Despite having dozens of cards and millions of points, I recently went deep on Citibank, which led me to opening a few new Citi cards. And now I'm thinking that Citi might be one of the most underrated issuers for earning points on your spending. So today I'm going to go deep on the entire Citi card lineup, highlighting the ones you might want to consider and putting them in a tier list.

I'll break down Citi's thank you points program and the best ways to use those points. I'll share a bunch of tips and tricks I've picked up from my experience with Citi. And finally, I'll be putting Citi's top two card combo up against the best two card combos from every other major issuer.

And I think you will be shocked at what I learned. I'm Chris Hutchins. And if you enjoy this episode, please share with a friend or leave a comment or review. And if you want to keep upgrading your life, money and travel, click follow or subscribe. As I mentioned in the intro, I've been really excited about Citi lately.

So that's why I'm going to do a deep dive into their card lineup. And as I do it, I'm going to be filling out a tier list where I rank all the cards. So for those not familiar with tier lists, the highest tier is S. Maybe that means special or super.

It's not entirely clear. Followed by a traditional A, B, C, D letter grade. And if anyone out there is asking if I'm just doing this episode because Citi is having some big affiliate deal where I get paid lots of money for referrals, that unfortunately couldn't be farther from the truth because despite that I do have links for Citi cards on the website, none of them are affiliate links or even referral links.

So even if every single one of you listening opens up a Citi card, I won't earn a thing or get any benefit. I genuinely just wanted to do this episode because I opened two Citi cards after going deep on the program and I feel like I was missing out.

Finally, in addition to Citi, I think I'm going to make this a recurring series where I break down all the cards from every major issuer. So please, if you have feedback on that concept, you can send me an email, podcast at allthehacks.com or on the website, use the contact form.

So let's get into it. Citi has a ton of cards. According to their website, there are 24 of them. I'm going to focus on the ones that are most interesting because there are a ton of cards where it's random stuff like the L.L. Bean MasterCard, the Dillard's card and those things.

It's not that you might not get value if you really care about those retailers, but they're a little bit of an edge case. So I'm going to skip those and start with the thank you points earning cards. I think Citi thank you points is a really competitive program. They've got a ton of transfer partners, some that are unique and have better earning rates or transfer rates than other programs.

So the marquee card in the thank you point ecosystem is the Citi Strata Premier card. This is one of the two cards I recently opened up and I've been pretty impressed with its earning. So two big highlights for this card is the signup bonus, which is often 75,000 points, though right now at recording, it's 60,000 points after spending 4K in three months.

And then the big other one is the earnings. You get 3x points on groceries, gas, dining, hotel, and airfare. I think those are a few of the major categories that people spend money on. You do also get 10x points on hotels, car rentals, and attractions through Citi travel, which is a bit of a recurring theme in a lot of these cards.

But as I've talked about in a lot of previous episodes, I don't love booking in the travel portal unless there's a bigger incentive. So I kind of write that off. The card does have a $95 annual fee. To make up for that, they give you a $100 credit towards a hotel stay in Citi travel, as long as you spend more than $500.

I have not yet decided whether I'm ever even going to use that credit. I don't know if, you know, 20% off one stay ends up, and obviously that's only if you hit exactly $500. I don't know if that ends up being worth the downsides of booking in the travel portal.

It earns 1x points on everything else. It has no foreign transaction fees. And while many Citi cards, I will knock for not having travel protections and purchase protections, this card does have some. They are not as strong as the ones you'll see from other major issuers. But they do have trip delay, trip interruption, lost luggage, damaged luggage, and rental car coverage, though that rental car coverage is secondary to your primary insurance.

And then they do have purchase protection, but it's also limited. They've got extended warranty of an additional two years, and then damage and theft protection for 90 days. So it has some protections, but not nearly as much as other cards. But the real marquee thing is that you're earning 3x on groceries, gas, dining, hotel, and airfare.

So for me, if I jump into my little tier list, I think this is a really, really great card. I'm putting this one in the S tier because those categories, earning 3x transferable points in a program for a $95 fee card with a decent signup bonus is just about everything I'm looking for.

And I've been using the card a ton in the last few weeks, both to hit the signup bonus and because 3x in those categories is pretty compelling. Interestingly enough, despite that City has a ton of cards, only three of them really earn thank you points that are transferable. The others earn are marketed as cash back.

But if you have the City Strata Premier, you can transfer those points. The next few cards on the list are sometimes marketed as earning thank you points, sometimes marketed as earning cash back, but they don't always come with the ability to transfer unless they're paired with the Strata Premier.

Or if you're a legacy City card holder and you have the City Prestige card, they're also able to be transferred to airlines. And that's where you get a lot of the value out of it. I think you could get a ton of value from City as just a pure cash back play.

And we'll get to that. But the transfer partners are pretty interesting, especially when you pair up a couple cards. The next card I'm going to mention is a surprisingly interesting one. And that is the AT&T points plus card. This one is marketed as earning thank you points, which is why I'm doing it next.

It is not that compelling. The signup bonus is $200 on $1,000 of spend in three months. There is no annual fee, does have a 3% foreign transaction fee. You get 3x points on gas and EV charging and 2x on grocery. I think you do better than that on a lot of cards.

If you are an AT&T customer, you do save $20 a month up to $240 a year on this card. So I could make an argument that a card that earns you $240 a year is interesting with no annual fee. But one, you're probably spending way more than $240 a year having AT&T in the first place.

So you'd be better switching. But it is a points earning card. So I feel like it is worth mentioning in the list. But I am unfortunately going to put this card in the C tier list. And you'll see what D entails in a moment. But you know, C tier for the purposes of this episode is not a compelling place to live.

Next card, there was a Sears card for a long time that Citi had. It actually had a bunch of interesting benefits. I'm not going to go deep into those because on April 12, they kind of effectively killed that card and said it is now going to be what's called the Citi Thank You Master Card.

Now you can't get that card. So there's not an interesting website about it. And a lot of the interesting deals from that card are no longer going to be issued. So if you like these earning perks that it had, the Citi Shop Your Way card is going to be interesting.

