Frequent Miler on the Air - Citi Strata Elite: the good, bad, and ugly | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep317 | 8-1-25

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

In this podcast episode, we'll talk about how US Bank is bonvoying grandfathers and US Bank's plans to add transfer partners. We'll also talk about who the Citi Strata Elite card is good for.Giant Mailbag(01:40) - This listener has tips about their strategy when a flight becomes available for a lesser mileage price...Card News(05:50) - Citi now offers transfers to American Airlines from Strata Elite, Prestige & Strata Premier(07:23) - Now transfer from most Citi cards to most ThankYou partners (even from Custom Cash)(09:41) - Citi Strata card now available(12:16) - U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve: Major changes expected in December.Bonvoyed(18:21) - US Bank bonvoys grandfathers (Smartly card sends updates to those previously grandfathered into old 4% term)Awards, Points, and More(22:38) - Inn at Bay Harbor leaving Marriott(23:42) - JetBlue & TAP Air Portugal split up as of 9/30(24:50) - Greg earned Alaska EQMs for his flight to London(26:53) - Nick's JetBlue 25 for 25 update postRead more about Nick's JetBlue 25 for 25 journey so far here.(27:50) - Another JetBlue 25 for 25 updateMain Event: Citi Strata Elite: Good, Bad, and Ugly(30:00) - Branch Offer: 100K after $4K of spend in 3 monthsRead more about the Citi Strata Elite offer here.Or, read our Citi Strata Elite Q&A post here.(31:45) - Application rules, basics, and earning rate...(39:32) - Credits and benefits(47:31) - Mini experiment: Citi Travel Hotels vs. Hotels.com(48:45) - What happens to Citi Prestige customers?(49:58) - Do Citi Travel hotel bookings earn hotel points and elite credit?(53:33) - Quick Review: What do we think about the card's earning rate and perks?(57:47) - What do we think about the card's coupons?(1:01:37) - Does this card deserve a place in an all-ThankYou wallet?(1:09:41) - Does this card deserve a place in a mixed-earning wallet? (For example, would this be your 3X card?)Question of the Week(1:12:54) - Advice regarding authorized users. What do you do about authorized user cards showing up to Chase as contributing to your 5/24 status?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, we'll find out about U.S. Bank, bonvoying grandfathers. And we'll discuss whether U.S. Bank is going to get transfer partners and whether they'll be of interest. And we'll tell you who city's strata elite card is best for. Frequent Liler on the air starts now. the city strata elite card the good bad and ugly city went for years without offering a single ultra-premium five hundred dollar or moreish card uh that earns thank you rewards points and that's their

like main rewards currency thank you rewards um but we've known for a while now that they had registered a trademark for the city strata elite card so we've been waiting and expecting them to come out with this ultra premium card. And it is finally out. And to say that it is not what we expected, I think would be a bit of an understatement. We had heard some rumors that it was going to offer bonus categories for all kinds of things so that you could put away all those other cards and use this one. That's not the case. But we're going to talk about all the details in today's main event, including who is it good for, if anyone? Very good. And it might be good for you, even if you didn't realize it yet, so you'll want to listen and check that out.

If you want to skip ahead to listen to that right now, remember, you can always expand the show description, and you'll have all the timestamps in the show notes, so you can jump ahead to something or come back to it later on to revisit it. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up, like it, leave us to a review, leave us some stars. We always appreciate that feedback. Let's drag out this week's giant mail bag. All right, and today's giant mail comes from Jonathan.

Jonathan was replying to a previous giant mailbag where we read about someone who had saved miles on her United award flights by noticing that the award price had gone down, she canceled the flight she had booked, booked the new flights at the, or rebooked the same flights at the new price and saved miles. That way, during that show, we had mentioned that we weren't sure if United could do this, but that we know some other airlines. you can simply go in, manage your reservation, click, change flight, pick the same flight, and save miles that way. Like we mentioned that you could do that with Delta and Southwest. Jonathan writes in to disabuse us of that notion. So Jonathan says, regarding changing United flights, in order to get a cheaper rate for the same flight, you must make a new booking.

If you select change flight and do the search and select the same flight, then it will always show a $0.0.0 point price change and say something like currently booked flight, even if the current price to book the flight is lower. He says, the thing I do differently than the listener who originally emailed is when my flight or another acceptable flight becomes available for fewer points, I book the new flight first, then cancel the unwanted reservation. Important to cancel the reservation you don't want because United will cancel one of them for you without warning if you have two overlapping reservations and they may cancel the one you want to keep you have enough you have to have enough miles to be temporarily double booked but I feel safe for doing it this way

so I'm going to pause there he has a little bit more to say but first I'll say that has actually happened to me that I had booked this is a while ago now but for one of the team challenges I had booked a sort of a placeholder flight on using United Miles, like to fly from one place to another. I ended up changing my plans entirely. Hadn't hadn't canceled that placeholder flight yet. And I booked a A&A around the world ticket and one of the legs was on United for the same day that I had a reservation already through United. And United canceled the A&A one. So it was a whole rigmaral to go through, cancel my United flight that I didn't even want, and get the other one reinstated, but I was able to do it. So, yes, Jonathan's 100% right. You do not want to keep

two reservations with United that are in your name and at the same time. Or any airline for that matter, and I say that as someone getting increasingly nervous, as Greg continues talking, because I have two overlapping JetBlue reservations right now, one that I need to cancel through Etihad and one directly through JetBlue that's really important. I need that one to definitely not get canceled. So after we get done with this, I have to call Etihad if I only get that other one canceled because you're making me nervous here. Oh, no. All right. Well, I think you could be pretty confident that JetBlue's tech is not as good as United's when it comes to that. So I feel confident for your flight will still be there. And Jonathan goes on to say, a note with American

airlines is you can't make any changes of any kind to a reservation booked with miles. And he means online. When you click on the option to do so, you get a message telling you that award bookings are not changeable and to just cancel the booking and rebook the flight you want. So I added that note because you can definitely call and make changes to reservations that are booked with miles. And I've had no problem doing that with American Airlines. Great tip. Very good. All right. So all together, great information there about how that works with United, not automatic like it is with other airlines or many airlines. Like we said, Delta, Southwest, many airlines, let you do it automatically and they give you

the refund rather than making you have to go through the process of canceling and rebooking. But so it goes it. All right. Let's move on to this week's card news because we got a lot of card news coming up. So first off in this week's card news, we have city now offering transfers to American Airlines from the Strata Elite, the city prestige card and the Strata Premier card. didn't see this coming. No, I mean, we did, but we didn't think it would be anywhere near this soon, right? So there was an announcement, I don't know, late last year maybe it was. It was several

months ago, at the very least, about City becoming the sole issuer of American Airlines credit cards starting in 2026. And it also made a reference that could have been interpreted as, oh, and we're going to get the ability to transfer to American Airlines as well. But it wasn't that clear. So we thought it was probably coming in 2026. And some people questioned, would it really be one-to-one transfers, you know, if and when it does come? And so the great news is not only do we have it way earlier than we expected, but yes, it's one-to-one. And from any of those three cards, the, again, the strata elite, the city prestige, and the strata premier.

