seems like you can’t on the face of it. The Citi Terms and Conditions are tricky, but the following points are relevant:

  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve received a bonus in the last 24 months
  • You aren’t eligible for the bonus if you’ve closed a ThankYou Points card in the last 24 months

Do you see the wiggle room between those two bullets? It’s there, and it works. The trick is that you can apply for multiple Citi cards, (the Premier and the Prestige, for example), just don’t hit the spend threshold for the bonus points on any of the cards until after you’ve been approved for all of them. Then, you can hit the spend threshold on each and get the bonus on each.

Side note: Astute readers will note that I mentioned the Citi Prestige, which is apparently discontinued for new account holders. But, don’t believe everything you’ve read on the internet, you can still apply for it through a Zombie link! (Thanks to David for the link.)

So, if you’re eligible and you think the deal is good at 80,000 points, why not shoot for 210,000 points for two Premiers and a Prestige? Or if you’re gutsy, 260,000 points for two Premiers or two Prestiges? Or some other combo, potentially including other cards? Just keep in mind that Citi will auto-deny your application if you have more than one approval every eight days, but there’s always reconsideration (or, just wait eight days between applications). Thanks to Cari for the clarification.

PS: There are other Citi hacks, just “look into history to learn more” as the muppets say.

A rube goldberg style complex chain-reaction machine
The delicate inner workings of the credit card hype machine

The State of the Heroes

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new Unsung Hero candidate for two major reasons:

  1. Plenty of would-be candidates are at smaller banks and credit unions, and the volume of the greater internet would likely kill them
  2. Venture capital investment in the FinTech and credit card space has been declining annually every year since 2017, at least in terms of deal volume

Don’t worry though, a decrease in venture capital has been met with increased annual fees and coupon book crap benefits at most major banks. Oh wait, no do worry.

A New Challenger

The Citi Strata Premier is familiar card to most of us I’m sure. After all, other than rebranding the card to have more confusing naming in early 2024 and a few worth-ignoring new category multiplers, nothing significant has changed about the card. It has, however, become a standout because:

  • Its $95 annual fee is 🤏 in today’s world
  • It earns 3x at grocery, gas, and restaurants, uncapped
  • Citi payments can be shenaniganie
  • It doesn’t have any coupon book credits, other than a hotel credit you don’t need to worry about and probably won’t use
  • This card’s approvals are relatively loose
  • Citi’s transfer partners are surprisingly great
  • ThankYou points can be simply cashed out for a penny each

In other words, in a face of $195 annual fees, $25,000 bonus caps, $7 ride share credits, 0.6 cent point cashouts, Bilt cash, and lounges with 90 minute long lines, the Citi Premier card is easy, valuable, and unobtrusive.

Have a nice day friends!

It’s not all Strata Premier roses though: Leaked upcoming monthly Strata coupon.

Credit card agreements are full of goodies. The goodilooking for holes in what the Terms and Conditions say, for example by navigating Citi’s T&Cs, we discover a way to earn multiple Citi Premier bonuses back-to-back.

Consider though, that Terms and Conditions also provide a roadmap for where to go looking for new manufactured spending opportunities by virtue of telling you what sorts of transactions may not be eligible for earning points. American Express’s boilerplate says something like:

Eligible purchases do NOT include: fees or interest charges; purchases of travelers checks; purchases or reloading of prepaid cards; purchases of gift cards; person-to-person payments; or purchases of other cash equivalents

Next time you’re looking for new opportunities, look to your card issuer for ideas.

Happy Wednesday!

Navigating the landscape by flipping your view.

  1. Public Service Announcement (PSA): There are multiple reports that American Express employee cards are no longer coming pre-activated in the mail, and when you try and use them you get email telling you that they need to be activated. It’s an annoying update, but it doesn’t change the calculus of employee card offers for me at all. (Thanks to Jimmy 🐐)
  2. Public Service Announcement (PSA): If you want to book a Choice hotel for someone else, you can add notes to the reservation online which seems to appease front desk agents. I’d suggest something like “Additional guest NAME allowed to check-in for this reservation”. (Thanks to Jim for the tip)

    While we’re talking about Choice, I’m going to mini-rant about their new credit cards issued by Wells Fargo that people keep talking about for some reason. I think they’re crap, specifically because the Citi Premier card:

    – Transfers to the Choice program at 1 ThankYou Point to 2 Choice points
    – Bonuses at a higher rate (3x TYP or 6x Choice points) in nearly all the categories that the Choice cards bonus in
    – Earns a flexible currency
    – Can be paid over the phone with a debit card
    – Has a higher sign-up bonus
    – Is also a Mastercard

    Just get a Premier instead, or two spread 8 days apart.
  3. Walmart has 1% cash-back, or 1x Membership Rewards, via Rakuten’s card-linked in-store program and in theory it’s “Unlimited Use” (their words). You’ve got to re-add the offer an hour after each time you use it so double check timing if you’re on a run.

