Best uses for Citi ThankYou points

Citibank offers several cards that earn ThankYou Rewards points. By using the right combination of cards its possible to earn 2 to 5 points per dollar on all spend. Once you’ve collected lots of points, though, you’re going to want to get great value from them. That’s where this post comes in…

Overview

If you like the idea of earning 2x to 5x transferable points for all of your spend while also keeping annual fees down to only $95 per year altogether, then Citi has you covered. The key is to assemble a collection of no-annual-fee Citi cards and to use the right one for the right spend:

• Citi Premier ($95/year): Earn 3 points per dollar (3x) for grocery, dining, gas stations, flights, hotels, and travel agencies.
• Citi Custom Cash (no annual fee): Earn 5 points per dollar (5x) on purchases in your top eligible spend category each billing cycle, up to the first $500 spent, 1x thereafter. Eligible categories: Restaurants, Gas Stations, Grocery Stores, Select Travel, Select Transit, Select Streaming Services, Drugstores, Home Improvement Stores, Fitness Clubs and Live Entertainment. A great approach is to get multiple Custom Cash cards by signing up for one and then later product changing other Citi cards to this one. That way, you can exceed the $500 per billing cycle 5x cap. You could, for example, assign one card to be your 5x grocery card and another to be your 5x drugstore card and spend up to $500 per month on each.
• Citi Double Cash (no annual fee): Earn 2 points per dollar for all spend. Use this one everywhere that you don’t earn more with the Premier or Custom Cash cards.
• Citi Rewards+ (no annual fee): Combine this account with your other Citi ThankYou accounts in order to earn a 10% rebate on the first 100K points redeemed each year.

If you have a lot of spend, you can rack up points quickly by using the above cards wisely. But that leaves the question of how best to use those points. This post is intended to give you specific examples of great ways to use your points. This post is not intended to be a complete guide to all good uses for Citi points but rather an overview of a number of good uses so that you’ll know where to begin looking.

Basic Info About Citi ThankYou Rewards Points

Here are some things you should know:

• Move points from one account to another (even to friends’ accounts): You can freely move up to 100,000 points per year to any other Citi ThankYou Rewards account. The catch is that once points are moved, they expire within 90 days. Make sure you have immediate plans for those points before moving them.
• You can pool points, but Citi still tracks which card earned those points: Citi lets you pool together your ThankYou accounts so that points earned from all of your cards show up in the same place and can be used together. When you do this, you get the benefit of the best available redemption options. For example, Citi’s no-annual-fee cards offer very few transfer options to hotels & airlines, but by pooling points with your Citi Premier or Prestige or Access More card, you can transfer your points to any supported transfer partner. Unfortunately, even after pooling points, if you cancel any of your cards, you will lose the points that were earned with that card and not yet spent.
• You can keep points alive by downgrading to a no-annual-fee card: If you don’t want to keep your ThankYou rewards card due to annual fees, consider downgrading to a no-annual-fee ThankYou card instead. Downgrade options include the Double Cash, Custom Cash, or Rewards+. Doing this will keep your points alive. If you later want to transfer points to an airline program, you can get a new Premier card, upgrade your no-annual-fee card to a Premier card, or move points to a friend who has a Premier card (or a Prestige or AT&T Access More card).

How NOT to use your points

One reason that Citi can afford to throw so many points at cardholders is that they make it easy to redeem points for poor value. Don’t do this. Your goal should be to get more than 1 cent per point value. Worst case, make sure to get exactly 1 cent per point value. While there are some exceptions, the following options for redeeming points are bad deals. Stay away from the following:

• Don’t Shop With Points
  Citi makes it easy to pay with points when checking out at Amazon.com, PayPal, Best Buy, Shell, BP, Amoco and other retailers.  In most cases you’ll get less than 1 cent per point value. Don’t do it.
• Don’t Cover Your Card Charges
  Citi lets you redeem points at very poor value to offset charges made to your credit card. Don’t do it.
• Don’t Redeem for Gift Cards
  You can redeem points for gift cards at a penny per point, but you probably shouldn’t since you’ll get the same value for your points by simply redeeming for cash. One exception: Citi sometimes has point-discounts for select gift cards.
• Don’t Book Travel
  When using points to book travel through Citi’s ThankYou portal, you’ll only get 1 cent per point value. Worse, the portal sometimes shows rates that are higher than those found elsewhere for the same travel bookings. And when things go wrong with your travel, you may have to deal with Citi’s travel center to fix it rather than going right to the travel provider. That rarely works out well. If you want to book paid travel, you are almost always better off redeeming points for cash and then using a points-earning credit card to book travel directly with the travel provider.