And we'll get to that. This card is not that interesting. I'm going to go ahead and put it in the D tier because there's really nothing about this card that's compelling anymore at all. But the next card I'm really big fan of. And in fact, if I get another Citi card, this one's what's coming next.

And that is the Citi Double Cash card. Now you've probably seen tons of ads for this card. It is a 2% unlimited cashback card. It's marketed as you get 1% when you spend the money and 1% when you pay it off. So I guess if you don't pay off your credit card, it's only a 1% card.

But if you don't pay off your credit card, you should ignore this entire episode. Stop listening and focus your strategy on paying down credit cards because unless they're a 0% interest card, credit card debt is just not worth any amount of rewards, any amount of points. In addition to that, it is no annual fee.

It has a minor signup bonus. You get $200 after spending $1,500 in six months, at least as of recording this, though it does come with a foreign transaction fee. So while it's a great everything card, it is not a great everything card when you're traveling overseas. And if you have the Citi Strata Premier card, then the cashback can be converted into points that can be transferred.

So really great card to pair. In a way, if you have the Strata Premier, it's similar to the Capital One Venture X card or Venture card in that you get 2x transferable points on every purchase. It has no travel protection and the only purchase protection it has is an extended warranty.

So not the best card to be using for those kinds of purchase protections at all. And definitely not a card to put a lot of travel on it. Though for this year, they're offering 5% back on stuff booked in city travel, hotel, rental car and attractions, not airfare. So on its own, 2% cashback card, you know, with Robinhood out there with the Smartly card, though, it just kind of got knocked down pretty hard with Bank of America with Platinum Honors.

There's a ton of cards out there that you could be earning more than 2%. But if you get the Premier and you get 2x transferable points, kind of interesting, not even kind of interesting, really interesting. So I'm going to put this in A tier because I think that it is a compelling card to have if you're in the city ecosystem.

And then last one in this group is the city custom cash card. On the surface, this card looks amazing because you get 5% back on whatever category you spend the most in. And the categories are really wide ranging restaurants, gas, grocery, travel, transit, streaming, drug stores, home improvement, fitness clubs and live entertainment.

And home improvement is probably the most notable one in here for me because I'm not aware of any other card that has a elevated earnings potential for that category. However, you're capped at only earning that 5% back on up to $500 per billing cycle, which means that you're only getting it on $6,000 a year.

And so if you look at earning 5% on $6,000 or earning 5% on a 2x unlimited card, you're just getting a bonus of 3%. And so that's really just a max of $180 a year. Now, if you have the City Strata Premier, then that could be 18,000 points a year over having the double cash.

But where this kind of gets interesting, and we'll talk later about how City allows you to product change between different cards, you could have multiple of these custom cash cards. So I do know a few people who ended up with two or three or four of them. And they're like, this is my gas card.

This is my travel card. This is my transit card. And if you figure you don't spend more than $500 during a billing cycle on gas, then this is effectively a 5x points on gas card. And I'm not familiar with another 5x transferable points gas card. So I do think that if you're in the City ecosystem, the City custom cash card is pretty good.

I'm going to put it at B tier, because it's not quite that exciting with the cap of earning only $500 of 5x a month. But it does have no annual fee. So that's nice. Similar, you get no travel or purchase protection except extended warranty to the double cash also has a 3% foreign transaction fee.

And I'm not sure why this card is different in this way. But you do get 5x or 5% back on all the same hotel rental car attractions and city travel. But for this card, it's through June 30th, 2026. I have no idea why they're doing these promotions on different schedules.

So those are the main cards in the City thank you point or cashback ecosystem. The next I'm going to go into is the American Airlines ecosystem. So if you have no interest in American, though, maybe I will change your mind. You could skip through this time. Timestamps are in the show notes.

But I will say one two things. One, as I've dug into Alaska Airlines, I've noticed that American Airlines status is also pretty beneficial to Alaska Airlines. And American Airlines is one of the easiest statuses to earn without needing to ever fly American. So if you don't fly a lot, or you're always flying on cheap seats, you don't think you're ever going to earn the status, you can spend your way to American status better than almost any other program out there.

And if you fly Alaska a lot, American status gives you very, very similar comparable benefits. Whereas Alaska is much harder to spend your way to status, especially because they cap how many elite qualifying points you can even earn using an Alaska card to earn status. So I'll run through the four city cards.

And I'll tell you why one of them is the second card I got, and is very lucrative in 2025. And I'm actually really excited about it. And I'll get there. This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. You know that feeling when you're standing in the grocery store, staring at labels, trying to figure out what's actually healthy, but that ingredient list is so confusing.

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Finding good and actionable financial advice is not easy, especially if you want it to come from someone who's acting in your best interest. So let me save you some time because when I shut down my financial planning firm a few years ago, we did a ton of research on who to recommend to our clients, and we landed on Facet.

Facet makes professional financial advice actionable to everyone, and instead of charging a high percentage of your assets, they only charge a flat annual membership fee with investment management included. With Facet, you'll get access to a team of CFP professionals and specialists providing guidance across retirement planning, tax strategy, estate planning, and more.

So head on over to chrishutchins.com slash facet, F-A-C-E-T, to learn more about which membership option is best for you. That's chrishutchins.com slash facet. So the first one's the mile up card. You get a paltry 15,000 bonus miles, though only after spending $500 in three months. It's a no annual fee card with 3% foreign transaction fees.

You get an extra 2x points on groceries and American Airlines, 1x on everything else. And you get 25% off food and beverage on American. You don't get checked bags. You don't get priority boarding. There's really not a lot to like about this card. The only argument I could make for this card is if you are really trying to earn American Airlines status, and you need a card to spend on, and you're doing it for the loyalty points.

Because the way American Airlines status works is you earn loyalty points. Base gold tier is $40,000 all the way up to $200,000 for executive platinum. And every dollar you spend on your card, you get a loyalty point. If you were a major spender at grocery stores, or there were gift cards or things that you were buying at grocery stores, and your primary spending category is groceries, then if you were also trying to get American status, then spending on this card would be more lucrative than the other cards because you'd be earning 2x American points.