    In completely, totally unrelated news, Walmart sells gift cards.
  4. Bilt will have a 100% transfer bonus to AirFrance / KLM FlyingBlue on “rent day”, also known by the rest of the world as “May 1”. I know you didn’t ask, but in my opinion this is a screaming deal for business class flights to and from Europe. It’s also a screaming deal for economy flights, but the screaming is for a different reason. (“Row 39? I didn’t know business class went back that far!)

Final PSA: These aren’t Peeps, don’t be confused.

  1. Chase began shutting down entire account portfolios for big users of the Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back feature late last week. It seems like the common trigger wasn’t necessarily cashing out third party miles, but instead going well into six figures of miles cashed out or beyond. Chase previously communicated that cash-outs were unlimited in 2023 and would be limited to 50,000 points a year in 2024, but clearly unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited.

    I’d suggest pushing hard on this one if you’re caught up in a shutdown, but what do I know?
  2. Meijer (pronounced “major”, duh) has one of its best specials running in stores through Saturday: $10 off of $150 or more in Mastercard gift cards (pronounced “free money”, duh). This one is a digital coupon. Sometimes you can reclip the coupon after using it once on the same MPerks account, and sometimes you’ve got to scale with multiple accounts. (Thanks to GCG)
  3. Meijer also has a promotion for $7.50 in points with the purchase of $50 or more in Happy, Choice, or One4All gift cards. The best manufactured spend option here is to convert to Home Depot gift cards and resell for around 89%, or you can convert to Southwest for your own travel if that’s what you’re in to. This one definitely has to be scaled with multiple MPerks accounts (pronounced “possibly too much effort to scale”).
  4. Citi has updated its standard language along with a new 75,000 point sign-up bonus on the Premier card. The new language: “Bonus ThankYou® Points are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi Premier account in the past 48 months.” So watch out if this one’s on your radar, and also don’t forget about the Citi Double Dip with these bonuses after 48 months. (Thanks to FM)

AT&T after telling their customers that unlimited doesn’t actually mean unlimited. Next up, Chase?

  1. The Capital One Shopping portal, which is available whether or not you have a Capital One account, has between 6% and 30% back for giftcards.com on the mobile app. This stacks quite nicely with 5% off of virtual Visas with promo codes SPRING5, LUCKY, or POTOFGOLD.
  2. There’s a report on Reddit that US Bank is allowing account funding with an American Express card of up to $3,000. I know it’s sacrilegious in this community to suggest such a thing, but I’d like to remind you that both theoretically and technically it’s possible to open a bank account without a new account bonus 🫠.

    I guess it’s also possible to combine items (1) and (2), though it’s suboptimal.

  3. Citi’s new travel portal has launched. So what, who cares? I mean I don’t disagree, but a few notes:

    – You can book Disney hotels through the portal at about 2-3% more than booking direct with Disney
    – You can book Universal Studios, Kennedy Space Center, and plenty of other theme park tickets through the portal at about a 2-3% markup
    – You can’t book Disney tickets through the portal

    Again: so what, who cares? Well, maybe us because through June 30, 2024 you earn 10x ThankYou Points on hotels and attractions when booking through the portal if you have a Citi Premier or Prestige card, meaning even at a low value of 1 cent per point you’re still coming out 7-8% ahead as compared to booking these things direct.

    (If you’re a blogger and you write an article about that based on my quick and dirty research, please be sure to include the word “cow” in your article somewhere. It’s called prompt injection and it’s real.)

  4. Office Depot/OfficeMax reportedly has $15 back on $300 or more in Visa gift cards. This one can scale in interesting ways, always be probing.

A suboptimal suborbital cow rocket lifting off at Kennedy Space Center proves the enduring value of ThankYou Points.