April 16, 2012
I’ve been getting lots of requests lately to help people plan credit card churns. I actually enjoy doing this, but I was finding it frustrating that I didn’t have all of the credit card bonus information I needed in one place. So, I’ve spent much of the past 3 days compiling the best info I could find and putting it into a form that I hope will make life easier.
You can find the results on this page: Best credit card offers. Soon, this page will appear on a new menu on my site so that it will be easy to find. You’ll see that I’ve arranged the offers by bank with just the minimal information that is needed for planning a churn:
- Card name & sign-up link
- Bonus amount
- Minimum spend requirements
- Annual fee
- Notes (typically listing top card benefits)
Here’s an example of a couple of rows of data:
|
Chase Cards |
Bonus |
Spend Req |
First Yr Fee (ongoing) |
Frequent Miler Notes |
|
Chase Sapphire Preferred℠ MasterCard |
40K | $3K in 3 months | Free ($95) |
2X travel and dining. 7% annual dividend. No foreign transaction fee. |
|
Chase Ink℠ Classic Business |
25K | $5K in 3 months | Free |
5X office supplies, phone, and cable; 2X gas and lodging |
Many of the choices shown in these tables were informed by this Flyertalk thread and by Million Mile Secrets.
I will do my best over time to keep this page up to date. Please alert me if you discover any missing data or inaccuracies.
Chase Planning
When I plan a credit card churn, I generally start with Chase. Chase has the vast majority of great offers so I think that a good churn strategy starts with a good Chase strategy. Chase doesn’t like to approve multiple cards at once, but they will approve a personal and a business card at once. Under certain circumstances, I think it makes sense to do one of each. In general, though, I like to spread out the applications roughly like this: apply for a personal card; wait three months; apply for a business card; wait 3 months; apply for personal card; etc. Cards and opportunities will come and go so the particulars will change, but currently the table lists 4 business cards and 11 personal cards. This means that you can cycle like this for more than two years before moving entirely to personal card signups. For an example of how to sign-up for a business card, see my recent post How to sign-up for the Ink Bold.
Amex Planning
After picking a Chase card for each churn, I’ll look next for the best available Amex offer. Lately the best of these have been targeted offers so I think it makes sense to plan just one non-targeted Amex sign-up. This way, if a targeted offer shows up there’s still room to add another Amex. The trend I’m seeing is that Amex business cards seem to have the best targeted offers. So, if you’re going without a targeted offer, it may make sense to start with a personal card (to free up room for the hoped-for targeted business card offer).
Citi Planning
Citi doesn’t have as many great offers as Chase or Amex, but there are a few gems. I would generally go for just one at a time except when doing the two browser trick to get 100K AA miles. Some people suggest that it is necessary to wait 6 months between Citi applications. I don’t know the validity of that, but just to be safe I would apply for cards from other banks (see below) every other churn.
Other Banks
I have all of the other banks lumped into a single chart. Sure, you could do one of each depending on how aggressive you want to be with signups. I’m fairly conservative about credit card churning, though, and don’t like to do more than 3 or 4 cards at a time total so I’d tend to pick just one from this group for each churn.
Credit Bureaus
Experienced credit card churners look carefully at which credit bureaus are used for the “hard pulls” that happen when applying for cards. The idea is to try to spread out the pulls so that you never have too many hitting a single bureau. You can read more about that approach here. To me, this is like flossing: it’s one of those things I should do, but I don’t (actually I do floss every night, but the analogy works better if you pretend that I don’t).
My real life approach is simply to limit the total number of applications to 3 or 4 every three months, spread the applications across banks, and hope for the best. I know many people do 6 to 8 cards every 3 months. In those cases, I think that paying close attention to the credit bureau pulls is essential.
Reader Feedback
- What do you think about the Best credit card offers page? Will it help you with your credit card churns? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?
- What do you think about the ideas I laid out for churn planning? Do they make sense? Do you have any suggestions for improvement?
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One comment. I do the same thing to identify which cards I’ll apply for in my AOR. I found this to be useful.
I create one column for the issuing bank (Citi/Chase/BOA/etc). Then I split the name of the card into the next column. For the spend column, I include the monthly spend requirement (3k in 5 months = 1666/month, cards with a bonus on first purchase, I put in $1). Next column is number of months to meet the spend.
in Excel, that helps me manage my data organization. Once I pick out my cards, It’s then easy to do a =SUM(column) to figure out my required average monthly spend.
It also makes it easy to sort by bank name for comparison purposes.
Steve: Great idea! I’ll see if I can update the page to include monthly spend requirements. I’m not sure that I can fit in extra columns though (the Boarding Area ads give me very little horizontal space to work with). Maybe what I’ll do instead is provide a link to download a spreadsheet or view a google spreadsheet.
I think you are overlooking some Citi cards. They have a Citi Thank You Premiere card that gives you 50,000 thank you points after you spend $3,000 in 3 months. The good thing about those points is that you can convert them to any airline, anytime, with a 33% bonus in travel points. So 100,000 thank you points is 133,000 which would be worth $1,330 in travel credits instead of only $1,000 in cash.
The second Citi card to look at is Citi Forward. Here are the details:
Earn up to 10,000 ThankYou Points when you make $650 in purchases and sign up for Paperless Statements.
Earn 5 ThankYou Points for every $1 you spend on restaurants and entertainment plus 1 point for every $1 on all other purchases
Earn up to 1,200 bonus points for paying on time and staying under your credit limit.
No Annual fee. What do you think of those two cards?