Now you're not earning 2x loyalty points, but you're getting two American miles for every dollar. So that's the only case I could make for this. But I don't know a lot of people who are spending a tremendous amount of money on groceries and trying to get American status. So I'm going to put the mile up card down in C tier because I really just don't think it's that compelling compared to the other options from American.

So the next card is the platinum card has a much more interesting signup bonus. Right now, it's 50,000 points on 2500 and spend in three months does have a $99 annual fee, but at least right now they're waiving it for the first year, no foreign transaction fees, and you get 2x American miles on restaurants, gas and American purchases.

So similarly, all that said, not that compelling for anything other than if you want to earn American status, where it does start to have a benefit is if you fly American a decent amount, you get your first bag free for up to four people on the same reservation. And I think American bag fees are something like $40.

So if you're doing round trip with a family of four checking four bags, that's $320 saved, you get preferred boarding and another 25% off food and beverage on American. So interesting if you're going for status interesting if you want to sign up bonus, though I'd hold out for something like 75,000 points on this card.

But if you do fly American a lot, but not enough to earn status, I would say getting free checked bags is a decent perk for this card. But if you fly American a lot, I imagine you would have status or you'd want one of the other cards in this platform.

So I'm going to put this at a C tier. I think it's better than the mile up card, but not nearly as good as the next two on the list. So on the personal side, the next one's the city executive American card, much higher signup bonus, though much higher annual fee.

So it's $595 for the card. It's got a 70,000 point signup bonus right now on spending $7,000 in three months has no foreign transaction fees. But it's pretty interesting for a few reasons. So not necessarily on the earning, because the only elevated earning is 5x on American if you spend $150,000 on the card, but that's a tremendous amount.

It does also earn 10x on hotels and car rentals through the city portal. I'm going to kind of exclude that right now. And then 1x on everything else. The reason to get this card is twofold. One, you get an Admirals Club membership. So if you travel American a lot, because one of the requirements for an Admirals Club membership to go in is to be flight American, or if you fly on Alaska, because the Admirals Club membership also allows you access to the Alaska lounge, and there's currently not a credit card that gives you access to Alaska lounge, this could be a really interesting card.

You can go into those lounges with your family, adult spouse, and children, or up to two guests. And the really interesting thing about this card, if you have a few friends that are all interested, is you can add up to three authorized users on the card for $175 total.

So if you had one person and three authorized users, and you all split the total annual fees, you'd be spending $192 a year for American Admirals Club access. Now, if you don't fly on American or Alaska, having Admirals Club access is not that interesting. And one caveat is the Admirals Club access you get as an authorized user does not allow you into the Alaska lounge.

So only the primary user gets that Alaska lounge perk. So it's pretty interesting if you want Admirals Club access or Alaska lounge access, because otherwise, the cost of an Admirals Club membership is $750 to $850 a year. Other perks, you get your first bag free this time for up to eight travelers.

One nice thing about the bag perk on American is you don't even have to pay for the flight with your card. Some other airlines do have that requirement. You get priority check-in, screening, and boarding. And then they have a bunch of coupon style credits. And this is not uncommon for premium cards these days.

I'm going to say these credits are not as valuable as some other ones. But it really depends on how you travel and spend money. You get $120 a year for booking Avis and budget car rentals and paying for them directly on the card. You get $10 a month for $120 a year on Grubhub.

To me, it feels like those two would be reasonably easy to use. We do use Grubhub probably once a month. But if we had this card, we'd be doing it twice. So twice a month. I don't know if we use it that much. And then you get $10 a month credit with Lyft, but only after three rides each month.

So I think that for us would be really hard to use. And then you get TSA Global Entry covered, which for someone playing this game, I'm guessing you already have a card that covers that. So those credits to me aren't worth nearly what they're marketed as. But the other big benefit here...

Now, if we go back to American status, I was saying that the base level status, you need 40,000 loyalty points. The next level is 75,000. And the next level is 125. One of the things this card offers, even without spending money on the card, is that after you earn 50,000 loyalty points with American, holding this card gives you an extra 10,000.

And then again, after you hit 90,000 loyalty points, you get another 10,000. So if you were going for American Platinum Pro status, you need 125,000 loyalty points. Just having this card, not even spending on it, would get you 20 of those 125,000 points. If you're going for Platinum status, you need 75.

So you'd get 10 towards that and only need 65. So if you're really making a go for American status, this card is pretty interesting. The only other perks that it has are World Elite MasterCard perks, which any World Elite MasterCard would have. There are some discounts and statuses with maybe some rental cars and stuff like that.

Nothing too compelling, but you can go search World Elite MasterCard and look at those perks. So for this card, I think that if you travel American, getting lounge access potentially for up to four people is pretty compelling. So I'd put it at A tier. Obviously, if you don't fly American ever, all of these American cards are going to be D tier.

But the last one I want to mention is probably my favorite and the one I recently got, which is the Advantage Business Platinum card. And the reason it's interesting might not be interesting every year and might only be interesting this year, but it has the highest signup bonus of all the cards right now.

So that's interesting. 75,000 after spending 5K in five months. It also has a $99 annual fee, but the first year is free. So that's interesting. You got no foreign transaction fees, which is interesting. And then on the benefits side, you get first bag free for up to four people.

And then if you spend $30,000, you get a companion certificate, which is $99 plus taxes and fees for a companion. So out the gate, it is a similar price to the personal platinum card. But I think it's a lot better for two reasons. You do earn 2x on rental car and gas, but also 2x on telecom, cable and satellite.

So if you're spending your bills on phone bills and cable bills, you can earn a little bit of extra American points. But the most interesting thing is as a business card, it has a couple unique features. So one thing that's very different about the way American business cards work than almost every other one is that if you add an authorized employee and that employee is using the card, the loyalty points accrue to the employee, not to the primary cardholder.

