Good afternoon everyone. A few weeks ago, I received a shocking and unexpected email from Citi regarding my beloved Citi Rewards+ Credit Card. On July 20, 2025, the Citi Rewards+ Credit Card will be converted to the new Citi Strata Credit Card. With that change, this credit card is about to lose its two best features:
- Rounding up to the nearest 10 points on every purchase
- Receiving 10% points back for the first 100,000 Citi ThankYou Points (TYPs) redeemed per calendar year.
With those losses looming, I’ve been strategizing how to max out the 10% rebate before the July 20 deadline. This quest sent me down a rabbit hole figuring out how many rebated points I already received in 2025 and trying to predict which TYP transfer bonuses might come around in the next two months. Follow me down the rabbit hole…
Maxing Out The Rebate: How I Checked My Rebated TYPs
To get started, I signed into my Citi ThankYou Points account and then went to my Points Summary page. As of June 4, I have 96,752 TYPs. I should receive a few thousand more TYPs in the next few days when my six TYP earning credit card statements close.
Crunching My Rebated TYP Numbers
I then scrolled down to the Points Details section. I selected a custom date range (1/1/25 to 6/4/25) and selected my Citi Rewards+ from the drop down menu. Year to date, I have earned 356 points from this credit card and I’ve only received 176 out of 10,000 rebated TYPs so far.
I then selected Redemptions from the drop down menu to see how I spent my TYPs. In January, I accidentally used 762 TYPs at a Shell gas station (oops!) and in April, I transferred 1,000 TYPs to Avianca LifeMiles to keep my current stash of miles alive. Since I’ve only redeemed 1,762 TYPs this year, I still have 98,238 TYPs eligible for the 10% rebate, if I want to max out the full 10,000 TYP rebate.
Predicting The Next TYP Transfer Bonuses
Since Laura and I have a baby girl on the way (arriving in July or August), I don’t have any immediate needs to transfer TYPs to partners, but if a decent TYP transfer bonus came along, I would consider transferring TYPs to that program for use in the future. Unfortunately, predicting upcoming TYP transfer bonuses is difficult, especially with a broken crystal ball.
The next best thing I could do was to look at the current and expired TYP transfer bonuses. Huge hat tip to Frequent Miler for keeping an updated list of current and expired transfer bonuses that go back to 2017!
I copied the data into Excel and filtered it to show only Citi TYP transfer bonuses. Fun fact: there are 68 current and expired TYP transfer bonuses from 2017 to 2025.
I then uploaded the file to ChatGPT and asked “Which Citi ThankYou Point transfer bonuses should appear in June and July 2025?” Here are the results based on analyzing the spreadsheet of TYP transfer bonuses:
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles – Frequently gets a 15% bonus around this time.
- Air France–KLM Flying Blue – Commonly receives a 25–30% bonus in summer months.
- Avianca LifeMiles – Often sees a 25% bonus in June or July.
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club (Avios) – Had a 30–40% bonus in this period once.
- Wyndham – Occasionally included, typically with a 20% bonus.
- Hilton Honors – Rare but notable appearance with a 33% bonus.
What Would I Do With Each TYP Transfer Bonus?
Here are my thoughts on each possible TYP transfer bonus:
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles – I don’t have any Cathay Pacific miles and don’t have plans to travel to Asia in the next few years, so I would pass on this transfer bonus.
- Air France–KLM Flying Blue – Laura and I love going to Europe and flying on Air France and KLM (love my Delft Blue Houses), so I would love to see a generous transfer bonus.
- Avianca LifeMiles – I currently have 91K Avianca LifeMiles and definitely do not need any more miles, so I would pass on this transfer bonus.
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club (Avios) – I currently have 65K Avios across the various Avios programs, so I may consider transferring some TYPs if a transfer bonus came around.
- Wyndham – I currently have 96K Wyndham Rewards Points that I am sitting on until I find my next Vacasa Vacation Rental, so I would be hesitant to transfer more TYPs to WR.
- Hilton Honors – I currently have 276K Hilton Points and a Hilton Aspire FNC, so I probably wouldn’t transfer TYPs to Hilton.
Based on those predicted TYP transfer bonuses (and my current point balances), my best bet would be for an Air France / KLM Flying Blue transfer bonus to come around in the next 1-2 months. Even if it did, I would have a hard time pulling the trigger to redeem all 97K TYPs, since it would sort of crush my soul to have only a handful of TYPs available for the future.
What Would You Do In This Situation?
Would you hold onto your TYPs or take advantage of any these possible TYP transfer bonuses? I’d love to hear what strategy you’d pick. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Have a great day everyone!
If you go to Asia EVA should be the transfer as they have special inventory for their members. Business class is available for 75k miles just about every day.
Good tip! I’ve always wanted to fly EVA to TPE, but haven’t had the chance yet. Glad to hear that business class award space is pretty plentiful using EVA miles.
Since AA cards are going out of Barclays to Citi, I hope Citi will add AA as a transfer partner option.
Hi Alex, I’ve had that on my predictions list for many years… maybe this is the year it actually happens. That would be great news :)
TYP don’t transfer to Hilton !
Hi James, haha, you’re right! I feel embarrassed that I didn’t catch that earlier. Looking at the data, it looks like there was a 33% transfer bonus from Citi ThankYou Points to Hilton back in July 2017, but since then, Hilton moved their credit card portfolio to AMEX.
Hilton Honors – I currently have 276K Hilton Points and a Hilton Aspire FNC, so I probably wouldn’t transfer TYPs to Hilton. Not
Hey Grant – Great article. Very thought-provoking. I have about 85k in TYP that I can still transfer with the 10% rebate. I’m definitely going to transfer – maybe because I just can’t help myself from “optimizing.” For me, it’ll either be iPrefer or ALL. But of course I don’t have a baby girl coming in a few weeks so our considerations are very different! I’ll probably go with iPrefer as I already have a decent ALL balance but I recently emptied my iPrefer account on a redemption.
Hey Craig, I always enjoy reading your comments :)
I have never transferred to Accor Live Limitless or iPreferred Hotels, but that is mainly since I haven’t found the perfect redemption. I should look into ALL when I get back to Europe since there are many properties to pick from.
Do you have any favorite ALL or iPreferred hotels that you have stayed at recently?
I actually have more aspirational iPrefer & ALL stays than recent ones. With ALL, I really want to stay at the new Fairmont La Hacienda Costa Del Sol as it looks beautiful and we’ve enjoyed that region. I’ve also long wanted to stay in the Fairmonts at Windsor England and Montreaux Switzerland. And, closer to home, the Fairmont Grand Del Mar. With Preferred, there are a number of good properties in Europe, and in the US I want to stay at the Edgewater Tahoe. We recently had a great stay at the Capital Hotel in Little Rock, which is beautiful and recently renovated. It was a great value with iPrefer points and they gave us an excellent upgrade as an iPrefer Titanium guest.
Those all sounds like fantastic properties! If you’re up for some homework, I would love to publish a guest post by you about your experience booking and staying at Preferred Hotels. Let me know if you’re interested.
Thanks Craig :)
Here is a thought – why bother with all this for a mere 10k points? In this hobby, earning 10k points will probably take you less than a month worth of spend… or not even that… why bet the future of 97k points just to earn back 10k points?
Live (your life while you can before the kid arrives) and let live (your TYP in your citi account)
Cheers!
Hi DMoney, you make a good point. It is really hard to know what to do. Will I have more regrets transferring all my TYPs before the July 20 deadline or will I have more regrets sitting on the sideline and missing out on the final chance to get 10K rebated TYPs? That’s my dilemma.