I Switched To The Citi Strata Premier And Saved Over $1,000. Here’s How. – Forbes Advisor – Technologist

While 3 ThankYou Points per dollar spent on gas, groceries and more served as a nice bulwark against inflation, there’s nothing like a big pile of cash to help with everyday expenses.

At first glance, the Citi Strata Premier card’s welcome bonus didn’t strike me as that special. After all, most midtier rewards cards that charge a similar annual fee have some sort of welcome bonus worth around $600 or more, including the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card.

Moreover, the landing page for the Citi Strata Premier℠ Card states that a 75,000-point welcome bonus is “redeemable for $750 in gift cards or travel rewards on thankyou.com.” This actually had me more concerned than excited, since it seemed to imply that I couldn’t redeem my welcome bonus for straight cash—only $750 worth of Applebee’s and Sephora gift cards.

Thankfully (pun unavoidable), Citi ThankYou Points really are worth a penny a pop in cash back. The only exception is for points generated using the Citi Rewards+® Card, which are worth 0.5 cents each.

But the ThankYou Points I generate using my Strata Premier card are worth a full penny, and here’s the proof in my ThankYou.com dashboard:

On top of that, Citi has 19 transfer partners including Wyndham Rewards and Turkish Air, where you can stretch your point values even further. You’ll also see frequent promos, such as 25% bonus Flying Blue Miles at the time of this writing.

But I had no upcoming travel to book and a six-month auto insurance premium to pay, so I decided to take the $750 cash and run.

For context, a welcome bonus worth $750 in statement credit (not just travel redemption) is pretty outstanding for a midtier rewards card. Here are some competing examples to illustrate:

So in addition to my $145 earnings from the 3 points per dollar rewards categories, the Citi Strata Premier card also earned me another $750 from its deceptively generous welcome bonus. That brought my total to $895, and all it took was a single hotel booking to cross the four-figure mark.

All information about American Express® Green Card has been collected independently by Forbes Advisor