So if you want to earn status, you want to use the primary card. But the miles from both primary and authorized users all accrue to an advantage business account. And that advantage business account can choose who to transfer those miles to. So in effect, you get this new account that lets you dole out those miles to any of the employees or authorized users on the card.

However, there is a promotion in 2025. And it says it's targeted, but I did never got an email about it. And I see it in my promotions tab. And I've heard pretty much everyone has been targeted for this promotion. And it was also effective last year that all the authorized user or employee cards that are earning loyalty points for themselves, the primary cardholder will also get those loyalty points.

Meaning if you need to spend in America's platform $75,000 to earn platinum status, if you do it on the authorized employee card, then the primary user and the employee or authorized user get that status because they're both accruing the loyalty points. So if you and any other person are both gunning for American status, this card is excellent because it effectively lets you spend once and earn those loyalty points for two people.

So I was a little torn on this. If you're going for American status, this card has to be S tier because it lets you earn status for two people at the same time. But I still don't think the earnings is that exciting. And so, and not everyone's going for American status and not everyone wants a business card and not everyone is trying to get status for two people.

Because if you are in a family and you're often traveling together, we don't really need the status for both of you. You're going to get free bags for four people. You're going to get preferred boarding. Your status will let others board with you. So I'm going to put this in a tier, but I think that it's definitely the best of the American cards, unless you really rely on lounge access, which by the way, at some tier of milestone perks, meaning as you earn loyalty points, you get perks.

One of those benefits is an admiral's club membership. So there is a way to spend your way to an admiral's club membership through loyalty points. It's going to be a lot more loyalty points, but it is an option without having that executive card. Okay. Next, I want to talk about the Costco cards.

Um, I think they're really interesting because people seem to love them, but I just don't see it. I just don't get it for myself. I don't get it for almost anyone. They have no signup bonus. They have no annual fee though. You do need a Costco membership. So in order to get the card, you need to have a Costco membership, which does have an annual fee.

And if you're going for the business card, the only real difference I can find between the personal and the business Costco cards is that if you have authorized users on the business card, they all need Costco membership. So you can't just add any authorized user. You need to add an authorized user who already has their own Costco membership.

They'll have no foreign transaction fee. The interesting thing must be for most people, the earnings potential. They do 5% on Costco gas and 4% on gas and EV charging anywhere else, but that's only up to $7,000 of spend a year. So if you figure, even if your best case alternative is a 2% on gas card, you're really only getting an extra about $210.

And I think that was, uh, only if you spend the entire $7,000 on Costco gas, uh, if you spend it getting 4%, then you're only getting an extra 2%. And like I mentioned earlier, the city strata premier card is going to get three X on gas. The city custom cash card is going to get you five X on gas in transferable points, or that could be cash back up to $6,000 a year.

So if you're getting this for gas, I would get the city custom cash. You're, you're only missing out on an extra $1,000 of an extra, something like, you know, 3% $30. So not worth it for me for gas. So what's another reason to get it could be 3% back on travel, except I can think of so many cards that are going to earn more than 3% on travel.

The city strata premier, the chase Sapphire reserve, the Amex green card, the chasing preferred card, the autograph and the autograph journey card, the Robin hood card. So 3% on travel is not a reason to get a card, especially one without a signup bonus. And then you get 2% at Costco.

There are dozens of cards that get 2%, uh, on all your purchases. Um, I will say Costco does need a visa in store. So if you've got the city double cash, you wouldn't get 2% in store because it's a MasterCard though. You can, I believe you can still use a MasterCard online.

Um, but the capital one venture card is, uh, great for in store. A lot of, I think the Robin hood cards, a visa card. I know the smartly cards, a visa card. Um, there are some cards that pay elevated bonuses on mobile wallet. If you have platinum monitors with bank of America, you can get up to 2.6 to 5% cash back on a visa card.

So a lot of cards I'd rather use at Costco that are not this card and then 1% on everything else. And on top of all of that, your cash back doesn't get paid out until your February statement. So make big purchases in March and all your cash back is, is kind of being held for another 11 months before you actually see it.

Only other thing, Costco did add purchase protection that is better than most of the other city cards here. So you get some damage and theft protection. And on the travel side, you get primary rental coverage, you get roadside assistance and accident insurance. The accident insurance is particularly interesting. It's, it's $250,000 of coverage, but then they get very specific about how it pays out.

So if you lose, uh, both your hands or both your feet, you can get up to $250,000. But if you only lose one hand or one foot, they will only give you up to $125,000. If you only lose a thumb or an index finger, but it has to be in the same hand, they'll give you 25% of the coverage, which is $62,500.

And other things are on this list. I just think it's funny that somebody went to the extent of saying, well, thumb and index finger on the same hand is worth 25%, but thumb and index finger on separate hands, you get zero. I don't know how people come up with these things.

Um, all in all, not excited about the Costco cards. Um, I want to put them in the D tier, but there's just so many worse cards that I'm going to put them in the C tier, but they're not cards I'll ever be getting, um, or using in any way, shape or form.

The last card is an interesting one. And it's a cult favorite in the points and miles. We're probably in the cashback world. It's a little bit of a sleeper because if you look at it on the internet, you'll probably be saying, why is this card even interesting? So it's the city shop your way card.

And it is signup bonus is $225 in statement credits. It's one of the strangest signup bonuses. You get $75 back after spending 500 up to three times in 90 days. So if you spend 1500, you'd get the full 225. It earns points, but these are not thank you points.

Um, it earns 5% at gas, 3% on groceries and restaurants, but only up to 10,000 a year on all those combined categories. So not that exciting. There's a list of shop your way merchants where I think you are in two X or 2% back on those. And then 1% on everything else.

It's not entirely clear what the points you're earning are worth. I've heard two reports that they're worth 1 cent or 0.85 cents. Uh, but that's not the primary reason anyone wants this card. And you won't find the primary reason why anyone wants this card anywhere really on the website.