You can now transfer right to American Airlines. And most people report that it's instant. Yeah, that's awesome. That's great. Yeah, it was certainly not explicit that it was going to transfer from thank you points. But we had inferred that and guessed at a 2026 launch for that. Very surprised it happened in 2025. Also, coming out of city this week, other city news, you can also now transfer from most city

thank you cards to most partners, even the custom cash. The custom cash in the past, you weren't able to. move points in the same way. So now, though, if you just have a custom cash, you just have a city strata, not even a strata premier, you can transfer to most of their airline and hotel partners. Now, I say most, I've said that a few times already, you cannot transfer to American airline unless you have one of the three cards we mentioned before, Strata Premier, Strata Elite, or Prestage. But the other city, thank you cards, can transfer to most partners. The catch is that the transfer ratio isn't great. It's 1,000 thank you points to 700 airline miles.

So that's unideal. I would still probably, in most cases, recommend you consider upgrading to a strata premiere, at least temporarily, until you've used whatever you need to use. And then you could always downgrade again at some point in the future. So I probably wouldn't transfer 1,000 to 700. But it's good to know that it's possible. Yeah, I found this really interesting that, you know, before this happened, they were most of the fee-free cards that earn thank you points.

If they had any transfer partners, they just had a few and at poor ratios. And now, you know, as Nick said, they've moved it to all of the fee-free cards can now, all the fee-free cards that are in thank you points can now transfer to airline and hotel partners. And the ratio seems to be 70% of, you get 70% of what you would get if you had a card that has an annual fee. So what I mean by that is normally when transferring to airline miles, you get like a thousand city points gives you a thousand airline miles now with a fee-free card unless you also have a premium card with a free free card you'll get you'll use a thousand city points and get 700 airline miles and where the ratios are not like one-to-one like that whatever the ending

ratio is multiply that by point seven to figure out what it would be for the fee-free card that's a great point because there are some that aren't one to one already. And so 0.7 is your multiple. Yeah. Yeah. You know, multiple factor there. All right. So that's the fee free cards. But speaking of the fee free cards, the city strata card is now available for applications. This replaced the, what was it? The rewards plus. Yeah. Isn't quite the same card, but it now has a welcome bonus and you can apply for it. Yeah. And, you know, as much as a lot of us were sad about losing the rewards plus because it gave us an annual 10% rebate on points, point redemptions, which was great, but it otherwise didn't have much going for it. Now, the strata card, though,

is actually kind of interesting on its own because it has a bunch of 3x categories. So like the strata premiere, this one will give you 3x for grocery and gas. stations and EV charging. Unlike the strata premier, it will also let you select a category to get 3x from this list, fitness clubs, select streaming services, live entertainment, cosmetic stores, barbershops, hair salons, that's all one, or pet supply stores. And so if you spend a decent amount in any of those, you know, it could be a pretty decent card to just say, I'm just going to use this card for that purpose even if you have the like let's say you have the strata premier where you get 3x for a lot of different categories you know maybe you spend a lot of fitness clubs

just use this card select fitness clubs as your 3x category and just just use it for that and otherwise never have it leave the house at all is how i would think about that card yeah yeah but i mean on the flip side for somebody getting started out like a student or something you know somebody that's just getting into credit cards this is actually also not a bad card at all. I mean, it's a low spending requirement for the welcome bonus. Not an amazing welcome bonus, but not a terrible welcome bonus. And the 3x categories are pretty useful for almost everyone, right? I mean, most people spend on grocery and gas. So those are two really common categories. And then we mix in one other one there. And I like this card for somebody getting started

out. Yeah. And I forgot to mention it also gives two X for dining, which isn't really spectacular. But yeah, someone's starting out, I mean, I would think about getting this and a double cash card, and you've got a pretty nice combination right there. The double cash card, of course, gives you 2X everywhere. And so that's why that would be a good sort of base card, and then use this one wherever you can get 3X. And that's a really nice, totally fee-free combination. Yeah, absolutely. All right, in other card news this week, though, less sunny news.

We have the U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve card set to come out with major changes in December. Now, these are expected changes that are based on, like, a mailer or something, the pictures of which have circulated, though, I haven't actually received any such letter. I don't know if you have, but I haven't either. Not yet. I've actually seen a hard copy of this yet, which I don't know, it's probably true, but I mentioned that because I haven't actually physically touched this letter yet. But anyway, according to the letter that has been circulating around the interwebs, there are going to be big changes. First up, the 3X mobile wallet. That's really why this card, the U.S. Bank Altru Reserve, has long been so popular because it offers 3X mobile wallet,

which means if you use Apple Pay or Google Pay or Samsung Pay to tap your phone and pay or online, I think if you have Apple Pay, there's lots of times where you have the opportunity to use Apple Pay at checkout. And so this card earns 3X on all of those things. And unfortunately, coming in December, they're going to cap that at only up to $5,000 per month. and spend. Now, for most people, it's probably a cap that isn't probably terribly restrictive if you're using it to tap and pay in person. If you were using it for bigger things, though, then that obviously hurts. So that's one change. Second big change is the $325 annual travel credit will no longer be an automatic travel and dining credit. Instead, it'll be a $325 credit for booking through U.S.

Bank's Travel Center. So you'll have to book through U.S. Bank, so this will work. work very similar to the venture access credit, then you'll have to use it through them. And perhaps the biggest, saddest piece of news is that the redemption value is going down. So points have been worth one and a half cents per point, whether you use them to book travel through U.S. Bank travel or via real-time mobile rewards, which is really where it's at for a lot of people. And unfortunately, starting December 15th, it's expected that that's going to drop to just one cent per point. So whereas it was four and a half percent back, it's going to turn a lot.

to 3% back on those mobile wallet purchases. Ouch. Yeah. So a lot of bad news there for Altitude Reserve card holders. But one, a really interesting, potentially good thing is that it says that they will allow transfers of points to other airline and hotel loyalty programs, which could be amazing if they have good transfer partners and a good transfer ratio. But I could also imagine it being like, transfer your points, you know, two points to one choice point or something like that.

That it won't be exciting at all. So, I mean, what do you think? What's your money on here? Are they going to have like a tiny little Wells Fargo set of partners? Are they going to launch like an actual competitor, transferable points currency? Do you think it's really likely that we'll see awful transfer ratios? What do you expect out of this? I don't have high hopes for what U.S. Bank does.

I mean, I should say I have high hopes, but I have low expectations. Let's put it that way. So I will actually be surprised if it's as good as what Wells Fargo came out with, which is setting a really low bar. Wow. Ouch. Ouch. U.S. Bank gets no faith from Greg the Frequent Myler. I don't know. You know, they've never had a transferable points program to my knowledge. So the one reason I think I'm going to disagree with your low expectations is because, we haven't, well, we've seen some other programs launch recently. I mean, Mesa rewards the Mesa homeowners card and Rove Miles. And those programs have all been able to pull off one-to-one

transfers to a number of different airline programs. They can do it. U.S. Bank can do it, right? I would think that they could negotiate the right deals. So I don't know. I think that they'll be one-to-one. I hope it better be U.S. Bank if you're listening. What I think could be interesting is maybe they will bring back the ability to transfer to Korean Air SkyPass, which I say bring back the ability to because Korean used to be a Chase Ultimate Rewards Transfer Partner many years ago. That ended, I think, 2017, 2018, a long, long time ago. And so it'd be the first time Korean was a transfer partner in a long time. I predict that because U.S. Bank issues the Korean Air SkyPass visa.