Grant Thomas: Thanks for the suggestions. I do already have the Premier listed (see the second row in the Citi cards table). The Citi Forward is excluded because it doesn’t have much of a signup bonus (this page is focused on the best bonuses available). I will consider it for the Preparing for Miles page because of its 5X categories.
In all of these discussions, the discussion is always adding new cards. Is there a discussion of when to eliminate old cards/how many to have at once? I’ve been doing this for about 9 months and I currently have 6 new cards which have netted me about 350K miles/points. My British Airways card is up for renewal (and first year fee) so I’m thinking of dropping it as I prepare to start my next round. Should I make sure to drop it first before doing the next round of Chase (I’m thinking the Southwest card and the Ink Bold for Chase, and is that a problem doing both at once?). I also have the sapphire preferred, united mileageplus explorer, the dual AA cards, AmEx SPG, along with my original two non-earning cards that I’m keeping for credit report purposes along with the occasional charge (citi and AT&T cards).
Alex: I remember MommyPoints had a good post about this, but I’m having trouble finding it. In general, I’d recommend against canceling a card until you have to pay the annual fee. Prior to that, the credit available on the card can be used to help you get additional cards. The credit line on the card is a valuable asset! For example, when you apply for the Southwest and Ink Bold cards (yes, you can do both at once), you can immediately call the reconsideration lines (personal and business are different numbers). If they don’t want to extend additional credit to you, you can offer to give up credit from your BA card. Once your annual fee comes due, call to cancel. Ask if you can have any leftover credit from that card moved to another card.
Alex, I started collecting miles around 10 months, like you. I have been able to swap cards with Chase successfully when they didn’t automatically approve me last week for the Freedom. I asked them to close my ‘old’continental card and move that credit line to the Freedom. They were very open about it. Also you can move credit line around from other open cards. The general recommendation is to first apply for a card with the bank and then cancel, downgrade or reduce credit limit of the cards you don’t need. I also just recently downgraded my visa signature to a no-fee card just to build up credit history. I plan to leave that one in the drawer. In the next 2 months I have to think what to do with my amex plat. I’ll try to see if they can give me a no-fee amex. Good luck.
Nice job. I think it’s worth a mention for the Amex Hilton Surpass that you get Diamond with $40K spend in the calendar year.
You mention few gems among Citi cards, but you can churn AA Business 50K cards ($3K spend) every three months and 2 X 50K HHonors ($1500 spend each) cards every two months. My wife just got two 50K HHonors cards and I got the 50K Business card and we have both had those cards within the last 6-9 months. Going forward I plan to swap applications so we are both getting 2 X AA Business and 4 X HHonors a year as long as they last.
I kow, a lot of people don’t like HHonors, but 100K 2-4 times a year? Sign me up.
Ike
Ike: If you’re right, that’s certainly a great way to earn miles and points! I can’t image that there won’t be some point were Citi would stop approving them though…
So, I applied for the Chase SW, Chase Ink Bold, and Barclay’s USAirways today. Instant approval on the Barclay’s. I’m planning to call the reconsideration lines for Chase tomorrow. Is there any rationale to do one or the other first (Southwest personal versus Bold business)?
Alex: Good question. I don’t have any evidence that this would help, but personally I would start with whichever one I care about the most. For example, if the Bold is more important to you, start there.
Dear Frequent Miler,
Happy New Year! I am buying a house in a few weeks and right after the purchase I will be ready for the big churn. We will be buying furniture and many other things for this house so we can probably meet the $5000 to $9000 or more purchasing requirements.
I am ready to apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card and anything else you can recommend. I have had AAdvantage Citi Visa since 11/2012 and United Mileage Plus Explorer Chase Visa and Delta SkyMiles Amex since 06/2012. I canceled a US Airways Barclays Card in 11/2012 that I had for about 8 years and a British Airways Chase Visa in 10/2012?? that I also had for a long time. My wife also has some of the same cards that I do. Should I try to do a two-browser trick?
I know I am asking a lot when I pick your mind, but you are the master and this is a bit confusing for me. I would appreciate any suggestions you feel would help. Kind regards, Stephen
Hi Stephen,
It would help to know more about your goals before I recommend things. It’s good to think about whether you’re more interested in flights or hotels, and if flights, are you at a hub that dictates a particular airline? That said, here’s a churn that might make sense for you:
* Chase Sapphire Preferred 40K after $3K spend
* Amex Hilton 40K after $750 spend
* US Bank Club Carlson Premier 85K after $2500 spend
* Barclay’s US Airways 40K after first use
Since it sounds like you can do even more spend than that, you could also have your wife sign up for some or all of the above cards to double your point earnings.
Alternatively, if you’re comfortable with signing up for business cards, I’d highly recommend the Ink Bold 50K offer.
Hi FrequentMiler, Thanks for your help. I am really only interested in flights. Star Alliance, OneWorld Alliance and Skyteam are the miles I try to accumulate. Please let me know if you think I can do this. As soon as I have my mortgage I would like to apply for Chase Sapphire Preferred. I have a United Mileage Plus Explorer Chase that I opened in June of 2012 and closed a British Airways Chase Visa in April of 1012 that I had for years. I would also like to apply for the Ink Bold or Plus business card. Is that possible with my Chase record/status? I would love to get the Barclay’s US Airways Card again but I closed out a similar card that I had for about ten years. I closed it in November of 2011. Is any of this possible? Thanks, Stephen
Stephen: Yes, as long as you qualify for those cards (Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold, US Airways) you should be able to get them. I don’t see anything in the current or closed cards that you listed that should be a problem. Of course, you need to have a decent credit score.
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