Um, and, and they talk about maybe special offers somewhere, but I really don't even see it listed anywhere on this site. And by the way, it has no annual fee. I didn't look, but I would be shocked if it didn't have foreign transaction fees because it doesn't seem like a travel focused card.

So let's assume it has 3% foreign transaction fees, which it does. Um, and, and here's what happens. I've got a few examples from a few people who reported the thing that's interesting about this card is all the deals that it sends to you sometime in a three to four month window after having the card, but there's no guarantee you'll get them.

But it seems pretty consistent that people three, four or five months into this card start getting very lucrative offers. So one person reported that the initial offers they got a few months into the card. They got three of them. One was 20% off a hundred dollars plus on utilities for three months in a row up to $75 back a month.

So if you spent a full $375 each month in utilities, you'd get 75 back each month for $225. They got a 10% off $400 or more each month at gas stations, grocery stores, and restaurants combined with a max of 150 back. So if you spent $1,500 three months in a row, you'd get 150 back each month for $450 total.

And then last, they got $125 off spending 2000 a month on anything. And these, my understanding is these all stack. So if you've got 2000, spend 2000, get 125 back and spend 400 plus on these four categories, you can combine them. And so that ends up being over three months.

Uh, you have three months to hit that spend. You end up getting $125 back on 2k of spend. So in total for $5,625 of spend, they got $800 back, which is 14.2% back. Plus they got all the regular earning from the card, which for the most categories is just one X points.

Uh, but maybe that bumps it up to 15% back and that's on 5,000 of spend. So a free $800 in a quarter. And I, and I say free, obviously they had to do this spend. There was an opportunity cost of this spend, but 14% with, with the regular spending, maybe 15% back on, uh, five grand is not nothing.

Another person got a bunch of offers in Q4, which was 50 off a thousand dollars online. It's about 5%. Another $200 off a thousand dollars online. And then another 75 off a thousand dollars online. And then they got two 50 off $2,000 on gas, grocery, and dining over three usable, each of three months, 40 off 400 in utility and 10% back on at least a hundred dollars a month on travel for two months.

I'm not going to break them all down. The short version is on $12,200 to spend, they would have gotten $1,395 back, which is 11 and a half percent plus their regular earnings. So let's call it 12 and a half percent. So in both these examples, 12 and a half to 15% back on, you know, five to $12,000 in a quarter, not bad.

So a card to keep in your wallet, if, if those kinds of offers and that kind of earning is interesting to you, you know, you could have a almost signup bonus level amount of cash back. Now, I don't know how often these offers come, but it seems like people are getting them every quarter.

They're getting a whole set of them. So I have not used this card. I'd encourage you to go search online and do some research. But if a card could convince, conceivably offer you like a signup bonus every three or four months consistently on an ongoing basis based on your spending.

And you know, you're not gonna have to open up a new card for it. Yes, it doesn't have a huge signup bonus, but maybe it's earned a spot in your wallet. It's definitely an interesting card. So I'm gonna put it in a tier because there's just not a card like it that I'm aware of.

And it's pretty lucrative. I've heard people say that they think that this card is like this sleeper secret card that maybe city forgot about and doesn't ever talk about, but is really lucrative after holding it for a while. So that's the shop your way card. I excluded a bunch of cards here.

I didn't include cards that cities discontinued the prestige card, the rewards plus and the AT&T access more. And then there's a bunch of retailer cards, like I mentioned, and then three city cards that they actually put at the top of their list. And by top, I mean in the upper half of their list of cards.

But they have no real benefit other than being balance transfer cards. That's the diamond preferred, the simplicity and the diamond secured. All three of those cards offer zero benefits. And I mean, zero earning, not just one X everything, zero X everywhere. Some of them offer balance transfer, low APR for balance transfers, but have a three to 5% balance transfer fee.

So I don't see a single reason to get any of these cards. All three of them D tier worst on the list. Not interesting. So I'll put a link to the photo of the tier list in the show notes for anyone who's not watching on video. As I mentioned, there are links to these cards on the website if you want them, but we don't earn anything from them.

If for some reason, I find that any all the hacks members happen to have, uh, referral links, I'll use those referral links on the websites links. Otherwise, you know, you could just go to city's website and find them. Also speaking of all the hacks members, when I do this series for other issuers, I'll probably take Amex and chase and make those a member only episode.

So if you want to see the deep dive on chase ultimate rewards, and you want to see the deep dive on Amex membership rewards, that's going to be a members only episode. They're just a bunch of things that, um, having those partnerships preclude me from talking about, uh, on the podcast and make it a little complicated.

So I might write them up as a blog post as well and share it in email because that seems to be okay. But for now, they probably won't be in the podcast. So let's talk city rules. Cause there are a few rules here that as anyone who's now thinking, Oh, maybe I should get one of these cards you might want to know about.

So one is that for any card on city, you can only get the welcome offer every 48 months for some cards. It's 24 months. So look into the terms, but you can repeat welcome offers. You just need to wait two to four years to do it. Um, you can only get one city card every eight days.

Um, but it's a little confusing because that is what everyone consistently says. Yet I signed up for the advantage business and the strata premiere on the same day. And then there's another rule that says you can only get two cards every 65 days. I think maybe because I applied for them at the, on the same day, um, maybe it got combined, but I'm certainly going to wait 65 days before I consider adding that double cash.

Um, there's some rumors that it's really hard to get a city card. If you've had six hard inquiries on your credit in the last six months, but it's not a consistent rule. Shout out to frequent miler for sharing that. Um, and then also city, a couple nuances of city that are interesting.

You cannot move credit from one card to another. So a lot of times the, from when it comes to reconsideration, you could call up and say, Hey, could I move some credit between cards? You can't do that with city. And then last, one of the cool things about the city is that you can product change between cards across platforms.

So on some platforms, the airline cards can't go to the hotel cards or the transferable points cards here. They can, but no one really understands the rules. So I saw lots of data points of people saying, well, I have the city mile up and I could transfer it to a double cash or a Costco card, but not the custom cash card.

