Citi Strata Elite: the good, bad, and ugly | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep317 | 8-1-25
Frequent Miler on the Air
Frequent Miler
4.9 • 640 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 77 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this podcast episode, we'll talk about how US Bank is bonvoying grandfathers and US Bank's plans to add transfer partners. We'll also talk about who the Citi Strata Elite card is good for.
Giant Mailbag
(01:40) - This listener has tips about their strategy when a flight becomes available for a lesser mileage price...
Card News
(05:50) - Citi now offers transfers to American Airlines from Strata Elite, Prestige & Strata Premier
(07:23) - Now transfer from most Citi cards to most ThankYou partners (even from Custom Cash)
(09:41) - Citi Strata card now available
(12:16) - U.S. Bank Altitude Reserve: Major changes expected in December.
Bonvoyed
(18:21) - US Bank bonvoys grandfathers (Smartly card sends updates to those previously grandfathered into old 4% term)
Awards, Points, and More
(22:38) - Inn at Bay Harbor leaving Marriott
(23:42) - JetBlue & TAP Air Portugal split up as of 9/30
(24:50) - Greg earned Alaska EQMs for his flight to London
(26:53) - Nick's JetBlue 25 for 25 update post
Read more about Nick's JetBlue 25 for 25 journey so far here.
(27:50) - Another JetBlue 25 for 25 update
Main Event: Citi Strata Elite: Good, Bad, and Ugly
(30:00) - Branch Offer: 100K after $4K of spend in 3 months
Read more about the Citi Strata Elite offer here.
Or, read our Citi Strata Elite Q&A post here.
(31:45) - Application rules, basics, and earning rate...
(39:32) - Credits and benefits
(47:31) - Mini experiment: Citi Travel Hotels vs. Hotels.com
(48:45) - What happens to Citi Prestige customers?
(49:58) - Do Citi Travel hotel bookings earn hotel points and elite credit?
(53:33) - Quick Review: What do we think about the card's earning rate and perks?
(57:47) - What do we think about the card's coupons?
(1:01:37) - Does this card deserve a place in an all-ThankYou wallet?
(1:09:41) - Does this card deserve a place in a mixed-earning wallet? (For example, would this be your 3X card?)
Question of the Week
(1:12:54) - Advice regarding authorized users. What do you do about authorized user cards showing up to Chase as contributing to your 5/24 status?
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Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. |
| 0:10.6 | On today's episode, we'll find out about U.S. Bank, bonvoying grandfathers. And we'll discuss whether U.S. Bank is going to get transfer partners and whether they'll be of interest. |
| 0:22.9 | And we'll tell you who City's Strata Elite card is best for. |
| 0:27.5 | Frequent Miller on the air starts now. |
| 0:31.8 | The City Strata Elite Card, the good, bad, and ugly. |
| 0:37.4 | City went for years without offering a single ultra-premium, $500 or more-ish card that earns |
| 0:45.3 | thank you rewards points. |
| 0:47.3 | And that's their main rewards currency, thank you rewards. |
| 0:51.3 | But we've known for a while now that they had registered a trademark for the |
| 0:56.2 | city strata elite card. So we've been waiting and expecting them to come out with this ultra |
| 1:00.6 | premium card. And it is finally out. And to say that it is not what we expected, I think would be |
| 1:09.4 | a bit of an understatement. We had heard some rumors that it was going to offer bonus categories for all kinds of things so that you could put away all those other cards and use this one. That's not the case, but we're going to talk about all the details in today's main event, including who is it good for, if anyone. |
| 1:26.9 | Very good. And it might be good for for you even if you didn't realize it yet |
| 1:30.9 | so you'll want to listen and check that out if you want to skip ahead to to listen to that right now |
| 1:35.2 | remember you can always expand the show description and you'll have all the timestamps in the show |
| 1:39.6 | notes so you can jump ahead to something or come back to it later on to revisit it and wherever |
| 1:43.8 | you're watching you're listening don't forget to give this a thumbs up, like it, leave us a review, |
| 1:48.0 | leave us some stars. We always appreciate that feedback. Let's drag out this week's giant mailbag. |
| 1:53.1 | All right. And today's giant mail comes from Jonathan. Jonathan was replying to a previous |
| 1:58.8 | giant mailbag where we read about someone who had saved |
| 2:03.9 | miles on her united award flights by noticing that the award price had gone down, she canceled |
| 2:11.5 | the flight she had booked, booked the new flights at the, or rebooked the same flights at the new price and save miles that way. |
... |
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