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Beginner’s Guide: Citi Application Rules
The world of Points and Miles is crazy. So much of the information out there is designed for those of us who have been doing it for a while. Miles and I understand that not everyone is as far down the rabbithole as we are, and we want everyone to feel welcome here at MonkeyMiles. Not only is this forest of points and miles intimidating to even begin to navigate, it’s so easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. So who better to help you navigate a forest than an adorable monkey who wants to help you get more lux for less bucks. So what are Citi’s application rules?
- 1/8
- 2/65
- 24 month rule
- 48 month rule on Aadvantage cards
- Family rules
- 1/90 for business cards
Citi 1,8,65 rule limits the number of times you can apply for a credit card
- No more than 1 card in 8 days
- No more than 2 cards in 65 days
Let’s look at a hypothetical situation where you’d like to take a trip. You want some air miles, lounge benefits and airline credits, and some free hotel nights. You decide that you’d like to sign up for 3 credit cards:
- Citi Premier: 3x dining, supermarkets, gas, groceries, air travel + hotels
- Citi Aadvantage Platinum: AA miles and priority boarding
- Citi Double Cash: Unlimited 2x points
Citi is going to limit you to signing up in the following way: the actual cards can be in any order
- Day 1: Apply for Citi Premier
- Day 9: Apply for Aadvantage Platinum
- Day 66: Apply for Citi Double Cash ( 65 days after your first card )
Citi now requires 24 months between opening and closing of an account to qualify for a bonus again
Simply put you need to wait 24 months from when you either got the bonus on the card or canceled the card. One way of bypassing this is downgrading the card since its still open.
Citi also limits one bonus per family of cards to every 24 months.
What does that mean? The clock restarts each time you pick up a bonus for that family of points, or you close a card in that family. Let’s say you want to get a Citi Premier and a Citi Rewards+.
- Get Citi Premier bonus on June 1 of 2022
- If you kept the Citi Premier
- June 2nd of 2024 you would be eligible for a Citi Thank You sign up bonus again
- If you canceled the Citi Premier in June of 2023
- June of 2025 you would be eligible for another Citi Thank You family bonus
- If you kept the Citi Premier
Citi Premier and Citi Rewards+ are in a family
- Citi Custom Cash is not in the family
- Citi Double Cash is not in a family
- Citi Aadvantage cards are not in a family
Citi’s 48 month rule
- If you have gotten a bonus on a particular credit card you aren’t eligible for the bonus again until 48 months have passed.
This has principally been a rule that applies to the American Airlines family of cards, but has shown up here recently on the Citi Premier card as well. This hasn’t been on all applications, but we have seen it on some. This means if you had it, but closed it 30 days ago, the clock wouldn’t have restarted, and if it had been longer than 48 months since you received a bonus, you’d be eligible once again.
Cards impacted
- All of personal American Airlines branded cards
- On Some Citi Premier card offers ( we saw it on the 75k offer direct with Citi )
Citi Business 1 in 90
Pretty straight forward, but it seems that Citi will not approve you for more than one business credit card every 90 days.
Can you have more than 1 of the same card?
Totally, what we call, YMMV ( Your Mileage May Vary ). Some have reported this to be allowed and received approval, others have not.
Citi Thank You Transfer Partners
This is the main reason I’m interested in several of the Citi credit cards, the ability to transfer into programs listed below
Overall
Hopefully this guides you in your decision making and wallet building!
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.