Citi Thank You Indeed

We've been big fans of Citi Thank You points. The combination of (a) being so easy to earn and (b) great redemption opportunities, we've earned and burned hundreds of thousands of Citi TY points over the years.

In particular, we've had special promotions like an additional 2x points on all spend for 6 months or $95 statement credits to offset the annual fee. Then there's the standard bonus categories such as 2x for Restaurants/Entertainment.

With a substantial stash of Citi TY points, we decided to use some for an upcoming long weekend in Florida this coming December.

First, we booked our United flights for 67,488 TY points, which saved us $844 for three round-trip tickets. Second, we booked an Enterprise Rental car for 4 days for just 9,200 TY points, which saved us $115. That's almost $1,000 of savings for a 4 day vacation!

To redeem Citi TY points, you need to book travel directly through their portal. The prices they show are generally the same as what you'd find by going directly to the airline or car rental websites. For example, our United tickets were the same price on Citi's site vs. United.com.

However, the car rental prices were actually cheaper on Citi's Travel site. Here were the prices on Orbitz.com. For the same Enterprise Compact car, they were charging $133 (vs. the $115 price we booked using Citi TY points).

Because we're having so much luck with Citi, we decided to open a new Citi Thank You Prestige card this past week which offers 60,000 TY points and has a reduced $350 annual fee, but with enough perks and benefits where my father will recoup that fee (and then some) easily in the first year.