Forget the cash back, using the Citi Double Cash welcome bonus for travel is a better value | CNN Underscored

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The Citi® Double Cash Card is one of our favorite credit cards — especially for those who prefer cash back. Typically, this credit card doesn’t offer anything in terms of a sign-up bonus offer, but as of recent, you can now get $200 cash back when you spend $1,500 on purchases in the first six months after opening your account for a limited time.

But what if you prefer travel rewards instead? You’re probably thinking that the Citi Double Cash Card doesn’t make sense for you. But, think again. Although marketed as a cash back credit card, the card actually earns Citi ThankYou Rewards points, which can, in fact, be redeemed for free travel toward your next vacation.

While you could redeem those Citi ThankYou points for cash back or gift cards and get 1 cent apiece in value for them, there are ways to get even more value out of them by transferring to some of Citi’s travel partners. With just the Citi Double Cash Card in your travel wallet, you can transfer your ThankYou points to three partners: JetBlue TrueBlue, Choice Privileges and Wyndham Rewards. Or, if you pair the card with a premium Citi ThankYou Rewards credit card such as the Citi Premier® Card, there are a total of 16 travel transfer partners — and you’ll get better transfer rates. While this takes a little extra time and effort, it’s well worth it and will help you book your next trip at a significantly lower cost.

Not sure where to start? Here are some options for spending the 20,000 points earned from the Citi Double Cash Card. We’ve also included more options if you ultimately go the extra step and pair the card with the Citi Premier Card, which is currently offering a limited-time bonus of 80,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on the card within the first three months after opening the account.

When it comes to using frequent flyer points, JetBlue TrueBlue is one of the easiest programs to use, as there are never any blackout dates or issues with award availability. If there’s a seat available for sale on a JetBlue flight, you can always use JetBlue points to book it. You can even use your points to fly in a JetBlue Mint seat and experience a great domestic first-class experience.

The reason is that JetBlue doesn’t have a classic award chart. Instead, the number of points you need to redeem for a seat is roughly tied to the ticket price — when the cash price goes up or down, the points price follows.

With the Citi Double Cash Card, points transfer at a rate such that 1,000 ThankYou points equal 800 TrueBlue points. Although this might come across as a less-than-desirable rate, the 20,000 ThankYou points earned equates to 16,000 TrueBlue points, which are worth about $224 towards JetBlue travel — since JetBlue points are worth about 1.4 cents apiece, according to frequent flyer website The Points Guy. If you were to redeem those same 20,000 points as cash back, you’d end up with only $200 back in your pocket.

But if you pair the Citi Double Cash with the Citi Premier, points transfer at an equal one-to-one rate, giving you an even higher number of JetBlue points to redeem for travel. And with the Citi Premier 80,000-point sign-up bonus, that’ll earn you an impressive $1,120 in travel. There’s also no need to transfer all your points at once — you can transfer ThankYou points in blocks of 1,000 whenever you need them, and most transfers happen instantly.

Many people prefer vacationing in a home or condo rental, but also want a way to redeem their points and miles. Historically, this hasn’t been an option — until now. Wyndham Rewards has partnered with Vacasa Management Rental in such a way wherein you can redeem your points for any available home rental at a fixed cost of 15,000 points per night per bedroom. Rent a one-bedroom condo and the cost is 15,000 points per night; rent a four-bedroom house and the cost is 60,000 points per night. The sweet spot here is a large condo or house that only has one listed bedroom but additional living space, such as a loft, basement or alcove.

For those who have not heard of Vacasa until now, it’s similar to Airbnb or Virbo where you are renting an individual person’s home, with the main difference being that Vacasa is the property management company for the particular rental.

Fortunately, Wyndham is one of the three travel partners for those with the Citi Double Cash Card. With this card, you can transfer your points at a 1,000-to-800 ratio. This means for every 1,000 Citi ThankYou points you transfer, you’ll earn 800 Wyndham Reward points. With the 20,000 points earned from the Citi Double Cash Card, if you transfer 19,000 points over (since points can be transferred in 1,000-point increments), you’ll end up with 15,200 Wyndham Reward points — enough for one free night in a home rental (and 1,000 points to keep in your ThankYou account).

But there’s one catch — even though a home rental is available for a paid stay on Vacasa, it doesn’t mean it’s available when paying with points. There are blackout dates, and typically, the home rental has to be less than a certain price for it to be listed with points. Unfortunately, the only way to check availability is to call Wyndham directly, which can be a lengthy process.

If used strategically — which we have done first-hand — the points earned from the Citi Double Cash Card can be easily worth up to $400 toward your next home vacation rental. And with continuous credit card spend, you can eventually book a multi-night stay at a great location.

Or, if you have the Citi Premier card, ThankYou points transfer at a one-to-one rate, meaning you only need to redeem 15,000 ThankYou points for the same one-night stay in a one-bedroom house or condo through Vacasa. With frequent-flyer site The Points Guy valuing Citi ThankYou points at 1.8 cents apiece, as long as you book a home rental for more than $280 for the night, you are redeeming your points at a great value.

Click here to earn enough bonus points with the Citi Double Cash card to book a home rental.

Although Delta SkyMiles isn’t a partner of the Citi ThankYou program, it’s still possible to use your ThankYou points to book Delta flights. The trick is to instead transfer your points to Virgin Atlantic, which is a partner of both Citi and Delta. From there, you can use Virgin points to book many Delta flights.

Keep in mind though that while you can’t transfer your Citi Double Cash points to many of the premier partners, such as Virgin Atlantic, if you have a premium card such as the Citi Premier, you can combine your Citi ThankYou points from the two cards. From there, your points are eligible to be transferred to the entire Citi ThankYou partner suite at the highest transfer ratio.