So they obviously have a relationship there. I could see maybe Sanesta making a comeback here. partnering up with somebody? I don't know. Is U.S. Bank creative enough to come up with partners we actually care about? I'm not sure. But if they have decent transfer partners, I think that will be probably a consolation prize that I will live with, even if I won't love the new changes. Would you keep the new card based on, we didn't mention the card's also going to earn more points per dollar when you book through U.S. Bank travel, just like everybody else. But would you keep this card or no?

Yeah, I, we'll have to see. have to see what the transfer partners are because, you know, based on the current situation without the transfer partners, no. I mean, it does have the four, no, eight priority pass visits, which is nice because you could use those at priority pass restaurants, but, you know, that's the only reason I would even feel sad if I didn't have this card anymore once they make the changes that are coming up. Or if, you know, suddenly there's a way to earn Korean air miles or some other currency that would be valuable, that could be really cool. So we'll see.

We'll see. Yeah, we'll see. Well, I'm hopeful that U.S. Bank will do something because I finally have my player too used to just tapping the phone to pay everywhere for the three points per dollar. And like that took a while. There was a lot of resistance to getting used to that. But now we're finally used to that.

And I'm like, oh, great. And now they're going to change it. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Let's talk about being Bonvoid this week because U.S. Bank said it's not just the altitude reserve that's going to get you this week. This week, U.S. Bank Bonvoy's grandfathers.

What's that about, Greg? All right. So you remember the Smartly card came out and it offered up to 4% cash back everywhere if you had enough investments and savings with U.S. Bank, then you would earn 4%. Flat 4%. back on all spend. And it wasn't long before they announced that they were changing it to have a lot of restrictions on what types of purchases could earn 4%. They were capping the 4% at $10,000 per billing cycle. They were also, they also changed what qualified for the 4% in investments. It used to be anything. It could be investments, savings, checking.

They changed it to checking only for new applicants. But at the time, they said anyone who applied before X date, which I don't remember what it was, would be grandfathered in to the old terms. So that was great. I hurried and applied myself, even though I didn't have an immediate need for it. I was just like, this is a collectible. I've got to get this. We're never going to see this again.

And the grandfathering was not long for the world. Those of us who were grandfathered got a letter recently saying that most of the changes, not all. Most of the changes that happen to everybody else are happening now to us, the grandfathers. I'm not actually a grandfather yet, but you know what I mean. It was a short reign as a grandfather for you there. Yeah. So they're capping our 4% at $10,000 per billing cycle. And they are excluding certain categories from the 4%, including tax payments, a bunch of other stuff.

But tax payments was like my big thing. I was like, this would be a great way to earn a bunch of cash back paying my taxes. But they're excluded, which means I would just get a flat 2%, which I could get many other ways. So that's just not interesting at all. they did keep for me at least the ability to qualify for 4% with the whole range of investments like they didn't take that away but the word was that they did take it away from some people and it's unclear why they took it away from some and not others weird weird odd well yeah so the smartly card once again is going to get a little dumber so it's unfortunate for the people who hurried and got it as a collectible that they killed it so quick, although also not hard to see that one coming because 4% everywhere was a little overly generous. And I think this is really the heart of why Greg has no faith in U.S. Bank doing a great job with a transfer partner program for the Altitude Reserve either, because if nobody in the

room was like, hold on, folks, 4% everywhere that's not going to work out, then it does make one question, the amount of planning that's going into the decision making. It makes you wonder who was in the room. I know who wasn't, anybody with any sort of sense, but the accountants certainly weren't. The marketing people were like, oh, yeah, everybody will sign up for this card. Nothing against marketing people, but yes, they were, I mean, they were right. It was certainly an exciting card for a while. The marketing people know what they're talking about there, but yeah, if they had their druthers, it would have been a 10% everywhere card. All right. This is, this is not a likely thing to happen, but it's a possible thing.

to save this card from the dustbins of time. And that is if U.S. Bank brings out transfer partners to this card as well, and the transfers are any good, then there would be this opportunity to earn up to $4.X on all spend, up to $10,000 spend per billing cycle, which would be pretty darn exciting. That's true. That's true. Good point. We'll see.

All right. Let's talk about Ward's points and more. got a whole bunch of different things and awards points and more this week also first up some sad news from you i've talked on the show probably a number of times about how i often go to the inn at bay harbor in northern michigan uh using my marriott free night certificates well the inn is leaving um the marriott chain this fall so uh if you want to go you better hurry i don't remember the exact date but sometime in october i think it was where they'll no longer be marriott they it sounds like they're just going totally independent so it's not like you'll be able to use

hilton or any other points for them it doesn't look like so bye-bye in at bay harbor it's time for me to stop going to bay harbor and maybe go back to travers city a bit there you go there you go travers city is on my list of places for the jet blue uh 25 25 thing but yeah not for a while yet will be there later anyway really nice really nice city uh I've heard. I've heard. I've heard good things. Well, speaking of JetBlue, JetBlue also wanted to disappoint us this week. You may remember not that long ago, I think earlier this year or late last year, it launched a partnership with TAP Air Portugal. And so you could redeem JetBlue True Blue Points for TAP Air Portugal flights. Well, that was short-lived because that loyalty partnership

is ending September 30th. So if you want to use your JetBlue True Blue Points to fly on TAP Portugal. You don't have much longer left to do it. Unfortunately, that didn't even make it the entire year. So that's kind of, I don't know, I'm bummed about that. That's too bad to hear that that ended so quickly, particularly in the beginning the value was great, but then they changed it and the value for points wasn't so good anymore anyway. So I'm kind of surprised it's ending so fast. Yeah, I bet it has, you know, something to do with other things going on. Like I believe Air France is cozying up to Tap Air. There might be. be something happening there that prevents them from continuing a partnership with JetBlue. I'm just speculating here with I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. All right. Next up, you have some news about your Alaska or well, your American Airlines flight to London that you booked via Alaska, right?

Yeah. I believe I already talked about my actual flight and running to the gate and all that to make it. One thing I wanted to add was I booked that American Airlines flight to London with Alaska miles. but it was flying American Airlines. And as you know, Alaska miles have this great feature where you earn elite qualifying miles towards elite status, even on awards that are booked to fly on partners like that. So when things went wrong at the airport,

when my first flight was massively delayed, I realized that I wanted to be treated like I have high-level status with American Airlines, that I wanted to be treated like a high-level elite with American in case they can help me better. So I called American, asked them to add my number to the reservation. And we heard from someone on a previous show, we mentioned that someone still earned Alaska elite qualifying miles, even when they put their American Airlines number on an award like this. But I was a little nervous despite having heard that data point that I wouldn't earn my elite qualifying miles.

But so I'm just reporting, I did the elite qualifying miles to get earned. They came in pretty quickly after the flight. So that's a really nice thing that you, if you have a reason to want to put your American Airlines number on, you can do that through American Airlines. Alaska won't let you do it, but you do it through American Airlines and and also earn Alaska elite qualifying miles. Great combo. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can't definitively count on that absolutely work.

You can't call somebody and complain if and when it doesn't. Greg's just telling you it might. It might, right. It worked for me this time. And who knows, maybe doing it last minute, help make it more likely. You know, I really just don't know what the parameters are. But that's really interesting. Very good.

