CC Hacking: best way to achieve my points & bonus goals?

[ChpBstrd]

DW and I have taken about a 1y hiatus from CC hacking while shopping for a house. Now that the mortgage is signed, it's game on again. I have two goals for this year:

1) Get travel rewards worth about $1000 (so I understand that would be 100k points?)
2) Get at least $1000 in introductory bonuses after the travel rewards have been obtained.

I've only ever signed up for $0 fee credit cards for the intro bonuses and cash back. I have never used travel points, and I'd rather avoid cards with an annual fee or some future cancellation hassle. Yet I'm open to the possibility. Do you have to use the points before cancelling the card? Can points on a Delta card work on Southwest? < Basic stuff like that is new to me. Bottom line, what's the optimal combination of cards to fund airfare for the next family vacation?

Also, I understand some card issuers have started rejecting people who sign up for too many other cards in a short period of time, so I should apply for these first. Any advice on which cards to target first?

My credit score is about 780-800 and I'm perfectly content to burn this down to achieve the goals above. So what sequence of cards would you sign up for in my situation? Thanks in advance for helping me with this optimization puzzle!

[secondcor521]

The best way is to research and read.  A lot if you want to maximize everything.  A fair amount if you just want to follow what others are doing - which will get you maybe 75% of max.

Points that are associated with the credit card - like Ultimate Rewards (Chase) or Membership Rewards (AMEX) are tied to the card, so if you cancel the card, the points go away.  Airline and hotel points (like Delta or Hilton) are transferred to those programs usually monthly, so if you cancel the card the points/miles stay in that program.

Delta card miles don't work on Southwest, although there are ways to transfer miles/points from program to program.  So one tip is to figure out which airline or airlines you are likely to use for that next family vacation, and then look at cards that get you points/miles in those programs.

I can't answer your request for specific cards or sequences of cards; it's too specific to you and your preferences and goals and current set of cards.  What I do is collect a list of cards that I'd like to apply for and then value them by my criteria, and then apply for them in descending order of value.  There are plenty of sites out there that provide cards to apply for, and the various rules and limits that apply - these rules and limits change somewhat over time.

Another point is, if your DW is willing, you can apply for cards in her name, wait for 3-6 months, then apply for cards in your name, and then 3-6 months apply for cards in her name again.  Since there's two of you, you can collect twice the bonuses and miles.  This is sometimes referred to as two-player mode.

Finally, some of the most worthwhile cards have annual fees.  For example, you might pay a $250 annual fee to get $1,000 in travel value, or pay a $0 annual fee to get $300 in travel value.  True, there is the hassle of dealing with the annual fee and/or canceling, so you would have to take that into account.

Good luck.

[ChpBstrd]

My initial take is:

100k Points/Miles:
1) Chase Sapphire Preferred                                 $95 fee after y1   50k miles
2) Capital One VentureOne Rewards Credit Card     $0 annual fee      20k miles
3) Wells Fargo Propel American Express                 $0 annual fee      30k miles

$1k Intro Bonuses:
1) Capital One Quicksilver Cash Rewards                 $0 annual fee      $150 bonus, spend $500 in 3 mos
2) Bank of America Cash Rewards                          $0 annual fee      $200 bonus, spend $500 in 90d
3) US Bank Cash 365 American Express                  $0 annual fee      $150 bonus, spend $500 in 3 mos
4) Blue Cash Everyday American Express                $0 annual fee      $150 bonus, spend $1k in 3 mos
5) Capital One SavorOne Cash Rewards                   $0 annual fee     $150 bonus, spend $500 in 3 mos
6) HSBC Cash Rewards MasterCard                         $0 annual fee      $150 bonus, spend $2500 in 3 mos

We'll call $950 close enough... And that's just in one-player mode.

[FI45RE]

I would recommend a LOT more reading before you jump into miles and points credit cards. It's easy to apply for the wrong cards and miss out on more lucrative opportunities. I think you're also approaching the accumulation of points/miles incorrectly. The point isn't to accumulate miles for the sake of accumulating miles (yay, 100k miles!). Instead, you need to be strategic about the cards you sign up for, based upon your goals for travel. In your 100k points/miles card scenario, you'd end up with 50k UR, 20k Cap1 miles, and 30k WF miles. For what? What are your plans for the miles?

