Thread: Where to go from a TY Preferred

Hello everyone; I've been a long-time lurker and felt now is the time to take the plunge and post.

If you may, I currently have a Citi ThankYou Preferred World Elite MasterCard and was thinking about either upgrading and/or applying for a new card. Currently, my ThankYou Preferred account will turn four years old this month and has a $10K CL. Also, I do not mind paying an annual fee, my Credit Karma score is a 743, and I do see myself travelling a bit more in the future.

Based on my current banking relationship and other pre-approvals I have received, my initial thoughts were to go for the following:

1. Upgrade current card to ThankYou Premier.
2. Apply for AMEX Gold Premier Rewards.
3. Apply for Capital One Cash Rewards.

Does my thinking sound right? Should I do something else, or even do nothing at all? I appreciate any feedback.

when you say that you see yourself traveling a little bit more in the future do you mean traveling on business or leisure travel vacation?

certainly you have nice thoughts on great cards, If your going to be traveling on business I would ask the person in charge of your traveling expenses which credit card do they want you to use when entertaining clients or checking in at hotels etc, you might want to ask them if you have to have a small business or corporate card of some sort. if they say use your own, I would get the upgrade of citi thank you and
the Gold premier is also a nice card for business travel.

If you are not traveling on business and you are going to be taking vacations then the Capital1 cash card looks like a great choice. I don't know anything about the card other than it's green you get cash back.
I have the venture card from capital 1.

Hey Money card, thank you for the reply.

Most likely, I would be starting out with leisure travel within the domestic US and to Korea [which mostly likely means no oneWorld airlines for me, sadly]. My initial thoughts were to get a card that would be good to have in the event I do go overseas (no foreign transaction fee and gives rewards for travel in some form) while at the same time is good for everyday use.

BTW, how do you like your Venture card?

I love my capital1 venture I have the gold 1.25 miles per dollar spent, columbus week I was on vacation a relaxing vacation in my area. about the middle of September I called the concierge up and asked them to make resorvations Monday at Mickey Mantles for lunch and dinner reservations at the HoHokus inn. They did a great job, the day I went into the city no problems.

when redeeming miles you have to redeem the whole thing. so let's say for example you have 6,000 miles and want to go on vacation from New York to Chicago, let's say the tickets round trip 375. you are 10,000 miles short so you can't break it up. do you know what I mean?

I would like to touch up on 1 thing since your planning vacations going to Korea I wouldn't get the gold rewards card. it has a 2.7 foreign transaction fee. I would suggest the capital1 cash rewards card or looking into the citibank thank you card.

if your going to places like Chicago, Orlando, Pittsburgh I then would suggest a gold rewards card.

1. Yep, can't do any point advance or anything like that (you want something that's 10K miles, you need 10K miles).

2. I've come to notice that the majority of cards that come w/ no foreign transaction fee are all Capital One cards, all Discover cards [which I think fare better in Korea due to better network coverage], and premium cards [like Sapphire, TY Premier, AMEX Platinum, etc.].

Things to consider, though it definitely is no rush :-).

I have a TY Preferred, but only at the World level, not World Elite. Does anyone know how Citi decides who gets which version of the TY Preferred card? I have a fairly high credit limit on the card and a 750+ FICO last time I checked. Some of the WE perks might be nice to have.

Hey Alika.

At least with me, I figure the reason why I was able to get my Citi credit card at the time [a Diamond Preferred Rewards] upgraded to WE was because I was easily charging $50K-$60K a year on it over a span of three years (I was able to pay my rent with it).

My best guess is that to become World Elite, sustained levels of high spending play a good part into that.

That might be why. I've resisted putting rent on credit cards because my property mgmt company levies a surcharge for CC payments, whereas direct debit is free. Ends up the reward points earned are outweighed by the fees! But thanks for the info. Too bad Citi doesn't see fit to upgrade me for transferring a balance onto their card! :-)

I will say this though: some property management companies are deemed as financial institutions by the credit card issuer. In that case, your rent payment is processed as a cash advance, which has more fees and higher interest rates.

Thankfully this only happened to me once when I was about to leave my most recent apartment, but still be careful and double-check if in doubt.