All right, JetBlue 25 for 25. I mentioned a few minutes ago. Picked up a couple more airports this past weekend. So my family is now at six airports with plans over, well, next week after this records, the week after this publishes, the week after this podcast publishes, we will pick up a whole bunch more will be pretty close to 15, we'll be at 15 before mid-August. So we picked up a couple in Southwest Florida last weekend. It was a pretty good weekend. I wrote up a summary for the blog and I'll try to keep a summary going on weekends where I kind of share what we're doing and

where we're going and how we're booking all the other parts and pieces of the trip, hotels and whatnot. So I published that. So if you're interested, curious about, what we're doing and how we're saving some money using various different benefits. We used Instacart this past weekend, for instance, and used some in-kind credit. All that stuff will be in those update posts that I put on the blog over the weekends. All right, but that's not the only JetBlue 25 for 25 update. It's not. JetBlue reached out to us with some news about the first passenger to complete the promo

and earn 350,000 JetBlue miles and 25 years of elite status. He was a California-based customer, and he flew all 25, two all 25 destinations in 12 days, 12-day span. They mentioned that he once slept through an alarm, but they don't say how he actually got to his flight just by doing that, or did he have to take a different flight? I don't know. But anyway, congratulations to him for being the first to complete it. I imagine we'll be hearing more from others as they complete it as well. Yeah, it's exciting. I ran into someone this past weekend from Reno that was doing it,

that was also doing it again in a really short amount of time, number of days. I can't remember exactly how many, but also a very short period of time. So that's pretty impressive to pack all those flights into that amount of time. You've got to have some dedication and hopefully also some on-time flights, I guess. But very cool. And the mosaic status, by the way, I got to say so far, so good.

we have gotten the extra legroom seats. And when I say we've gotten them, we've gotten an entire row for my wife and two sons and then a seat in the row across or behind them for me. So seats together, not just four seats, but four seats together. Every one of our flights except one so far. So that's been a really good run. Now, whether that keeps up or not, I don't know, knock on wood. Though if JetBlue keeps canceling the Duncan flight every week, that ought to help us. So thanks for your help there.

Fewer elites because they keep canceling that. If you were looking for the Dunkin flight for this coming week, there is none yet again. They'll be the third week in a row. So hopefully August 11th, they'll come out with a set. Or I should say, they'll come out with it the Tuesday before that. Hopefully August 11th will be another opportunity if you want to pick up Mosaic 1 status ahead of some of your flying. And let us know what you're up to and how you're completing the 25 for 25 challenge. Love to hear from you.

All right. I think. That finally brings us to this week's main event. Main event time. City strata elite. The good, the bad, and the ugly. All right, unless you've been hiding under a rock, you probably are aware that the strata elite is out.

As we record this, there's a hundred thousand point in branch offer, and it's possible to get that by calling branches even in other states and have them email you. You might need to already be. be a city customer. That's a little unclear about that. I know when I did it, I was already a customer, so it was fine. And we did hear from someone that the in-branch offer might have been scheduled to end on the 31st of July, so it's possible that that may not be available anymore. Yeah, but yeah, right. So by the time you list it was, maybe it won't be, but other people

reported different later dates. And it sounds like the initial end date. We're recording this on July 31st, by the way. So if I'm wrong about this, sorry, but I believe that the initial end date was like something that they just, they sent to bankers like, here's the marketing materials that's good till July 31st and that they get a new update each week or each month or whatever about that stuff. So I don't think that was real. Okay.

I hope. Very good. Anyway, it's only if you don't have an offer. from a branch, either emailed to you or by going in, then the offer at the time of this recording is only 80,000 points. So it's much better to get the branch offer. Anyway, let's move on to some details about the card. I'm going to talk about the basics of the card and its earning rate, and then I'll turn it over and Nick to walk through the credits, perks, and coupons. Okay, so first up, the application rules are pretty liberal as far as being able to qualify for the

welcome offer. It just says that it's not available to you if you've received a bonus for a Citra Elite card in the past 48 months, which you haven't because it just came out. Or if you converted another city credit card account on which you earned an account bonus in the past 48 months to a city strata elite card. So make sure you don't convert any other card to the strata elite before you apply for it. I mean, that should be obvious. And you should be, if you get approved, you should, you'll qualify. The annual fee for this new card, $595 and each authorized user is $75. The if you have a city gold status with Citibank, you get $145 rebate each year. So that brings the effective annual fee down to 450. To get city gold status, you have to have $200,000 in

deposits, retirement and investment accounts. So, for example, City has a self-invest account that has no fees if you can move like, you know, stocks and stuff to be covered there in order to qualify. City private client is like that, but requires a million dollars in investments with City and that one gives you the same $145 each year rebate but the first year it gives you the full annual fee rebate so the card's free first year for for you so I don't think that's enough incentive to go out and and put them find a million dollars to put in a city but if you already have a million dollars if you already found it if you already found it right you're logged into your city account you found that you've got it then but it's good if you're there or really close maybe

It's worth putting in a few thousand dollars or more to cross that threshold. Also, I should mention with both of these, I think that city will temporarily, like, bump you up to one of these statuses if they think you're on your way there. And so it can't hurt to, like, you know, ask them, hey, can you bump me up to a city private client? And hopefully, like eventually they'll probably knock you down if you don't have the million. but hopefully you'll get the first year rebate before that happens. So it could be worth trying that out. And you could do that with City Gold as well, by the way.

Okay, earning rate. If you're okay booking through City's travel portal, 12x on hotels, car rentals, and attractions, and 6x on flights on buck through city travel. So that's the earning rate through the portal. Outside of the portal, the earning rate for dining is 3x everywhere and 6x on every Friday and Saturday between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Eastern time. Yes, Eastern time. Okay. So, okay, so let's say you're in Hawaii where they don't practice daylight savings time. Or Eastern time for that matter. Or Eastern time for that matter.

So sometimes you're going to be six hours earlier than New York, and sometimes you're going to be five hours. So if you're trying to plan ahead to say, I mean, if you're at a restaurant and you want to know, just Google, what time is it in New York? And you see right then. But if you're trying to plan ahead, like, you know, I'm doing a big brunch or something. I want to know whether it'll be 6 p.m. in New York yet, well, you got to do some serious think in there. So anyway, this is, I just find it hilarious that city hates their call center reps this much. You have to field call after call from somebody who's like, no, but I was there. It was during those hours, 7 p.m. Oh my gosh. Right. And my goodness, for the first several weeks, it's going to be 7 p.m. local

wherever they are, right? Because they're going to assume it's 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. wherever they are, not that it's only based on Eastern time. They're going to assume it's local time, probably, right? I can't tell you how many people are going to call in, assuming that it's just six to sex because... Oh, this is so... You know that they were in a meeting in New York City when they dream this up. And New York City residents, I'm sorry, but you know it's true. You can't imagine anyone being anywhere else. or caring about anyone in here. Sorry, I'm being a little extreme there, but, but the,

but yeah, I don't know. What else could possibly have motivated that, right? I mean, it's just the most absurd thing I've ever heard. So, yeah, I mean, in some places, you know, it's going to be like, it's, it's going to be, you know, 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. or something weird like that. And, you know, it's just not going to make sense. This is supposed to be a card that people,

use and travel all around the world with. All right. So that's that. Dining is is three X, most of the time, six X some of the time. If you're lucky. If you're lucky. The, the, uh, let's, now I'm going to go over all of the, uh, other category bonuses that don't require going through a portal. Let me grab a, let me grab a pen so I can write these down. Yeah, yeah, be prepared. I'm going to go over like the, the grocery store bonus, the, the, uh, flights, hotels, all that stuff. Okay, I'm done. I'm done. Literally. What was that? They literally do not have any category bonuses for direct purchases other than restaurants. Other than dining.

