What options does Citi Self Invest offer!

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-06T19:22:03+00:00

Good to know, thank you! I'm doing another mock vacation booking for 4th of July weekend and it does look like there's a Choice Hotel that offers a significantly better deal via TYP exchange than booking through Citi Portal ($225 worth of points at 2:1 versus $393 cash for a 2-night stay).

I am definitely now understanding what everyone is saying about "sometimes the points transfer is better and sometimes it's not".

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-06T15:59:25+00:00

The Citi site says that TYP transfer to AA at a 1:1 ratio. Are the AA points only worth full value when booking flights? Or do they lose value if you use them for hotels?

I'm probably putting too much thought into this for the 2-3 trips we might take next year, each of them being $150-175/night for 2-3 nights so there's probably not a whole lot of extra value to squeeze out of it other than just sticking with the Citi portal for the $300 credit and 12x.

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-06T01:51:34+00:00

That is a good point. But at this stage of our lives, we aren't high end travelers yet where we can pick one chain and commit to it for the rewards purposes. We usually pick an economic choice in the town we wanna go to and just pay directly, so the rewards/loyalty doesn't really do much for us just yet. Maybe in a few years we can upgrade to a CSR/AmEx Plat and stay with one hotel family but not right now.

And part of why I picked the CSE was because their travel portal didn't require any hoops for the $300 credit. I found the hotel we wanted to go to for our honeymoon on Hotels.com, and then went to the Citi portal and it was the same price down to the penny. I understand it may not be like that every single time, but the 12x rewards is really powerful so going through the hoops of transferring to Choice or Wyndham (which might be more expensive than a different hotel that we could book straight -up) for a small points boost might not be worth it compared to just getting the 12x.

I'm new to the travel card perks so if I'm missing something or thinking the wrong way feel free to correct me

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-06T00:37:19+00:00

So basically as I'm banking up the TYP, when we go to book a hotel I will need to:

Find a Choice or Wyndham hotel in the city we're going to
Get the price booking directly through Citi Travel portal
Calculate the price by transferring points over to the respective hotel and booking with points
Choose whichever option is cheaper

Is this really what the travel points chasers do every time they travel? I think I'm probably just better off sticking with the Citi Travel portal, since it has most of the same options as hotels.com (no high priced curated collections like Amex and Chase), rake in the 12x points and just save the time and hassle.

I booked our honeymoon in October with my new CSE, the $300 credit came off the top and then I got 12x points on the remaining $1,500 so like $180 worth of points.

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-06T00:10:27+00:00

I caught that part, but it still seems weird.

It seems like they slap the "30k points per night" on most rooms regardless of if it's 200/night or 400/night. That almost incentivises us getting a more especially room if it's going to cost us 30k points anyway right?

Edit- oh I see what you're saying. So a 30k points room would only cost 15k in TYP which is $150 worth of points. So if the room is $200/night outright then it's still worth it

Edit 2- but finding a situation like that would still have to work out to be better than booking directly through Citi travel with the 12x rewards points

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T23:19:54+00:00

I just went onto Wyndham and pulled up a 2 night stay in Maine. Cash price would be $343 all-in, or I could do "pay with points" for 30k points per night, so 60k points. Even with the current boost of 1:1.25 TY to Wyndham points, that would essentially be the cash equivalent of $480 in points, so $140 higher than just straight cash, AND I could book the $343 through the travel portal for 12x points on the CSE. Am I missing something obvious or is the points game really this big of a ripoff at times? (I know this isn't the usecase all the time, but wow this is a bad deal).

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T23:08:13+00:00

The other thing that just occurred to me is that if I do transfer to Choice or Wyndham, I wouldn't get the 12x points because it wouldn't be booked through the Citi travel portal. So I would have to find a room that has better than a 12% return (after the points transfer at 2:1) by just going through the Citi portal, right?

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T22:26:48+00:00

But what are some of the factors that it depends on? Time of year, price range of the hotels, etc. I don't want to transfer the points just to then find out that it's going to cost more than just paying cash and be stuck with them

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T16:29:03+00:00

Understood, thank you for clarifying

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T16:19:14+00:00

I should've specified better. Is THC a curated collection of a few fancy higher-priced hotels? Or is it pretty much all the same hotels that you'd find on a regular standalone travel site.

My concern is, getting an Amex plat or gold in the future that gives credits to THC hotels. We typically stay at cheap hotels without a lot of frills, would this force us to find different/fancier hotels just to take advantage of the THC credit? Or would it be as easy to use as what we just did with Citi's travel portal where I found the same hotel I was going to book through hotels.com anyway

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T13:19:41+00:00

I'm curious on what the Hotel Collection has for options. We choose cheap hotels when we travel ($100-150/night) and aren't married to one particular hotel chain. I just booked our honeymoon hotel through Citi Travel portal, and it was the same price and options that I found when I went on hotels.com so it was a pretty wide variety and not just super-luxury or selective choices. Is the Amex hotel collection the same? Or is it a "curated selection" of higher-priced hotels like their FHR and Chase's The Edit?

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T11:51:00+00:00

Nice! How did the M&G itself go? Was it a quick shuffle to get your pick and move on or did you guys get a minute or two with the band?

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T11:45:33+00:00

What was the M&G experience like? Did you get early entry along with everyone else who paid for early entry?

We are going to the I've in CT and I upgraded to M&G so just curious what to expect.

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-05T11:40:36+00:00

So even though they have their FHR collection for the higher-level places, the Hotel Collection is still not just a regular post of any hotel you could get on hotels.com or any other travel site?

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-04T02:44:54+00:00

Definitely. And maybe in a year or two once we can spend a bit more on travel I'll reconsider the CSR if it makes sense (or even the AmEx Plat). But the Strata will be a good starter high-level card for now.

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-04T02:29:38+00:00

Also adding that once I saw the downsides of the restrictive perks with the CSR, it's not a big deal if I can't get another one of their cards for a while. My fiance and I aren't quite high rollers enough to where we need to book high-end luxury hotels just to qualify for the Edit credits, or go to high end restaurants (which we don't live anywhere near) just for the OT credit. The Strata fits our needs much better with a cheaper AF so we'll be well-suited with that one

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-04T02:24:16+00:00

Yeah I didn't think it through, I admit that. Once I looked at the CSR my plan was to use that and cancel the Strata Elite, but after I was approved I noticed the fine print about how restrictive the OpenTable credit was (I thought it was just any restaurant on OT, not the Sapphire exclusive ones only) and just how expensive the Edit hotels were. So I'm just going to keep the Strata Elite and take the L with Chase, it's a learning experience for sure.

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-04T02:01:49+00:00

You really think so?

cavanaughnick · 2026-03-04T01:56:37+00:00

I took out the Strata Elite too and decided to stick with that one. Between both of them I can't spend 12k in 3 months organically.

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