3x Bonus Citi Thank You Preferred

Usually, my parents would call up and ask for a retention bonus for cards that have an annual fee coming up. For example, we called up Chase a few weeks ago and received a $100 statement credit to offset the $95 annual fee due in a few weeks.

But apparently, we should have also been calling up our no-fee cards as well. The banks also want to incentivize you to spend on all their cards.

So after reading about Miles to Memories' retention offers on the Citi Thank You Preferred (the no-fee version of the Citi Thank You family), we called about my mother's card. After stating that we were thinking of closing the card, we were eventually offered a great promotion.

1. Spend $1,000 each month for 3 months and receive an additional 10,000 Thank You Points.

However, we knew to hold out for an even better offer.

2. Get an additional 2x Thank You Points for every eligible dollar spent in the next 6 months.

JACKPOT!

Since my father is a math nerd an Asian, he quickly did the math of how much spend he would have to make to be break-even between the two offers. Under the first offer, he would get 13,000 points for $3,000 of spend, which is about 4.33x for that initial $3,000 of spend. But then 1x on any additional spend.

But under the second offer, we could earn more points if we spent more than $5,000 over 6 months. At that spend level, we'd clear at least 15,000 points. And if some of that spend was on dining/entertainment, we'd get even more. Those two categories normally get 2x, so they'd earn 4x under this promotional offer.

And yeah, trust me. My father will find ways to spend more than $5,000 in 6 months.

Ugh, too much math for one day...