There are lots of aspects to maximizing your credit card rewards, including taking advantage of the best welcome bonuses, spending categories, and card perks. Admittedly some of us take maximizing credit cards to the extreme, by having dozens of cards.
Continue reading: My Citi Credit Card Strategy: Dining & Lounge Access
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I'm surprised you don't place some value on the Citi Prestige extended 2 year warranty. The added coverage for just our family's Apple products has more than justified the annual fee since Citi will cover battery replacement and phone/computer/iPads almost always need new ones at around 3-5 years.
Ben: These are the three cards I have as well, but you've left out two more things I find genuinely useful. First, 4x AA miles on AA ticket purchases with the Exec card is great since nobody transfers to AA anymore (and 5x with the Amex Plat did zippo for me); and second, fourth-night free on independent hotels booked through Citi's portal is great since even after their absurd mark-up it's still a discount with 10x Citi points on the spend besides. Every situation is different, I suppose, and for me with a cancelled Amex Plat, the 5x on airfare spend is useful.
Citi has provided almost $400 billion in fossil fuel financing since the signing of the Paris Agreement. It’s the #2 bank for fossil fuel financing in the world. If you hold a Citi card, your money is funding a rapidly accelerating climate crisis.
With three or four wisely chosen cards, a person will likely capture about 95 percent of the points theoretically possible given the person's spending pattern. The incremental benefit of adding another card to the mix only adds about 1.5 percent. The next card even less. The juice ain't worth the squeeze.
Go right ahead, and show your entitled attitude and science illiteracy in the process.
Go right ahead, and show your entitled attitude and science illiteracy in the process.
LOL, science illiteracy.
Your fart is also rapidly accelerating climate crisis.
You should never go near Starbucks ever again.
And stop paying tax too. Your tax money is funding all crazy stuff including Citibank.
Ouch!?
I still find the Prestige well worth it. Based on your own points valuations, for a card that essentially cost $245 if you spend at least ~$14,412 per year on dining you'll come out ahead over the next best card (you say you spend a lot on dining, although I don't know if you spend that much), not even considering that you'd be paying more in annual fees anyway if you downgrade to the strata premier and pick up the AmEx Gold . Beyond that, the priority pass restaurants are hugely valuable to me, I probably get hundreds of dollars of value from that per year. Finally, although people who have been in this game a long time have lamented the weakening of the 4th night free benefit, I still find it very useful for inexpensive stays where giving up points with a hotel program isn't a huge concern for me. It may not be the jaw-dropping, save 1000's of dollars perk it once was, but I find it still helps me chip away at the annual fee significantly.
Matthew, I get where you are coming from but with your attitude about it all then you should not even be on this blog because it is all about using your points for flights and hotel stays and not even including how it talks about the great cards Citi provides which you are against. Yes, the environment is important, but not the way you are going about it and hopefully you are not a part of the group Extinct Rebellion. Do you own a car? Do you take flights? If so, do you carbon offset? Do you carpool? You should not own a car and take the bus or take the subway instead.
I often wonder why a credit card issuer worked so hard and spend so lavishly to acquire new card members and then incentivize them heavily (by offering multiple x's points for certain category) to use the card frequently so that their credit card(s) occupy the "top of the wallet" status only for the same card issuer to make it TOUGH to use their cards overseas. This is my experience with Citi. I love the Citi Premier card because it offers 3x points on stuff I spend the most (travel, food, groceries) but whenever I bring the card overseas ALWAYS failed to work for charges >USD 100. I have set up travel notifications both thru the app and via live agent yet the card NEVER FAILS to decline whenever I attempt to charge something bigger than approx USD 100 in a single transaction. This is so maddening that I finally gave up using the Citi Premier entirely.
I believe most citi cards offer this, not just the prestige. That said, the prestige is the greatest credit card ever created and getting rid of it would be a huge mistake IMO.
The “you’re a hypocrite” argument is a distraction from the hard work that needs to be done to ensure a healthy climate for everyone.
I'm actually interested in the Citi ShopYourWay card. The spend categories and SUB aren't super exciting, but the targeted cash back offers are stellar. Figure I'll try my luck and worst case downgrade to another Custom Cash