Do pool your ThankYou accounts with Rewards+

If you have a Rewards+ card, make sure to combine that card’s ThankYou Rewards account with your other Citi ThankYou cards. That way, when you redeem points you’ll get a 10% rebate each year on the first 100,000 points redeemed. This works even if you redeem points for cash or by transferring to airline partners. Either way, if you redeem 100,000 points, you’ll get back 10,000. This makes your points about 11% more valuable!

Unfortunately, if you have a second Rewards+ card, you won’t get two separate 10% rebates for your pooled points.

Do (sometimes) cash out points

Citi will let you redeem points for cash back at a value of 1 cent per point. That’s hardly an amazing value, but other than transferring to airline and hotel partners, it’s better than most other redemptions. With the Rewards+ card in your arsenal, you can get 10% of your points back so that points will be worth more than a penny each (1.11 cents each) when redeeming for cash.

Do! Transfer points to airline and hotel programs

This is the way to go!

Citi offers a number of airline and hotel programs to which you can transfer your points, usually 1 to 1. For a complete list, see: Citi Transfer Partners. By transferring points wisely, it’s often possible to get far more than 1 cent per point value.

Please keep in mind these tips:

• Always have at least one transferable account: With a few exceptions, ThankYou Rewards are transferable only from the Citi Premier card (and the no-longer-available Citi Prestige and AT&T Access More cards). If you or a friend has such an account, you can move points to that account from almost any other account before transferring to an airline or hotel program, but you are limited to moving 100,000 points per year this way. Another option is to pool points among your own accounts. For example, if you have the Citi Rewards+ card and the Citi Premier card, you can pool points between them in order to make all of the points transferable. Note that the Custom Cash Card is different. With this card, you cannot move points to other accounts, but you can pool points with your own Premier card in order to make points transferable.
• Wait to transfer points: Don’t transfer points until high value awards are available and you are ready to book them. Transfers are one-way only. Citi ThankYou points are valuable for their flexibility. Once you transfer, you are locked into a single program that may or may not have awards available.
• Slow Transfers: Most transfers are instant but some can take a day or more to complete. This can be a big problem since award space could disappear before the points are available to make an award booking. Our Citi Transfer Partners post shows the expected transfer time for each program.
• Check Award Value Before Transferring: Just because an award exists doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to book it. For example, you might find that a flight is available for 25,000 miles, but the cash rate for the same flight is only $200. If you were to transfer your Citi points to an airline for this purpose, you’d get only 0.8 cents per point value. In that case, you’d be much better off redeeming your points for cash and then buying airfare with your credit card.
• Partners Often Offer Better Value: When booking flights, you’ll often find better value booking an award using miles from a partner airline rather than the one you want to fly. For example, Air France KLM Flying Blue will often charge fewer miles to fly Delta Airlines than Delta would charge for its own flights.
• Watch for Transfer Bonuses: Citi sometimes offers bonuses when transferring to select programs. See our post “Current Point Transfer Bonuses” to see both current and expired bonuses (the latter can give you an idea of what to expect in the future).

Stay in Preferred Hotels & Resorts

Citi offers an amazing 1 to 2 transfer ratio to Choice Privileges for those with a Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card). Many luxury hotels in the Preferred Hotels & Resorts collection can be booked with Choice Privileges points. Point prices range from 20,000 to 55,000 points per night. Given the 1 to 2 transfer ratio, this translates to only 10,000 to 27,500 Citi ThankYou points per night for some incredible hotels. For details, see these posts:

• How to book Preferred Hotels online with Choice points
• Great value Preferred Hotels bookable with Choice points

