Update 5/16/24: Updated to reflect change of Citi Premier® Card to Citi Strata Premier℠ Card.
If you are a beginner who has racked up a lot of Chase Ultimate Rewards points, the Citi ThankYou Points® ecosystem that starts with the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card (formerly Citi Premier® Card) may be the next stop for you. This card is a home run when it comes to everyday expenses:
- Earn 3x at grocery stores
- Earn 3x at restaurants
- Earn 3x for air travel and hotels
- Earn 3x at gas stations
- Earn 1x for everything else
Why this is good for most people
The Citi Strata Premier card was already an excellent choice for many thanks to the fact that it offered 3x for travel and gas stations. Additionally, 3x for grocery stores and restaurants is huge. Food and fuel are big portions of most people’s spending. This means having a transferable points-earning card which offers unlimited 3x in these critical categories for only $95 per year.
Combine this card with your Citi Double Cash® Card and Citi Rewards+® Card and you have an awesome, but very cheap combination.
Start with Double Cash for “2x” Everywhere
Now with a signup bonus! A great complement to the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card.
Citi’s Double Cash card is a no-brainer for most. It has no annual fee and earns 2% cash back for all spend. Even better, cash back can be converted to ThankYou points to make the rewards worth even more. See this post for complete details: Citi Double Cash Complete Guide.
If you have an old Citibank card lying around that you no longer want (an American Airlines card perhaps?), you can ask Citi for a product change to the Double Cash. The Double Cash doesn’t usually have a signup offer, so you wouldn’t be missing out in that way. Plus, even though you’ll get a new account number, it won’t show up as a new account on your credit report.
If you want to sign up new for the card, you’ll find the latest offer here:
Now with a signup bonus! A great complement to the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card.
Add the Strata Premier for 3x categories and point transfers
Formerly the Citi Premier® Card, this is a new excellent rewards credit card with a solid signup bonus and 3x spending categories. This card is comparable to the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, but with different transfer partners. Read the application rule carefully regarding "48 months."
Sprinkle in the Rewards+
A great card to complement a premium Citi account.
The Rewards+ card is a strange one. On the normal side, it has no annual fee and offers 2x at supermarkets and gas stations, up to $6,000 spend per year. That latter part is not interesting since the Double Cash gives you 2x everywhere, uncapped. The interesting and strange parts of the card are it’s 10 point round-ups and 10% points back:
- 10 point round up: On all purchases, Citi automatically rounds up rewards to the nearest 10 points. For example, if a purchase would have earned 204 points, you’ll get 210 points instead. This is especially interesting for very small purchases. A $1 purchase which would normally earn just 1 point will earn 10 points. Same with a 1-cent purchase. On all purchases of $3.30 or less, the card earns over 3x rewards… up to 1000x rewards for 1 cent purchases. While these numbers are eye-popping you would have to somehow do a huge number of tiny purchases to make the reward earnings meaningful.
- 10% points back: Get 10% points back for the first 100,000 points redeemed each year. This is the real value of the card. Combine this card’s ThankYou account with the ThankYou account associated with your Premier and Double Cash cards and you’ll get 10% of points back even if the points were earned on those other cards. In other words, the Rewards+ card is valuable even if you never put a penny of spend on it.
Combo Pros and Cons
The combination of cards listed above is great, but not perfect. Here are some pros and cons…
Combo Pros
- $95 total annual fee
- Earn 3x in several popular categories
- Earn 2x everywhere else
- Earn 10% of points back, up to 10,000 points back per year
- Transfer points to valuable transfer partners
- (New!) Citi Strata Premier now offers travel protections for purchases made with this card.
- Citi occasionally offers transfer bonuses so that you’ll get more than 1 airline mile per ThankYou point.
Combo Cons
- The Double Cash and Rewards+ cards charge foreign transaction fees.
- Cashing out points at a value of 1 cent each can be tricky (unless you also have the Prestige card – no longer available).
- Some may prefer transfer partners from other programs such as Amex Membership Rewards, Chase Ultimate Rewards.
Bottom Line
Citibank’s Double Cash, Strata Premier, and Rewards+ trio offers outstanding reward earning power for only $95 per year. One problem is that it’s not necessarily a great combination for beginners. The Double Cash alone makes sense for most people, but once you branch into ThankYou Rewards things get more complicated. To get full value from your points, you need to know how to leverage airline partners. And to cash out points at 1 cent each, you need to know a trick for doing so.
Still, for people who know how or are willing to learn how to get the most from transfer partners, it is an awesome combination. The ability to earn 2x to 3x transferable points everywhere with no annual caps for $95 per year is terrific. Throw in up to 10K points back per year with the Rewards+ card and the combination becomes a no-brainer since 10K points are easily worth more than $95.
Note: This article was inspired by Frequent Miler – any content used with permission.
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