Uh, and then other people said, I have an American platinum card and I could go to double cash. Um, but I, or any other American card, other people said they couldn't go to the double cash card. Another person said they couldn't go to the strata premiere, but another person said they could.

So after a year you can call city and potentially change your card to another card, but it's unclear which one of those cards is, is possible, but it seems pretty consistently that the double cash is often an option and that for AA cards, the AA and Costco cards are often an option.

And that, you know, who knows if the strata premiere, the custom cash will be an option. This is all pretty recent historically getting a downgrade to the custom cash was really easy. I want to dive into city thank you points because the reason that I'm excited about city aside from being able to earn American status for two players at the same time is really the thank you points ecosystem.

And I'll share a lot about that. A few other quick things about city. I have heard issues that people have said cities kind of a pain to deal with fraud. I haven't had any of those issues. I've done a bunch of large random transactions, no issues. So not a problem I've had getting virtual card numbers.

I did get a virtual card number when I signed up for the AA card. So if you have some spend and you need to hit it quickly, I was able to get a virtual card for the AA business card and use it right away. But I didn't get one on the strata premiere.

Business and personal cards are separate logins, which is just kind of a pain. You can't product change business cards at all. Also, I didn't mention that earlier. I do like some of the spending summary charts they have on the city website. It's kind of better than most of the other cards I've used on other issuers.

With credit limits, I did not get very high credit limits. And I don't know if that's because I have a ton of outstanding credit amounts on other cards and they didn't want to give me more, or if it's because they're pretty stingy with credit, which I have heard. I got $11,000 on the strata premiere and 16,000 on the city biz versus other cards.

I've gotten, you know, 20 to 30 K. You can do an online credit line increase. My understanding is that you can only do it once every six months. So once it's been 180, you know, two or three days from your last card issuance with city, you can request an increase.

And I know people have been able to drive up their credit lines to over $50,000 on a card, but they had to do it every six months. And you could do that without an additional heart inquiry, which is nice. This episode is brought to you by Element. Now, I love Element and I use it all the time because it helps anyone stay hydrated without the sugar and other dodgy ingredients in popular electrolyte and sports drinks.

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Get your free sample pack with any Element purchase at chrishutchins.com/lmnt. This deal is only available through that link. So support the show and go to chrishutchins.com/element or click the link in the description and get hydrated. This episode is brought to you by Gelt. Now, when it comes to building wealth, taxes are such a big part of the strategy.

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So first off, there's some bad ways to redeem them. If you redeem them as statement credits, you can get one cent. So it's not the worst, but I think transferable points are more valuable. But if you wanted to play this whole game with cash back, just assume every point is worth one penny.

You can get one penny as a statement credit, or you can get one penny in the travel portal, or you can get one penny buying gift cards and some merchandise. But at the end of the day, I would always encourage you for the same rate of return, get the cash, get the statement credit, pay off your balance, and then use the money saved and go buy travel with the airlines directly.

Earn points on that travel by using the city premier card. Go buy gift cards somewhere else, go buy merchandise somewhere else. So I would not use my city thank you points for anything other than statement credits, or what I think is the best use, which is transferring them to airlines and hotels.

So city has 23 transfer partners right now, 18 airlines and five hotels. Like I mentioned earlier, you do need the city premier or the prestige card, historical card to transfer points to airlines. But when you do, there's a lot of great options. And so on the airline side, I said, there's 18.

The biggest one I'll highlight is Eva air, which is an airline based in Taiwan. And they make a ton of award availability, especially in premium cabins available to their members. So having access to Eva air availability is a really great way to unlock low cost international business with good availability to Asia.

And while Capital One is the only other transfer partner that has Eva air, Capital One, you need five Capital One points to get four Eva air points. So it's 1.25 to one. And with city, you get one to one. So Eva air is a real standout if you have other points ecosystems to pull from.

But if you don't, and you're just looking broadly at what is city have, they've got almost all the obvious airlines, they've got flying blue with Air France and KLM, they've got Avianca, Cathay Pacific Asia miles, Qantas, Singapore, Turkish Virgin, and a few others. Notably, they don't have any US airlines except jet blue.

Now, for me, that doesn't matter, because I know I can use Avianca to book Star Alliance United, I can use flying blue to book Delta, though, I'm often not using points for Delta. And it's a little bit of a harder game. I will say if you're trying to use your points to book a lot of one world flights on American, it's going to be a little trickier, you know, you could use Qantas, this, but it's hard.

And by the way, if you go to all the hacks.com slash TP, you can or in the show notes, there's a spreadsheet I put together of all the different transfer partners, I kind of try to highlight and compare them against all of the different programs. And so on the on the airline side, the really standout one is is Eva air, there is also Thai air, which only city is a partner of two things.

One, I believe those transfers take three to seven days. And two, I haven't found a single redemption worth using Thai airways for. So cool that they have a unique partner, but not really cool, because it's not useful. On the hotel side is where I think city really shines. And that's honestly, the reason that I wanted to get into cities program was hotels and and the Eva air availability.

Notably, city gets choice choice hotels, which is also part of Amex also part of cap one, but you get a one to two ratio instead of on those programs, you get a one to one. So twice as many choice points. Wells Fargo rewards similarly has a one to two choice points.

I'll brush on Wells Fargo in a little bit. But that's interesting. Choice hotels, the access to some preferred hotels, which are some nice luxury hotels is interesting. There are also a ton of choice hotels, they don't have the most luxurious portfolio, there are some really nice Radisson blues, Cambria's ascends.

But for the most part, I would say compared to other hotel chains, this the shining star of choice is not hotels, if you're looking to stay in really luxury properties. But if you are city also has preferred hotels and leading hotels of the world. And those two transfer rate partners are unique to city, no one else has them, which is really exciting.

And so the ability to book hotels and luxury hotels is really nice. They also have Wyndham and Accor. And so the best hotel bookings here to get the most value out of your city points. If you book preferred hotels, either through preferred hotels or by transferring to choice, you can get a really good value like up to 0.71 cent per point on choice, which going one to two means 1.4 to 2 cents of value for transfers to choice.