I should say dining because it includes like food delivery. But okay, that's it. And now the one interesting part is another interesting part is that instead of 1x for all other purchases, it gives you 1.5x for all other purchases. So only 25% worse than the fee-free double cash card then. Yeah. yeah okay that makes no sense thanks for that city uh what there's no that this is the crazy part of this card right that there's no regular bonus categories it's just if you book travel through city so that i guess they're hoping that you're going to book travel through city so that they can

you know afford to give you the other things and you know that was my speculation on this is that transfers to american airlines are probably very expensive and so my speculation here is that Obviously, when you make purchases through city travel, cities earning some sort of commission, especially hotels. The commission on hotels can be pretty decent, it seems, you know, Expedia, price line, whatnot have been around for a while and making a fair amount of money. So it would seem that there's a fair amount of money to be made there. So it makes sense to me that they're incentivizing you to book through the portal.

And I have to think that the reason that basically the only bonus categories on this are for booking through the portal is because they need to make more money to subsidize those transfers to American Airlines. in order to be able to afford those. They had to say, well, we got to get people booking through city travel so we can afford to pay for those transfers to American Airlines. So that's it. And then somebody was like, no, but we got to do dining. And they were like, no, we don't have to do dining just city travel.

And eventually somebody from New York was like, come on, give us 6x at least like 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., right? That's what happened. That's what happened. Okay. All right. Well, all right. But for $595, we're not getting just the, ability to earn 6x now and then at restaurants. We're also getting a bunch of coupons. Do you want to

walk us through the coupons at a high level? We are. So the first coupon is a $300 annual hotel benefit via city travel. And when I say annual, this is a calendar year benefit. So once per calendar year, you can get up to $300 off of a hotel stay of two nights or more that you book through city travel. Kind of a mouthful there. So you've got to be booking at least two nights. You've got to be booking through city travel. And then you get $300 off. This works. as a discount, not as a rebate. So it comes off the top of the price. You have to prepay this day. So it has to be a prepaid stay. You have to be using either your city strata elite or your thank you points to pay for it or some combination thereof. So, you know, it's not terrible, not great. If you use partial, you can use the

rest later. Sorry, cough's getting me too. So you can use partial now. Use partial later. That's fine. If you cancel, you get the credit back. You can use it later on. So I don't know, not bad. You know, if you're booking through city travel, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, this all hinges, how good it is, all hinges on how good is the pricing through the portal. I've had bad luck with that in the past quite a while ago.

We'll talk more about that in a little bit. There you go. There's also a $200 annual splurge credit so you can treat yourself and buy something nice. So I guess. So you get $200 in statement credits on your choice of up to two of the the following brands. So first dibs, American Airlines, Best Buy, Future Personal Training, and Live Nation. So $200 back on one of those or two of those things. You have to activate the slurge credit merchants prior to purchase. So you have to actually choose which merchant before

you purchase, I guess. And you can only activate up to two of them at any particular time. But you can change your selection, I guess. So I guess you could use partial and then change the two later on at some point. So, I mean, okay, not bad. I think many people could probably spend $200 between at least American Airlines, Best Buy, or Live Nation. Live Nation, of course, includes Ticketmaster. So, you know, if you're buying tickets to an event or you're buying stuff at Best Buy, they sell obviously a range of electronics, but also appliances and other home stuff through Best Buy. And then, of course, obviously American Airlines is American Airlines. So that seems like a relatively easy calendar year benefit to use. And so just between those two.

in the first year because if you open the card now in August of 2025, you could use it in 2025 and use it again in 2026. So you could get a total of $600 in the hotel credit and a total of $400 in those splurge credits. That's $1,000 in credits between those two over the first year. I wouldn't value that at $1,000. But not bad when you consider that the annual fee of $600 for getting that plus the welcome bonus points. Not too shabby. And that's not the only things. There's one more here. There's a $200 annual. private chauffeur credit with Black Lane. And so you could use that. That's two separate $100 credits once January through June and once July through December. So it's $100 first half of the year,

$100 second half of the year. Black Lane chauffeur service, private car service you could book you could book it for a wide range of different things in different cities. I looked this up and for the most part, it seemed like once you took the $100 off of the trips that I checked, it was roughly around the cost of an Uber. So for about the cost of an Uber and a lot of of my sample scenarios, you could have this like, you know, chauffered car thing that's sort of like an Uber. So, you know, it's not, if you want that, great. And if not, I'm not really sure that that's going to move the needle on getting the card for you, but you have that option to use. So those are your coupon benefits. Then, of course, you also obviously have other various benefits, ability to transfer

of partners, travel protections. Nice to see travel protections on this card. So that's good. And priority pass membership, but unfortunately, it's priority pass select without restaurants. So you don't get restaurant access. Authorized users do get their own memberships. But remember, authorized user cards aren't free. They cost, what, was it, $75? 75. So it's not bad, you know, price-wise, especially if you consider that like the Sapphire Reserve has moved to, what is it, 195, I think, for the authorized users. Something ridiculous, yeah. Yeah. So that's not terrible. Like you said, and it gives you two free guests with the priority pass membership, whether for the primary card holder or the authorized users,

then you have to pay $35 a guest after that. And that's worth knowing. We mentioned Priority Pass a lot. We mentioned guesting people in a lot. And then a family member was at a lounge a few months back and guested in a bunch of people. And they were like, oh, I was able to bring in five guests or whatever. I don't know how many it was. And I was like, oh, yeah, but you probably got paid their, got charged 35 bucks ahead for

everybody over, whatever, the two gas limit or whatever it was, because they just didn't realize that that's the way it was. So, yeah. So worth knowing that. And then finally, for American Airlines, Admiral Club passes each year. So you can go to the Admirals Club four times a year. I think you have to be flying American Airlines in order to use this benefit, right? And then you... I think so. And one nice thing is the pass is valid for a 24-hour period. So you might be able to go to multiple lounges if you have, especially if you have a layover on your way somewhere. You, if you want to bring in, adult guess you can use you know you could use more than one of your passes at once to bring an

adult guess and if you have children under age 18 you one pass you can go in with up to three children with the one pass so that's that's pretty good so nice little uh extra perk there yeah yeah and then it's got global entry tsa pre-check credit and it gives you access to cities new fine hotels and resorts competitor, the reserve. That's why Chase couldn't take the reserve. A while back, I gave Chase a hard time over how it's Chase the edit is the name of their hotel looking for. I was like, couldn't she make it the reserve or something like for the Safare Reservist? But this is why. City had already trademarked that. All right. That's probably true. Well done. Well done. Well done there. So yeah, they have this little, you know,

same fine hotels and resorts type thing and the same type. of stuff basically that you'd expect with any of those programs. Yeah, they also have something called hotel collection. So if you think about fine hotels and resorts, like Amex has both that and the hotel collection. And so city has the reserve and hotel collection. I'm not really sure whether it goes with their hotel collection or not. Doesn't seem so. I don't think so. Now, their hotel collection has advantage of which it does include daily breakfast for two, which Amex's hotel collection does not. Find hotels and resorts does, of course.

