Review of the Citi ThankYou Preferred Card

The Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card is one of the staples in Citi’s suite of personal credit cards. This card combines a respectable sign-up bonus and a reasonably good balance transfer offer, though there are other cards out there that excel on one or the other of these fronts.

As an everyday-usage cards, the Citi Thankyou Preferred is average, offering only 1 ThankYou point per dollar of spend, and no bonus spend categories. So we can’t recommend this credit card from a rewards-earning pov.

As a sign-up bonus play, the 15,000 point bonus is good, though not rock-star level, although there is no annual fee with this card, which is nice. You can check out some strong sign-up bonus offers here.

While I’ve seen better promotional APRs (15-month, 18-month and even 24-month on occasion), 12 months is OK and may make sense for you if you can’t get access to a better offer. Check out our post on the best available balance transfers if you want to go that route.

In short, whether you are in the market for rewards, sign-up bonuses, or attractive balance transfer/ purchase APR options, I would strongly recommend you first use the GetDebit Ranking Engine to help you quickly locate the credit cards that match up to your spend behavior and credit management needs.

Details of the Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card
Sign-up Bonus 15,000 ThankYou Points after spending $1,000 within 3 months of opening your account.
Spend Rewards 1 ThankYou point for every dollar of spend
Annual Fee None
Foreign Transaction Fee 3% of purchase amount after converting to USD
Balance Transfer Fee $5 or 3% of the transfer amount, whichever is greater

Your Best Strategy For Redeeming Thank You Points Earned with the Citi Preferred Credit Card

The folks at GetDebit value Citi ThankYou points anywhere from abou $0.006 to around $0.01, depending on what you redeem them for.

While you can read an in-depth article on the value of Citi ThankYou points here, the long and short of it is that you should redeem your points for either airline travel, or (if you have one of these loans) student loan rebates or mortgage rebates. For any of these redemption methods, your Citi TY points will redeem at $0.01 per point.

Citi ThankYou Preferred Anniversary Bonus: Should You Get Excited?

At the end of each Citi ThankYou Card account membership year (your membership year begins the date you become a Citi ThankYou cardmember and resets each year on that date) you will also earn an Anniversary Bonus calculated as a percentage of ThankYou Points earned from purchases during that membership year as follows:

  • Membership Year 0-1: 1% bonus on ThankYou Points earned in that same year
  • Membership Year 1-2: 2% bonus per above
  • Membership Year 2+: 3% bonus per above

The reality is that even in its peak (3% bonus from year 2 and beyond), this just means that you’re really earning 1.03 ThankYou points per dollar, instead of just 1 TY point. This type of boost is as small as that cute little rainbow micro-unicorn we dug up somewhere on the web.

GetDebit’s Concluding Thoughts on the Citi ThankYou Preferred Credit Card

As a rewards card, it’s part of “the masses” of 1% credit cards on the market. The sign-up bonus isn’t bad, but with some searching you can find more enticing offers. The promotional APR offer may make sense if you can’t secure a longer-term promo offer. So there you have it! Merry Christmas from GetDebits-ville.

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