So if your city points are getting 1.4 to 2 cents, that's really good value. On Vacasa, booking through Wyndham, you can get up to about 1.6 cents of value from your city points. And for people not familiar, the way Vacasa works is Vacasa is a vacation rental platform. They have tons of properties all over the world.

And it's 15,000 Wyndham points to book a Vacasa per bedroom up to places that charge $250 per bedroom. So if you're looking at a three bedroom place, if it's $750 a night or less, you can book it for 15,000 points per bedroom per night. And if it's $500 per bedroom per night or less, you can book it for 30,000 points.

Let's say a two bedroom that's under $1,000 a night, you could book for 30,000 points per bedroom per night or 60,000 points a night. A little complicated. I'll leave a link in the show notes to Wyndham Vacasa bookings, but good way to get value out of city points. Wyndham is also a transfer partner of Capital One, so a good way to get value out of Capital One points.

And then for leading hotels, those points are worth about eight cents each. The transfer ratio is five city points to one leaders club point. So you end up getting about 1.6 cents. A lot of the perks you get from hotel programs booked through travel agencies like fine hotels and resorts or the all the hacks hotel upgrade program, you get upgrade breakfast, early, late check-in and check-out.

When it comes to transferring to partners, city does have a lot of transfer bonuses. I looked in 2023 and 2024, there were 13 and 15 each. So far we've had three in 2025. For the most part, it looks like every year there's been one Cathay Pacific, Air France, Virgin Atlantic, Accor and Wyndham transfer bonus, at least over the last two years.

Last year, there was also a Turkish leading hotels and Etihad transfer bonus. And for the most part, all the transfer bonuses end up being 20 to 35%. Anytime they've done a core, it's been a 50% bonus. And anytime they've done Cathay Pacific, it's 10 to 15%. But all the rest of them are pretty much between 20 and 35%.

So there are opportunities to take your points even further by waiting for windows in which you have transfer bonuses. I think as of recording right now, there is a transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic for a 30% bonus until May 17th. So I think you're going to get the most value out of thank you points transferring to airlines, as is true for all points and miles.

But notably, unlike a lot of other programs, there's a lot of opportunity for hotels here, especially choice to book preferred preferred to book preferred and leading hotels for luxury hotels that you don't get in any other program, at least at those ratios. Finally, one last great thing about Citi is that you can transfer points to anyone else.

However, when you transfer points, there is a limit, you can only transfer up to 100,000 points, someone can only receive 100,000 points, and those points expire after 90 days. But if you wanted to combine points and book one vacation out of one person's account, or one person has earned status, you could add 100,000 points from your account and they can transfer them to their transfer partners.

And that give you a little bit easier ability to do that. There are mixed reports. Some people are saying that you can transfer from your Citi account to the loyalty program of an authorized user. Some are saying you can't, I'm not sure. And also you can transfer your points, as I mentioned earlier, between cards.

So even though the Citi double cash card can't transfer to airlines and hotels, the Strata Premier can and you can transfer your points from your double cash to your Strata Premier. The only weird edge case here is that all your points, even if you've moved them, are still somehow on the back end tied to the card they were earned on.

And so let's say you had 100,000 points you earned on your Citi double cash card and 10,000 you earned on your Strata Premier card and you moved them all over. Now you've got 110,000 in your Strata Premier. If you close your double cash card, 60 days later, those points are expired.

And so even though they might be living in in the Strata Premier system right now, they will still expire after 60 days. So general advice is until you have zero points, if you've ever merged or moved points around, I would say just downgrade whatever card you want to cancel to a free card, because it's not not a not a real problem if you have a card and you just leave it open.

So that's Citi thank you points. Let me talk about at a high level, what I think is the summary of Citi. What is exciting about Citi? The most exciting few things are, look, if you care about American status or lounge access, Citi is really the only place to go.

And then if you want to diversify beyond Chase and Amex, there's a lot of interesting reasons to do that. Like I mentioned, Eva Air, one to one ratio is the only place you can get it. Turkish has some good sweet spots, not as many as they used to. Turkish is not on Chase and Amex.

And then Cathay, Qantas and Etihad are all not on Chase as well. So you get some new options on the hotels front, you get choice at one to two leading hotels in the world and preferred, which are also not Chase and Amex. So a lot of good options, at least choice at that transfer ratio is not, but a lot of good hotel options.

On the earning side, I was really surprised to see what I'm going to share. So I used the credit card optimizer tool I built, and there's a link to it on the website. And I went in and I used Bureau of Labor Statistics standard earning data for a household earning, I think, over $100,000.

And just said, what if people had the best two card combo from all major issuers? What would their average points earning ratio be? So worst in the pack is actually Chase. So that's primarily because the best everything else card is the Freedom Unlimited, which only earns one and a half points.

And so with Chase, the best combo would be the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Freedom Unlimited, you'd get 3x travel dining, one and a half x everything else for a total annual fees of $550. But the average earning there is 1.91x points. So you're not even getting an average of 2x points, which obviously, if you're doing City getting your second card as the double cash, the floor is 2x points.

So not great. If you went to the Sapphire Preferred instead of the Sapphire Reserve, you'd be getting 1.79x on everything. Obviously, your own spending affects this. If you want to go use the tool I built, you can put in your own spending and see. But Chase is really low in the pack.

Worst worst here when it comes to a two card combo. Next is Amex. I guess the best Amex two card combo, if you're not talking business cards, would be the Amex Gold and the Amex Green. You'd get travel, transit, dining, and groceries. And you'd get a $400 of annual fees.

And your earning average rate would be 1.96. Now, if you replace the Amex Green with the Blue Business Plus, which earns 2x points on up to $50,000 a year with no annual fee, you'd have a much higher earning rate of 2.37. But again, that's using the BLS data. If I use my own spending, which that everything else category goes over $50,000 a year, it really starts to weigh that average down because then you're earning 1x on everything else.