But in city's case, both of these do. I don't get the impression that they're very far along with filling these out yet. I haven't had a chance to really check it out. But I don't expect we're going to find very many qualifying hotels at the get-go with this, because this is just now rolling out. All right. So, I mean, those are the main benefits of the card and the main features of the card and the extensive bonus.

categories of the card what do we think uh yeah well first let me say uh i i feel like this card is only justifiable if you know that big annual fee and everything if you'd really do well getting that three hundred and twenty five dollar rebate for booking stuff through the portal booking hotels uh three hundred dollar rebate three twenty five the altitude reserve sorry three hundred right. There's too many of these portal. Yeah, every ultra-degree card's got one now. Yeah, so I did

the tiniest little experiment where I just compared city's hotel prices to hotels.com and I just looked at three hotels that I had either been to recently or had booked recently. And the interesting thing is that city

was often either the same price or cheaper most of the time, especially when looking at non-refundable rates, but even in one case for a refundable rate was cheaper than Hotels.com. So that's a big change from what I'd seen like a few years ago. I did a comparison of City's Portal to some other things, and it was awful. Like the prices were just terrible. So something good, either something good has happened there or I got, or City got really lucky in which hotels I happened to pick. They know what you like. They know what you're going to be looking at.

Yeah, well, that's good. That's really good news because even anecdotally, if you found that a few times means that the rest of us might find that a few times too. So it's worth taking a look. I mean, if that's the case, if prices were equal, then that would certainly make that a little bit better. We have some questions, though, that this is brought up in terms of what this means for other cardholders. For instance, city prestige cardholders, many were assuming that they would probably get forced converted to the strata elite, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least. not yet. Yeah, a city PR person reached out to us to say, and I quote, City prestige card members can continue to use their card as they normally would. There are no changes to the city prestige card and its benefits. So great news. As a existing prestige card holder, I'm very happy to hear that. But I'd heard a rumor that they were going to force convert us next year in 2026. So I asked the PR person about that. What about next year? the answer was very discouraging because they said we don't have anything to share at this time when you hear that from an official person that's bad news very bad news don't have anything to

share about that means you don't want to hear what I what I know about that so yeah yep so it sounds like probably next year prestige card holders should expect they're they're going to have a force conversion to the strata elite probably I mean we don't have that straight from the horse's mouth, but the next closest thing we have. Right. Right, right. All right. That's not the only question we had for for them. The other was do city travel hotel bookings earn hotel points and elite credit. So with Chase's new system where you book through the portal, all of the hotels that are marked as the edit are supposed to qualify for hotel points and elite credit if you book through chase. And there's also a bunch of other hotels that are not part of the edit that where it

says on the screen, this will qualify for points earnings. With Amex, if you book fine hotels and resorts, that's supposed to be true. With Capital One, with their elite hotel collection, I forget what that's called. It's supposed to be true that you can earn points. And Bill is changing over their whole portal to where, for most hotel bookings, you should be able to earn points directly from the hotel, which is, by the way, historically not true for third-party bookings like these. So the question is, what about city? Because we don't want to book chain hotels through your platform if we're not going to

earn points or elite credits. And the PR person was encouraging in that they said they would find out and they came back with the following quote, you can connect other hotel or airline loyalty accounts to city travel and earn points simultaneously through those accounts. So what do you think, Nick? Does that mean yes? You can absolutely 100% earn points through. You're going to learn how to speak marketing lingo here because I can read in between the lines

there and see they did not say you would, yeah, the answer was not yes. You're going to earn points. It was, well, you can connect your accounts. But it did say and earn points simultaneously. Sure. You can earn city thank you points. Yeah. So I think it's it's a hundred percent clear that this blanket answer, if you interpret it as you'll always earn hotel points when clicking through a city is, it has to be incorrect. Because, you know, let's talk about built for a second. Like they're bending over backwards, trying to make this possible with as many hotels as they can. But even they, like, there are some hotels that they just can't make that happen. I have no. indication that city has tried to do anything along these lines.

I think if you do earn any points directly from the hotel, that's probably just good luck. I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't like fine print saying, or I wouldn't be surprised if, I'm sorry, if they're a reserve collection or whatever, they might try to make that where you can earn points, but there will be most likely fine print that says as long as you make the reservation between 8 p.m. and 12 and midnight New York time. no i won't even be new york town it would be like something random some other yeah sometimes on that doesn't exist yeah yeah no i wouldn't count on that you know generally speaking i would count on not earning hotel points when you're booking through any kind of third party like this and

unless somebody comes along to very explicitly tell us otherwise i would assume that you will not with city either so unless you see a whole bunch of data points people saying hey yes actually you can earn points through the hotel program even when you book through city. Unless and until that happens, I would not expect that. All right. We've been, we've been kind of giving our input all long, but I have a structured discussion I want to go through now about this card. We're now in the review phase of this. Like, what do we think? So let's start with the card's earning rate. Portal earning, 6x flights, 12x hotels, cars attractions, dining, 3x or 6x, depending on the weather in time and the base earning rate rate of 1.5. What do you think, Nick? Well, I mean, I'll start

with the base earning rate. It's not as good as having a double cash card. You'd want a double cash card if you're going to have this card. You want to also have a double cash card. That said, it's better than the base earning rate on most ultra premium cards. Most ultra premium cards are great for their benefits and not good for everyday spend. So this is at least better than the one X you earn on most ultra premium cards for base level spend. But that still doesn't make it exciting. So personally, I would rather they kept that half a point and added some other bonus category that was actually worthwhile. But that's my opinion. Dining the 3x 6x. I mean 3x dining, okay, that's like table stakes at this point. You can't come out with a travel card that doesn't

have 3x dining at this point. Everybody's got it. So, so okay, good. Yeah, you needed that. There's no way you were going to do this without a 3x dining category. The 6x nuts. It's crazy. It'll be great when you can get it, but so annoying when you don't. And they say supposedly that it's going to be based on the timestamp of when the initial authorization is put through and not the final charge. I don't know if I believe that. And some restaurants might batch process that stuff at some point in the future or different. Like, who knows, don't count on getting six X and by all means, spare the city's poor. Thank you.

Phone representatives and don't call and make a big stick. well, maybe you should. I mean, you should because then I guess City will get the message that this is really annoying and dumb. But that doesn't excite me. We'll split it that way. It doesn't excite me. The 12X on hotels and cars and attractions via the portal, that's a little bit better than what most are offering. So, okay, not bad. If you're going to book your hotels and cars through City, I mean, that's not a bad rebate. I could deal with that. And six-ex flights, too. Same thing. Not bad. If you don't mind booking through the card portal, those are pretty good returns. I can't complain there.

So overall, I'm surprised there isn't more, but all right. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I'm happy, I guess, if you want to say that way, with the portal earnings, I think the ability to earn 12X, that's like, that's like if you think about like, you might

otherwise go through like Rackatin or some other portal to a, you know, a booking site and earn some multiplier. This is like getting, you know, having I'm going to call it. So the 12x hotels, cars, and attractions, it's like having 9x from the portal at all times. And I'm saying that because you may have a card in your collection that earns 3X for like a broad level, broad categories of travel.

And so this is earning 9x more than that in total. And that's good. I mean, getting a guaranteed 9x for travel purchases through a portal. That's very good. That's about the only thing good, I have to say about this. I mean, well, no, let me say one other good thing. Having a base earning rate, as Nick said, higher than one for an ultra-premium card, that's a really good direction to go in. I just don't think that the dining stuff makes up for the lack of other categories.

