travel cards - am I doing this right?

[Mr Dumpster Stache]

I've been doing some "light" credit card churning - sign-up bonuses, one card at a time, no manufactured spending, etc. I haven't looked at travel cards at all, since my globe-trotting days are pretty much over. However, we just found out that my wife's brother will be getting married at Disney World next summer, so I decided to try and see if we could use credit cards to minimize the expense.

I spent the afternoon pottering around Miles Dividend MD and a few other sites, trying to get my head around the details. I finally ended up with this plan:

Get the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card - 40,000 points plus 5,000 for the wife when I get her card.
Next year, get the Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards Plus Card - 50,000 points
Transfer the points from Chase to Southwest and cancel the Chase to avoid the annual fee.

This looks like it should be more than enough to get tickets for ourselves. I couldn't easily find if these points could be used to book motels?

Does this sound reasonable? Am I making any n00b mistakes?

Thanks, you people are great.

[bryan995]

I just finished doing 2 x southwest cards + $10K spending to hit the 110,000 points in a year which gives you the companion pass.

Wife and I have been on 5 round trips already, still have 35K points left.
Google it - it is a sweet deal and easy to do :)
(or read on slickdeals / millionmilesecrets etc)

Current Cards:
Southwest premier (50k)
Southwest plus (50k)
Chase Sapphire Preferred (40k)
Marriot Rewards (70k pts)

As long as you cancel within the first 2 months of the 2nd year, they will refund the annual fee (and you get to keep whatever the annual bonus is)

Lots of easy ways to 'spend'.  Visa GC + Walmart bluebird.  Amazon payments.  Can pay mortage/rent etc.
It is free money - as long as you are only spending money you already HAD to spend to survive / live your normal MMM Life.

Good luck!

[arebelspy]

Sounds good.  If your credit is good, apply for both at once, no need to wait a year.

[Janie]

You might want to get two separate Chase Sapphire cards rather than adding your wife to your account so you each get 40,000 point bonus.

[ves]

you and your wife get seperate chase sapphire and add authorised user to each other..so 40000+40000+5000+5000+6000(min spend points) 96000 UR points and there is running promotion for chase freedom for 20000+2500(au user)..man you are going to get 141000 Ur points ;-)

[arebelspy]

You might want to get two separate Chase Sapphire cards rather than adding your wife to your account so you each get 40,000 point bonus.

You can do both.

[Amesenator]

The frugaltravelguy blog is a terrific source of practical advice on the how's of travel credit card churning, so that may also be a helpful resource. Recently there have been a couple of hotel cards with high point offerings - you might check whether one of those would be a good fit for next year's travel plans...

[bryan995]

As long as you don't plan on getting a mortgage in the next 6 months, you and your wife can both open each card (assuming you can hit the min spend living normally). . Transferring UR points to either Southerst or Marriot gets you 1.5-1.8x per dollar, maximizing the bonus.

I would space out the SW + companion pass though. No sense on you both having that active, unless you need to travel 10+ times in a year. Make sure you each have your own reward account. Don't use the same one (RR / MR etc)

You can usually open 3-5 CC in a single day before they stop you :)

[Mr Dumpster Stache]

Thanks everyone! I'm pretty sure we would not be able to meet minimum spending on any two cards at once without getting way more creative than we are comfortable with.

I'll check out that blog, then go looking for the forum threads about how to do Disney World on the cheap. :)