Stay in a Vacasa Vacation Rental

One of the best ways to book vacation rental properties with points is by using Wyndham points to book Vacasa Vacation Rentals. Vacasa charges either 15,000 or 30,000 Wyndham points per night per bedroom. Full details about this opportunity can be found here: How to book Vacasa Vacation Rentals with Wyndham points.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Wyndham. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Stay in an Ascend Hotel Collection Boutique Hotel or Resort

Citi offers an amazing 1 to 2 transfer ratio to Choice Privileges for those with a Premier card (or the no-longer-available Prestige or AT&T Access More cards). Choice’s Ascend Hotel Collection offers high-end boutique hotels and resorts with award prices usually ranging from 16,000 to 30,000 points per night (but I have seen as low as 12,000 and as high as 40,000). With most award prices between 16,000 and 30,000 points, the cost with Citi points is only 8,000 to 15,000 points per night. Unfortunately, Choice won’t let you book award stays until you are within 100 days of your trip.

See these posts for more info:

• Choice’s Ascend Collection Gems (Great Value with Citi Points!)
• Nordic Choice Sweet-Spots: Great Value w/ Choice Points

Also note that Bluegreen vacation properties are bookable with Choice points under the Ascend Hotel Collection brand. It can be difficult to find availability, but the opportunities are amazing. Jen, from Deals We Like, suggests the following properties:

Bluegreen Vacations South Mountain. It’s in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and a mile or two from Loon Mountain ski resort. Loon is a great mountain for families! Mini golf across the street and in the winter there’s the ice castles nearby. Lots of hikes and outdoor activities for the summer too. The hotel is right on the main street so nothing special there but they have up to 3-bedroom suites. The rooms are nice and all the rooms (at least the suites) have a full kitchen. There’s an indoor pool with a fun hot tub. And in the summer an outdoor pool.

Another suggestion is The Soundings and The Breakers Resort. Both are right on the ocean in Cape Cod. They are right next to one another and also offer multi-room suites. Outdoor pools and in a great area of the cape. Only problem is that availability can be sparse during the summer months and since you can only book 100 days out, getting award space can be problematic.

Last year I also stayed at The Valley Inn. While the hotel itself is nothing special. It’s an older hotel with dark hallways/rooms, it’s right in Waterville Valley village (a few minutes away from Waterville Valley ski resort). I was able to spend just 10,000 points a night and get a two bedroom with full kitchen (one room even had two twin beds which was perfect for my kids). The room also had a sauna in it (which I didn’t attempt to use).

Stay in a Leading Hotel of the World (LHW)

For those with a Premier card, or the no-longer-available Prestige or AT&T Access More cards), Citi points transfer 1,000 to 200 to LHW’s (Leading Hotels of the World) Leaders Club. That transfer ratio doesn’t sound great, but Leaders Club points are worth approximately 8 cents each towards hotel stays and so this transfer ratio gives you 1.6 cents per point value with your Citi points. That’s pretty good!

One cool thing about this opportunity is that just by booking through Leaders Club, you are eligible for on-property perks:

• Upgrade priority upon arrival
• Daily continental breakfast for two
• Early check-in and late check-out considerations

My wife and I tried out booking a stay with Leaders Club and the results were great! See: Sampling Leading Hotels of the World (LHW) thanks to Citi ThankYou Rewards.

Fly AA, Alaska, and other oneworld airlines for as few as 6,000 Citi points one-way

Via Qatar Avios, it’s possible to book oneworld flights for as few as 6,000 miles one-way economy or 12,500 miles one-way business class (or regional first class).

Qatar has a distance based award chart with extremely low award prices for nonstop flights up to 650 miles long. In fact, prices are really good for flights up to 2,000 miles. Plus, Qatar has reasonable change/cancellation fees ($25 USD per person) for changes made more than 24 hours from departure.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Qatar Avios. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly First Class to Japan

The cheapest way to fly ANA first class between North America and Japan (or between Europe and Japan) is with Virgin Atlantic points.

If you can find first class award space (that’s the tricky part!), these prices are amazing. See also: Best uses for Virgin Atlantic points.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Virgin Atlantic. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly Business Class to Asia on EVA

EVA offers very good award space to their own members, and Citi is the only major transferable points program that transfers 1 to 1 to EVA. To do so, you must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly First Class to Europe

Avianca LifeMiles offers awards on Star Alliance carriers with no fuel surcharges. If you’re willing to book relatively last-minute, one of the most luxurious ways to fly to/from Europe is on Lufthansa First Class.