And I wish they had just done a VentureX copy and just said, this card earns 2x everywhere, and you earn even more through the portal. Like, just do that. I'd be much more interested in this card if they had done that, but they didn't. So, okay, so that's the cards earning rate. What about the perks? What do you think about the perks? Are the perks worth it? Come on.

What do you think? Four American Airlines passes, priority pass without restaurants, some middling travel protections. No, pass. Yeah, I'm out, Doug. I already have a priority pass through just about every other card in my wallet. And I can't think of the last time I pined for. an American Airlines lounge.

So the 4A passes just if it's not something I would buy. So it doesn't really matter much to me. And the travel protections don't compete with what I can get elsewhere. So like I said, could have done better on the perks there, city. If you were going to do perks, you should have done something better. Yeah. All right. What about the coupons though?

Coupons. Come on. I mean, you can make your money back on the coupon. It kind of negates the annual fee almost, sort of, right? Yeah. Well, you know, if the travel portal, the hotel bookings, are actually well-priced. Like, personally, I would have no trouble spending the $300 each year.

And I book independent hotels often enough that I wouldn't worry that much about whether or not I'm going to earn points from the hotel. So that would be an easy $300. The annual splurge credit would be, I think, an easy $200. I hate that you have to think about these things and, you know, remember that you have those available. But, but, and then the chauffeur thing, I'd probably, use it every six months, but I wouldn't see it as a discount. Because like you said, like

once you factor in that it's much more expensive than Uber, you're not really saving any money using it. What you're doing is getting hopefully a nicer experience twice a year, which is good. So, but, you know, as far as cash back, I think I would easily get $500 cash back. I have city gold. So I would be getting back more than I'm spending in the annual fee. So I'm actually pretty happy with the coupons. I think more than some of the other bank ultra-premium cards where they have all kinds of wild coupons that are so specific to certain purchase practices that people have, I think these are actually broad enough to appeal to most people to some degree.

Yeah, actually, I agree. I think that this is probably the best set of coupons of the ultra-premium cards so far in the sense that it's very easy to use. I mean, the $200 Spurge credit, super simple. Best Buy carries a wide range. of gift cards. So even if you don't want to buy something at Best Buy, you could very easily use that splurge credit. So that, to me, is awfully close to cash value. And the hotel booking thing, like I book like a residence in or something like that for two nights, at least once a year

where it doesn't really matter if I have elite status, the benefit, like everybody gets breakfast. So I'd be fine. Even as not a boutique traveler, boutique hotel traveler, even as a chain hotel traveler. I'd be okay with trading away the two nights of elite credit once a year for the ability to not have to pay the $300 for that stay. Or I guess you're still kind of paying it in the annual fee. But at any rate, those two would go pretty far to mitigate a lot of the annual fee of this card. So I feel like that's not bad. And I would probably end up using the Black Lane thing, even though I can't really use it at home. When we travel, there are enough times where, yeah, all right, whatever, for about the same cost of an Uber. Like you said, maybe we'll have a slightly

better experience. So I'm reasonably happy with the, I'm glad that they didn't overly complexify the coupons. I think the nice thing here is it's not like a dribs and drabs once a month or I guess the black lane thing is once every six months, but the other two. That's the only one they did that way.

Yeah. The other ones are really easy to use in one shot. And I like that. That I think that's the simplification that somebody needed to understand that an ultra premium card holder wants you to offer. So thank you for that. So credit where credit is do.

Yeah. Although it's not as simple as the VentureX again where you just have $300 off travel book through the portal once a year. I mean, that's the only coupon. And with a $3.95 annual fee, that's the only coupon you need. But still, yes, I think they did a good job. Given that all of the banks are moving towards these couponification thing, chase has gone so far towards those little piddly, monthly things.

Yeah. And Amex, of course, started all that with things like the six months, every six months, a tiny sacks credit and things like that that are very hard to get full value from. These are actually good. All right. So the city has a bunch of cards that earn city thank you rewards points, and most of them are fee-free. So we've talked before about how you could put together a great wallet full of cards where you'd earn 2x base with your double cash card, earn 3x in a whole bunch of categories with your

strata premier card, not the elite card that we've been talking about, and a 5x in a bunch of different categories up to $500 per billing cycle with one or more custom cash cards. So if you're someone who's bought into that whole idea of like a city, a wallet full of city cards so that you maximize earnings thank you points, does this card deserve a place in that wallet. I thought you're going to ask me, is it time to set your watch to Eastern time, wherever it is that you just go all in already, right? Set your clock to Eastern time, move to New York mentally, whether you live there or not, and live on it. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think that if, yes, I think if you're doing all the rest, well, I don't know,

actually, let me take that back. Only if you really want to book Travel Through City. That's really what this comes down to. If you really want to book Travel Through City, then, yeah, this does belong in your wallet because the 12x on hotels is a good return and attractions perhaps. I don't know if they have good prices for their attractions, but maybe they do. And if they do, even if they don't, the 12X might make up for some of that. So at any rate, maybe I think that the thing for me is that this card's not terribly rewarding on an ongoing basis. You could probably just have a custom cash rotating in or two for restaurants and do better than the 3x on restaurants and almost as good is the six-ax without having to set your clock to Eastern time.

So I don't think it's a, I don't think it's compelling to get this card. If you want it because you want this to be your one ultra premium card, you want to get your priority pass this way, then maybe. However, I think it's kind of for everybody for the first year because, you know, certainly if you're able to get the 100,000 points, that's already worth well more than the $600 annual fee.

And if you also use, like I said, a thousand dollars worth of those, just the hotel credit and the splurge credit, forget about Black Lane for a second, thousand bucks in those credits. I mean, that's a good trade for $600. So I think just about anybody who qualifies ought to be considering it for the first year. Yeah, yeah. Oh, definitely. Regardless of all this other stuff, the first year bonuses is, I think, really good,

especially when you factor in, as you said, the coupons, which you could get at least twice as long as you apply mid-year. Okay, so my feeling about it is like it doesn't do a lot for your, wallet. So, yes, incrementally, your earnings through the portal will be better. And sometimes your dining earning will be a little bit better. If you were, though, if you have enough custom cash cards and it earmarked one or more for restaurants where you'd be getting 5x with that at restaurants. So this would only be one more in that case. I think where it would be most compelling is for someone who would easily use the coupon, so it's not really an expensive net

card. It's not net expensive and would value the perks like the lounge access and the ability to get 1.5x internationally without any foreign exchange fees because the double cash, of course, would charge a foreign exchange fee. So right now, the wallet without that, when you're traveling internationally, you're only going to want to use the strata premiere, which would get 1x for a lot of things. I should have mentioned earlier that one thing I really don't like about their restaurant, 3x, 6x thing, is that because hotels aren't a bonus category, if you go to a restaurant that is in some way associated with a hotel inside the hotel next to the hotel, but somehow associated with it, you never know whether

it's going to code as a restaurant or a hotel charge. And so I really, I would, like, if I just had the strata premiere and the strata elite and I was in a restaurant like that, I'd rather use the strata premiere where I know I'll get 3x either because it's a hotel or a restaurant versus the Stratelite where you might end up getting one X. Anyway, so that's a little problem with that one. Okay. I'm going to skip the next question.

