Originally Posted by
air360
But if I didn't care that much about the lounge/club access it would seem I am better off with maybe the Barclay at 2.2.
If one did MS you would have to do 25k on citi for a flight that costs 400 compared to 18k on Barclay for the same flight. am I understanding that correct?
Not exactly. Arrival Plus "miles" are worth $0.011 each when redeemed for travel. Since you get 2 "miles" per dollar spent, that works out to a clear effective 2.2% cash back.
With Prestige, the points are worth $.016 each when redeemed for AA/US tickets. So each point is arguably worth more (assuming you buy AA tickets now and then). But the effective cash back rate is much harder to calculate, because the number of points you earn per dollar spent varies depending on what you are buying and whether or not you are eligible for a relationship bonus.
At one extreme, if you never charge dining/entertainment/airline/hotel expenses to your card and don't get a relationship bonus, you'd only be getting an effective 1.6% cash back. At the other extreme, if you are a Citi Private Bank client and use your card exclusively for airline/hotel expenses, you'd be getting over 5% effective cash back.
At the end of the day, if your spending is heavily weighted toward the 2-3 point per dollar categories, Prestige is probably the better deal. If you don't spend much in those categories, Arrival Plus is the better deal. Of course another option is to get both cards and put the bonus category spend on the Prestige card and the non-bonus category spend on the Arrival card. But that assumes the incremental value would offset the second annual fee.