In addition to offering an excellent first-class experience in the air (think caviar, top shelf champagne, complementary slippers and pajamas, and comfortable bedding), Lufthansa offers terrific ground services, especially in Germany. First class passengers transiting through Frankfurt or Munich get escorted to and from their exclusive first-class lounges, passport control is often handled within the lounge itself, fantastic food and drinks are provided for free, etc. Lufthansa’s ground services, in my opinion, are what make flying Lufthansa first class so desirable.

Use the Seats.Aero Lufthansa First Class Finder tool to easily find Lufthansa first class awards.

Unfortunately, lately Lufthansa hasn’t been releasing first class award space to partner airlines until 3 or 4 days prior to departure. So if you’re interested in taking advantage of this sweet-spot, it’s best to book something else that’s cancelable and then grab this last minute.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Avianca LifeMiles. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly Business Class to Europe

Fly Delta One business class for 50K Citi points one-way

Delta will often charge hundreds of thousands of miles for a one-way business class flight to or from Europe. Their partner Virgin Atlantic, though, charges only 50,000 miles one-way for non-stop business class Delta One flights. This price doesn’t include flights to/from the U.K., but all other direct Delta flights will work if you can find award availability. That’s the tough part. Delta has been extremely stingy with releasing partner award space on Delta One in the last several years.

See also: How to book Delta flights with Virgin Atlantic miles

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Virgin Atlantic. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly Air France / KLM business class for 50K Citi points one-way

Air France and KLM share a rewards currency: Flying Blue. With Flying Blue miles, it’s often possible to find business class awards to/from Europe for only 50,000 miles one-way. Search for available space at AirFrance.us or KLM.com. You’ll need to create a free Flying Blue frequent flyer account to search. Make sure to select “Book with Miles” and then leave the dates of travel blank in order to bring up a monthly award availability calendar.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Air France / KLM Flying Blue. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly Star Alliance for 63K (or fewer) Citi points one-way

Avianca LifeMiles offers a great way to book business class flights to/from Europe on their Star Alliance partners (United, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Swiss, TAP Air Portugal, etc.) with no fuel surcharges. Avianca’s “regular” rate is 63K miles each way in business class, but you can bring that price down by adding on economy segments thanks to the way LifeMiles handles mixed-cabin pricing. If you have a long economy class leg in your itinerary, you may be able to get to Europe with the transoceanic leg in business class for under 50K miles.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Avianca LifeMiles. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly JetBlue Mint for 78K Citi points one-way

This isn’t the cheapest option in this round-up but award space is usually plentiful. Thanks to Qatar Airways’ partnership with JetBlue, it’s possible to book JetBlue business class (Mint class) to/from Europe for 78,000 miles one-way.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Qatar Avios. You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Fly to Hawaii for 10K one-way

It’s possible to fly United Airlines to Hawaii from anywhere else in the United States for only 10K miles one-way economy or 15K business class!

Unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to actually book these awards. First, you have to find United saver award space. Next, the really hard part kicks in: you have to find a Turkish agent capable and willing to book the award for you. This post might help: How to book United flights with Turkish Miles & Smiles. See also: Turkish Miles & Smiles Complete Guide.

If you don’t want to deal with Turkish Miles & Smiles (I don’t blame you!), another good option is to transfer points to Singapore Airlines. Singapore charges 17,500 miles each way in economy or 34,500 in business for United Airlines flights to or from Hawaii.

Citi ThankYou Rewards points transfer 1 to 1 to Turkish Miles & Smiles (and to Singapore Airlines). You must have a Citi Premier card (or a no-longer-available Citi Prestige or Access More card).

Conclusion

There are many exciting ways to use Citi points. This post was intended to give you a taste of some of them. This post is not intended to show you how to accomplish these things though. For example, finding award space so that you can fly business or first class can be a very difficult trick on its own. Fortunately, there are great tools that can help. Please see: Which award search tool is best?

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