And all right, so who is this card good for? Like, what do you think about, like, who's the perfect candidate for this card? I mean, so, and I'm not talking first year. I think we're all good candidates for the first year. But, like, what's the profile of the person that should be looking at this card and saying, that's the card for me? I mean, somebody who just wants, you know, that's the, somebody who wants to book a lot of travel through city travel. I mean, I really think that unless you're going to be booking a lot of travel through city travel,

If it's only a little bit of travel, it probably doesn't make that much sense. If it's a lot of travel through city travel, okay, then maybe, you know, I, I think otherwise this is kind of, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Instead, you'd be better off with a double cash in a city strata premiere for most people. I can't really see the spot for the strata elite unless you're booking a lot of travel through city. Those four admirals club passes, I don't know what American charges to get into their lounges. They must probably have a fee of some sort that you can pay to get in. So you could probably set a pretty concrete benefit at that. I know Delta charges, what, 50, 60 bucks person or something. This was a bunch of the, like, Centurion Lounge type things or $50 a guest.

So even if you really care about the American Airlines, the four passes, they're not worth that much. So I think that I'd have a hard time justifying this unless I were booking a ton of travel through city travel. If you want to have that one place to manage it and city travel is the place for you, then I guess this is the right. card otherwise i don't know like it's not really yeah yeah i agree with all that nick and in fact you might also think while someone who spends a ton at restaurants on weekends would would do really well with the card but but if you think about it it's only earning at best three points per dollar more than a strata premier or uh two points per dollar more than like the amex gold card which earns for exit restaurants. And so you'd have to spend like a ton for that, those extra points,

I think, to add up to a really material amount. And it would have to always be during those windows, those time windows that it's earning the extra. So I think there are probably a handful of people out there where that's them. They're spending so much on weekend nights or mornings in other parts of the world. But but I think that's, it's got to be pretty rare. It does have to be pretty rare. And so I can't imagine that that will be applicable for a huge number of people. Though, you know, if you are planning some expensive things like that, you know, you're able to put the company party on your card or you're planning a wedding, make sure your caterer charges you between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Eastern time on a Friday or Saturday night. So you get your

six acts. I mean, maybe you could make that work. But it does seem sort of annoying. to have to even deal with that and not a huge incremental return unless, like Greg said last year in that, like really rare category of people who spent a ton, a ton on those things. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's weird because they did build a card that's not a terrible deal. I'm just not sure why I would take even a not terrible deal in a world where I'm going to have any other sort of ultra premium cards. The other thing worth mentioning here, I think, is that like 3X on dining is fine, but let me ask

you've got a lot of different cards there are in 3x on dining probably right because you got chase cards are in 3x on dining at the bill card there earns 3x on dining of this so would city be your go to for 3x on dining if it was 3x would city be your go to for 3x no if i would i would go for built for 3x i value built points a bit more than city um but not i mean not a ton more especially now that there's the american airlines transfer partner um so you know i'd be I'd be close. I also, you know, historically have valued ultimate rewards points more than city because of Hyatt, but now I'm kind of on the fence between the two, to be honest.

So we'll see. We'll see by next week I'll have my first experience using my preferred hotel points to book a stay and actually staying there. And we'll see how good that experience is. On a previous show, I said it was shockingly easy to make the booking. And remember, this matters because city transfers, one to four to preferred hotels. And so you can get really amazing deals that way.

And so, no, they don't have as many properties available as like Hyatt does. But where they do have the properties, it's a very legitimate alternative to Hyatt, I think. So, yeah, we'll see. So you're pretty much, you're pretty much, I would have probably, you're right, the addition of American Airlines makes a big difference. Historically, I would have been probably less interested in collecting three city points and other points. So when I look at the opportunity to earn an additional three, that not all three of that is profit to me, you know, because I would rather be booking three of some other currency

to begin with. So some of that is just making up for the fact that, you know, that would encourage me to use city, maybe that first point. Okay, if it was four X city points versus three X of other points that I would rather collect, then maybe that tips the needle. So you're earning an extra two on top of that. So you know what I'm saying? I think it changes the math a little bit too and makes me less excited about 6x than you might initially think, although the six points per dollar with the ability to transfer to American Airlines will be compelling for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. Now, take someone like me that has the old city prestige card that earns 5x for all dining. So the question now will be, you know, I go out

on a on a Friday night do I bother I'm taking along the strata leak card that otherwise has no place in my physical wallet at all I mean I probably have it on my apple pay so if the restaurant takes that great but not not all of them do I say you don't bring it unless your reservation's like 7 p.m. and you're sure that it's not going to but I mean it just it seems like a lot to even worry about it all when I could be getting 5x automatic with the procedure. card and and the prestige gives three exit hotel so if it happens to code as a hotel I'm still you know not that bad off so so yeah for someone like me until the prestige card gets you know erased from my portfolio it's even less compelling to use for dining yep there you go all right

all right I think my friends that wraps this up there and brings us to this week's question of the week this week's question of the week comes in via email from prince thank you by the way prince for remembering to hit the like button I appreciate that This week's question in the week says I was hoping to get some advice regarding authorized users. I added my wife as an authorized user to a few of my older credit cards. However, I made the mistake of adding her as an authorized user on my new built card. Soon after, I noticed she had a new two-month-old credit card on her credit report, which put her at 524.

Can we still apply for Chase cards with her as an authorized user on my new card? If not, is there any way to fix this on her credit report? I'm mostly hoping to sign her up for business cards. cards over the next year to avoid exceeding 524 for a while. Thanks for all you do. Love the podcast, Prince. So what's the story here? So quick reminder with Chase, if you've opened five or more cards from any bank over the past 24 months, they often will deny your application for a new card. And they do that by looking at your credit report to see how many new accounts are on there. And yes, authorized user cards.

will show up. Chase doesn't want to count those against 524. And what I mean by that is they might automatically deny your application because it looks like you're over 524 because of an authorized because you're an authorized user on someone else's account. But if you call the reconsideration line, call Chase's reconsideration line and tell them that you're just an authorized user, you're not responsible for payments to that account, they will rerun it. without that card factored in and then you should have a chance to get approved. Yep, very good. So that's how you fix it.

There's no way you're going to fix it in terms of just like getting it removed. So from an automatic approval standpoint, you're probably still going to run into trouble getting automatically approved because it'll look like you're over 524, but you got a decent shot anyway of doing that over the phone if you call reconsideration. And remember, you can always find the reconsideration phone numbers on any of our card pages or if you go to our best offers page and you go to the bank section for each individual bank any of that type of information like the phone number for reconsideration is listed in a box along with the bank there so that you know what number to call in order to speak to somebody

who can potentially help you turn that initial denial into an approval yeah all right my friends that brings us to the end of this episode if you've enjoyed this and you like to get more of this stuff in your email inbox each day or each week you want to go to frequent myler dot com slash subscribe to join our email list. You can follow us on all the various social media, join our Frequent Myler Insiders Facebook group, or you can ask and answer questions about this stuff all the time.

And if you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback for our giant mailbag. You can send that too. Send it to Mailbag at Frequentmyler.com. Bye everybody.

If you're a fan of travel stories, don't miss Go Nomad. I host this short form podcast to share inspiring interviews and unique perspectives from travelers all over the world. Uncovering, unforgettable, and different adventures. Check it out at voyescape.com.