Sojourner
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2012
- Messages
- 2,610
For those who seek out good "travel rewards" credit cards, what do you think of the Citi ThankYou Premier Card? It offers 50,000 points after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months and has a $95 annual fee waived for the first 12 months. The points can be transferred to various airline miles programs, but what drew my attention is that those 50,000 points can be used to book $625 in travel on any airline through Citi's ThankYou Travel Center.
The way I figure it, it would cost me $80 to get this $625 in value, since I'd have to use the Citi TYP card for the next few months in order to spend the required $4,000, instead of my usual Citi DoubleCash card that gives me 2% cash back on all purchases. And from what I've read about the ThankYou Travel Center, flights tend to be a bit more expensive than what you could book through other sites like Kayak or Google Flights. So I figure that $625 might actually be more like $500, in which case I'm really only netting about $420 in value.
I'm strongly considering signing up for this card, though, since I think getting (for example) a free round-trip flight from Atlanta to Honolulu—or maybe two round-trips from ATL to NYC—is pretty tempting. The only downside I can see (other than the hassle of signing up, making sure to spend the $4,000 minimum, and then cancelling the card within 12 months) is having to use the TYTC website to book a few flights. I've read a few articles and forum posts that indicate the TYTC website can be somewhat user-unfriendly and doesn't give as many flight options as other sites.
Thoughts?
https://citicards.citi.com/usc/LPACA/Citi/ThankYou/Premier/external/index.html
The way I figure it, it would cost me $80 to get this $625 in value, since I'd have to use the Citi TYP card for the next few months in order to spend the required $4,000, instead of my usual Citi DoubleCash card that gives me 2% cash back on all purchases. And from what I've read about the ThankYou Travel Center, flights tend to be a bit more expensive than what you could book through other sites like Kayak or Google Flights. So I figure that $625 might actually be more like $500, in which case I'm really only netting about $420 in value.
I'm strongly considering signing up for this card, though, since I think getting (for example) a free round-trip flight from Atlanta to Honolulu—or maybe two round-trips from ATL to NYC—is pretty tempting. The only downside I can see (other than the hassle of signing up, making sure to spend the $4,000 minimum, and then cancelling the card within 12 months) is having to use the TYTC website to book a few flights. I've read a few articles and forum posts that indicate the TYTC website can be somewhat user-unfriendly and doesn't give as many flight options as other sites.
Thoughts?
https://citicards.citi.com/usc/LPACA/Citi/ThankYou/Premier/external/index.html