Your application strategy is also not likely to work. Cap1 is stingy with approvals, pulls all 3 credit bureaus, and will likely not approve you for 3 cards in a short amount of time. Chase has the 5/24 rule; BoA has 2/3/4 rule, etc. You'd be wasting 6 hard pulls for your $1k intro bonus goal, when you could get a single card with a signup bonus value of $2000+. If you are scared off by the annual fees, even more reason to rethink your strategy. Why sign up for 6 cards to only get a $950 bonus? Would you use these cards for the long-term or just cancel after a year? You'll be reducing your AAoA if you cancel.

My recommendation: First, set your travel goals. Start with the place, not the points/miles. Once you've done that, get the Barclay Arrival+ with 70k signup bonus for travel (your DW could do the same). Annual fee is currently waived, $89 after 1st year. You'd have 160,000 miles after you both complete MSR, worth $1,600 toward travel of any kind. I'm not a cash back CC churner, but I also don't think the value proposition for cash back signup bonuses is all that great. You could churn bank account bonuses and do way better than $950 in a year. I did $1200 in 3 months in 2017 when I hit it hard.

There are a lot of strategies in the miles and points game, but I want to reiterate that signing up for bonuses just to get the bonuses is silly. Have a plan with what to do with the miles first.

I'm happy to chat about any aspect of the miles/points game.

[Catbert]

I agree with FI45RE you need to do more homework before you jump in.  A couple of places to look are thepointsguy.com and doctorofcredit.com.  Both have beginner guides that will answer the question you posed as well as walk you through the different rules and strategies of credit card churning.

thepointsguy.com started out as a "guy" but is now a multi-million dollar website with 40+ employees and is owned by (I think) Bankrate.  While it has good info its important to realize that it makes money, lots of money, from credit card referrals.  Doctorofcredit.com OTOH won't take credit card affiliate links/payments so his advice on credit cards isn't tainted.  He also has a spreadsheet that lists current available bonuses as well as the highest  recentish bonus for each card.

For more advanced study flyertalkforums.com as a wealth of info.

[zoochadookdook]

Check out churning reddit. There's a LOT of cards and rules out there (5/24 in chase etc). You also want to self refer and make sure you can meet spending limits in due time.

Side note on chase UR points-they can be cashed out directly into your account-they don't just have to be used for v vacations etc-although if you have the right card they're worth 1.5x in vacation points.

I'm currently on my 3rd chase ink preferred business card and have cashed back 3200 out of 15k I had planned to pay back on student loans anyways. Those and the chase Safire are generally considered some of the gold standard.

[Peachtea]

Start here for some solid basics: https://www.choosefi.com/all-articles/travel-rewards/

You could do as they recommend and go through the “Chase guantlet” first if your goal is just to get points generally. Or if you have a particular trip in mind you can research the best way to get there with points. I.e. we started our points with United cards, because Chicago’s a United hub and they have international flights where we wanted to go. (And we already have the Chase Sapphire as our primary card.) If we were starting domestically we probably would have done SW.

[Radagast]

How much does American Express like you and how well can you use their perks? I recently learned that the AmEx Schwab Platinum card lets you cash out Membership Reward Points for 1.25 cents, which makes them a nice dual role point. Bonus if you have $250k at Schwab to reduce the fee a little.

Here is what an Amex run might look like:
Card                 MR Rec'd    Spend
Platinum           106,000    $6,000
Gold                  61,000    $3,000
EveryDay          33,000    $2,000
ED Preferred      34,000    $2,000
Schwab Plat       66,000    $6,000
Total                300,000    $19,000
Cash Value $3,750    
Rate   19.7%   
I added an extra $1,000 dollars of spend to each card, assumed you referred yourself using the Platinum for a couple cards, assumed you could get a large Platinum bonus, and threw in some random extra points for the spend. A 20% cash return is not bad, and if you maximize the points on travel instead it would be more like $5000 or 30% return. You can probably do a little better elsewhere, but I find myself really liking the cash out option.

[ThatGuy]

Here's a couple blogs to read up on the travel points game.  There are others but these will keep you busy.

https://millionmilesecrets.com/

https://www.flyertalk.com/

[ChpBstrd]

Thanks for the links everyone! I'll get to work optimizing my strategy after doing some more reading.