Amex is really a bad platform for the everything else category because they don't have a card that earns 1.5x unlimited or 2x unlimited on the everything category. So then you come to the three real contenders for a two card combo in one ecosystem. You've got Capital One with the Venture Card and the Saver Card.

So $95 of annual fees, 2.26 earning on everything. With the Saver, you get 3x dining, groceries, streaming, and entertainment. And you've got very similar transfer partners actually to Citi. So Citi has a better, you get JetBlue, you get EVA 1 to 1, you get Choice at 1 to 2 instead of 1 to 1 and some other hotel stuff.

And then Capital One has Tap Portugal, which is a pretty matte airline to redeem points on. So I'd say comparing these two, Citi's at the top of the pack, 2.33x with the Strata Premier and the Double Cash. Just to recap, Strata Premier is getting 3x on dining, gas, grocery, hotels, and flights on a $95 annual fee.

So 2.33x on everything. Now, the other card that's really close behind, and when I say really close, the Citi average for a two card combo was 2.33x and the Wells Fargo average was 2.32x. So 0.01% less in terms of points. And that is the Wells Fargo autograph card paired with the Wells Fargo active cash card.

Now, it has $0 annual fee. So maybe you could say that takes the cake. And the autograph card is doing 3x on dining, travel, transit, gas, streaming, and cell phones. So pretty compelling alternative to the Citi Premier card. What you miss there is you don't get the grocery spend.

But the thing I don't love about Wells Fargo is they have a much, much more limited set of transfer partners. They've only got five airlines that you can transfer to. And on the hotel front, they only have one hotel program. So they do have choice at one to two, which is nice, but that's it.

So you're just really, really limited with Wells Fargo. And I think everyone thought when Wells Fargo launched all these transfer partners, that there would be a ton of options that were getting added and added month and month after month. But unfortunately, it turns out they were not added month and month after month.

And they really haven't added a ton of transfer partners. So I think Wells Fargo is an interesting earning rate. The cards are compelling, but I think the program just isn't where the Citi program is. So at the end of the day, if you want a two card combo and you want it from one issuer, I think the Citi Premier and the double cash from an earning standpoint is the best option out there.

I went in and replaced the BLS spending with my spending data and it was still the best card out there compared to all the others. So really, really impressive combo that I do not have both of yet. I don't have the double cash. Where I think that Citi is less exciting is that it's just really hard to get these points.

There are not tons of cards all the time with massive signup bonuses and upgrade bonuses. And you can't get a bunch of different business cards and accrue tons of points. So for me right now, I want to get the double cash card and add it to the list so I can start building up enough Citi points that those EVA air and hotel bookings are possible.

But it is hard, right? I'm three months into this with a 75,000 point signup bonus and I don't think I've cracked 100,000 points yet. So it's really hard to get Citi points. They also don't have a refer a friend program. They also don't have points that you get from a shopping portal.

So that's hard and they have lower limits. Even if I maxed my Citi Strata Premier card out every single month of the year, I would barely earn 100,000 points because the limit is so low. Hopefully, I can get that up over time. But just throwing it out there that that's one of the reasons to not be excited about Citi.

The only thing I didn't mention, which I'll just jump back to quickly, is like Chase and Amex and Bank of America, Citi does have merchant offers. I thought I'd do a quick run through of them. I have them pulled up on my screen. One cool thing is I'm looking right now.

Similarly, they work with card pointers. So whenever I open the Citi page, card pointers, auto ads, all of these offers to my cards. If you haven't used card pointers, I've saved hundreds of dollars by having these offers auto added. Definitely worth checking them out. It's also a great way to just pull up on your phone and say, Hey, do I have any card offers?

At Lyft, JetBlue, whatever retailer you're going to, or even a restaurant, you might be surprised. So love that. I think you can get 30% off at allthehacks.com slash card pointers, 50% off for members, all the Hacks members. And it's really interesting. So if I look at the offers, they're not as compelling as what you get with Chase and Amex, but there were some that I thought are worth mentioning.

You know, they had an offer for Lyft, $5 off $25 spend, $25 off $250 of JetBlue, $50 off $150 at Trust & Will. An interesting one was 4% back at Giant, the grocery store. We don't have them in the Bay Area, but you could do it up to 10 times for up to $30.

But some of them are really, really tiny offers. So Walmart, 4% back up to $3. I saw one for 8% back on my FICO. I was kind of disappointed because I paid for that and I didn't use an offer. I don't think I had gotten the card yet, but still.

And then last, there was one for Dropbox, 20% off $100 plus purchase at Dropbox, which I will likely use because I think my Dropbox plan renews. They did have a bunch of local restaurants, like five to 10, five or six restaurants that we actually go to that are local where we live in our Bay Area suburb in town.

Most of them were all offering 6% back. Obviously, they're probably partnered with some other platform to do this because I just don't think that Citi is making deals with all these small restaurants. But at the end of the day, there's 315 offers on my account. And almost all of them except the ones I mentioned are pretty low 1% to 10% back with caps.

None of the massive crazy offers that I've seen with Citi and Amex lately. So good that they have them. Good to get them all added. Good to know where they are, but probably not going to add a huge amount of earning. So that's my end. I'm really excited to be in the Citi ecosystem.

I'm excited to do this episode because I think there's a lot of opportunity here. Even if you want to just go cash back, the combo of Citi Strata Premier and Double Cash, using those for cash back is a pretty compelling option as well. So if you like this, if you don't like this, would love feedback.

Podcast at allthehacks.com is the email. Expect another one of these on each program. I'm probably going to focus on the ones first that are less well-known. Things like Bank of America and Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank that we haven't dove into as much, though most of the exciting U.S.

Bank cards are no longer available or have been knocked down a bit. So maybe we'll skip that. And then I'm going to do everything I can to try to put the Chase and Amex one out on the main feed. But I think realistically, it's going to be tough. So if you want those, definitely check out the member site, allthehacks.com slash join.

We'll do the Chase and Amex ones there. And that's it for this week. So I will see you next week.