When it comes to Delta flights within the US, Virgin Atlantic has a distance-based award chart for economy seats that looks like this:

This means when award space is available, a round-trip nonstop Delta flight between Boston and Los Angeles costs 30,000 Virgin Atlantic points. That can sometimes be cheaper than booking the exact same flight using Delta’s own miles, which fluctuate depending on the cash price of the ticket.

Just remember that Virgin Atlantic prices awards by adding up the miles required for each flight segment. So a routing that requires a connection will cost more than a nonstop flight, because the two connecting flights will be priced separately, then added together.

Also, if you’re wondering whether you can transfer your Citi ThankYou points to Virgin Atlantic and redeem them for flights to Europe and the United Kingdom, you can — but I don’t recommend it. That’s because Virgin adds extremely high carrier surcharges to their own award redemptions — as much as hundreds of dollars, which often make your “free” flight not worth the cost. Fortunately, you won’t see those high surcharges when you’re redeeming Virgin points for domestic Delta flights.

Redeem points from the Citi Premier card for Delta flights through Virgin Atlantic.

Hawaii isn’t part of the continental United States, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to the Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles award chart. The airline groups the Hawaiian Islands in with the rest of the 48 mainland states, making it incredibly cheap to use Turkish miles to fly to Hawaii.

Of course, you’re probably thinking to yourself that Turkish Airlines doesn’t fly from the rest of the US to Hawaii — and you’re correct. But Turkish Airlines is part of the Star Alliance airline partnership, which means you can redeem its miles for flights on United Airlines, which is also part of the Star Alliance. And you can transfer your Citi Premier points — although not Citi Double Cash points (unless you have a premium card) — to Turkish Airlines, since it’s one of Citi’s 16 travel partners.

For just 7,500 Turkish Airlines miles one-way — or 15,000 miles round trip — you can fly on a United flight from almost any destination in the US to any Hawaiian island when there’s award space available. Or, if you’re looking to sit up front, you can fly the same route for just 25,000 miles round trip in business class.

Now, if you’re on the East Coast and Hawaii is slightly too far away for your liking, you can instead visit Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands for the same 7,500 miles each way, since those destinations are also grouped together as part of the US on the Turkish Airlines award chart.

With just the 20,000 points earned from the Citi Double Cash card — as long as you also have a premium Citi card — you can find yourself enjoying many nearby islands in no time.

Use Citi Premier points to fly your family to Hawaii.

Singapore Airlines has one of the very best first class seats — or as the airline calls them, “Suites” — in the world, and recently started flying its A380 aircraft with these Suites to the US. And believe it or not, you can actually redeem Citi ThankYou points to get a Suite for nearly nothing.

While Singapore Airlines is a member of the Star Alliance, the carrier only releases award space for its Suites to members of its own frequent flyer program, known as KrisFlyer. Fortunately, it’s free to join KrisFlyer, and once you’ve joined, you can transfer Citi ThankYou points from a premium Citi credit card to KrisFlyer at a one-to-one rate, meaning you can easily acquire enough KrisFlyer points from the Citi Premier to book one of these fantastic suites. Unfortunately, the points earned from the Citi Double Cash welcome bonus won’t nearly be enough to get you one of these highly desirable seats, but it will help boost your account balance.

Right now, Singapore is only flying the A380 on one route to and from the US — New York’s JFK to Singapore by way of Frankfurt, Germany. But it’s possible to book just the segment between New York and Frankfurt, meaning you can get from the US to Europe this way and then use any other airline to make a quick hop to any other country on the continent that you’d like to visit.

Even better, it’s cheaper to book an award to Frankfurt than booking the entire run to Singapore. For a one-way flight from New York to Frankfurt, you can expect to pay 86,000 miles for a seat in Suites at the lowest “Saver” level, but only when Singapore has released award space at that level for the day you want to travel. But if you can find space, the 80,000 bonus points on the Citi Premier card will cover almost all of the cost all by itself.

Even if you can’t find saver-level space and need to book at the higher “Advantage” level, which costs 140,000 miles one-way, the bonus from the Citi Premier will get you more than halfway there, and you can then either earn more points by using the card on a regular basis, or transfer additional points to Singapore from one of the other credit card programs that also partner with KrisFlyer, including Chase Ultimate Rewards, American Express Membership Rewards and Capital One miles.

Click here to earn enough bonus points with the Citi Premier card to fly first class to Europe.

While you shouldn’t transfer your Citi ThankYou points to Virgin Atlantic for flights to Europe due to that carrier’s high surcharges, there’s another option for transatlantic trips without paying huge fees.

Avianca is another airline that’s both in the Star Alliance network and a Citi transfer partner (only for premium cards, such as the Citi Premier and not for the Citi Double Cash), and while its LifeMiles award chart might look slightly more expensive than some other airlines’ award charts, it’s one of the few programs that doesn’t pass along major surcharges on partner awards, although it does charge a small $25 fee for all award bookings.

The number of Avianca LifeMiles required for an award flight from the US to Europe depends on which route you’re flying. LifeMiles divides both the US and Europe into regional zones, which means there’s a different award chart tier for each zone you’re flying to and from.

For example, if you’re flying on a Star Alliance partner out of New York (United States Zone 1) to London (Europe Zone 1), it’ll cost you only 20,000 miles one-way on a Star Alliance partner. But Los Angeles (United States Zone 3) to Athens (Europe Zone 3) will cost you 30,000 miles one-way. Still, those are very reasonable redemption rates for flights across the pond.

Additionally, you can use Avianca miles to fly domestically around the US on United Airlines, since again, both are members of the Star Alliance. One-way flights within the US are typically 7,500 miles each way, but there are times you may find routes as low as 3,500 miles one-way using LifeMiles.

Learn more and apply now for the Citi Premier card.

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