I'm a complete churn whore - I've got 32 open cards with a total available limit of just over $400k. These days, I churn whatever offers I get as I've pretty much gone through all of the best offers! I recently got a $100 cash back after $1500 spend BBVA card, followed by a $100 cash back after $1000 spend from PNC. That's most of the types of offers I get anymore, which I'm still fine with as I have no issue hitting those spends with regular bills that I'm already spending money on. I have 9 cards actively enrolled in tradeline sales and have made over $5000 for the second year running from those. If anyone has additional suggestions for cards for me, I'm all ears. I also like playing the "yep, got it" game... ;)
Quick question if you don't mind. With so many cards open, aren't the annual fees killing your profit? If you are balancing the AFs with tradelines, what did it look like when your cards were still too young for tradelines?
I only have 5-6 cards that have an annual fee, the rest don't have one. Of those, two are used for tradelines that more than offset the fees on all of the cards. The rest are AmEx and I get enough value from the benefits (Hilton, Bonvoy, and Delta) that I feel the annual fee is worth it.
Before I started selling tradelines, I didn't have any cards with an annual fee minus the AmEx cards listed above - that, or they were $0 for the first year and I would cancel or downgrade before the fee hit. I have enough Bank of America and Barclay cards now that offer 0% interest with a 2-3% fee that I've used for financing big expenses (think furnace / AC replacement, carpet, etc.).
I'm considering combining some of these offers and leveraging them into cash offers in the $35-40k range for 2 bed/1 bath rental properties, then mortgaging the property once the sale goes through. I did that with my 401k once before, the allure of a cash offer can mean scoring a 20% or higher discount on the price of the home in this area.
Some have asked me too if my credit score has taken a hit due to the high number of inquiries and open accounts, but the high overall limit and low utilization (around 3% usually) keep my score in the mid to high 700's.