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

1. No more than 1 card in 8 days
2. 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:

1. Citi Premier: 3x dining, supermarkets, gas, groceries, air travel + hotels
2. Citi Aadvantage Platinum: AA miles and priority boarding
3. 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. 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

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’s 48 month rule for American cards

If you have gotten a bonus on a particular American Airlines branded Citi credit card you aren’t eligible for the bonus again until 48 months have passed.

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.

Overall

Hopefully this guides you in your decision making and wallet building!