An Ideal First Credit Card Churn

A credit card churn is about signup bonuses. It isn’t about what card gets you the most for your spending (other than the minimum spending necessary to earn a bonus). It’s about getting a card which gives you a big upfront bang for the buck.

You may or may not keep that card, depending on what other features and benefits you have. But it’s about a big payment to you for applying for the card, which can fund your travel in premium cabins all over the world.

I’ve written in the past about managing good credit to fly and stay cheaply all over the world. If you have good credit you can do this, and you can often even improve your credit in the process.

Now when I write about the cards I’m looking at to apply for and the cards I have in my wallet and which I will keep and which I will cancel, I hope that’s a useful window into strategy and at least the way that I think about these opportunities.

But I’ve been at this for 15 years and I’ve already had many of the cards that offer the best bonuses. Some you can get again, others you can’t, some you have to wait awhile before you do.

So what I thought would be useful would be to highlight how I would approach signing up for cards to get the best bonuses if I were new to this game.

See, Chase usually will only give you a signup bonus once for each card. Sometimes they revamp a card and consider it ‘new’ like the British Airways Visa a couple of years ago, I had had it years before but the new features and benefits meant I could get the card again, and I did (for the 100,000 point bonus). There are folks who will report getting bonuses over and over still, but they’re generally the exception.

American Express used to be one bonus per cardmember in a lifetime, or if you signed up for a card you’ve had in the past they would only give you the incremental bonus over what you had gotten before. More recently they seem to be open to allowing signup bonuses every two years, at least in my experience and reading.

Meanwhile Citibank has been good in allowing me to get the same bonus on the card after 18 months.

And Bank of American and Barclays have both given bonuses more than once, though there are reports that Bank of America is clearer in their terms and conditions at least (though unclear as yet if in real world practice) that they’ll only give a bonus one time.

None of this is like the good old days of getting a bonus over and over on Chase cards every 60 days or every 90 for Citi. Those days are long past, but on the plus side the bonuses themselves are bigger. I used to get excited by 15,000 and 20,000 point signup bonuses!

Roughly speaking conventional wisdom is that you sign up for a bunch of cards at once every 90 days for best effect. Each card issuer will only give you so many cards at a time, so try to pick one card from each. Business cards are often considered different and it’s possible to get both a personal and business card from Chase and from American Express at the same time, though they may make you talk to one of their representatives if you do try (e.g. American Express might want to make sure it’s not a duplicate application).

Some folks will check their credit report and see which issuers are pulling from which bureaus in their state, hoping to spread out their credit inquiries across the different bureaus. Since I’m really only interested in a few card issuers anyway, that’s not affected my decision-making in the past.

But if I were starting from scratch what I would do as my ideal churn is:

Chase:

• Sapphire Preferred Visa.
  
  • No fee the first year, 40,000 points after $3000 in spend within 3 months.
    
  • No foreign currency conversion fees
    
  • Double points on travel and dining
    
  • Points transfers to United, Hyatt, Southwest, Amtrak, British Airways, Korean Airlines, Marriott, Priority Club, and Ritz-Carlton.
    
  • One of the very best all-around cards, and with a great signup bonus.

• Ink Bold charge card or Ink Plus small business credit card.
  
  • These are the small business counterparts to the Sapphire Preferred
    
  • No fee the first year, 50,000 point signup bonuses after $5,000 spend within 3 months.
    
  • Points transfer to United, British Airways, Korean Airlines, Southwest, Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Priority Club, and Amtrak.
    
  • Quintuple points on wireless/telecommunications services, cable and satellite TV and radio, and office supply stores and double points on hotels and gas stations up to 200,000 points per year.

American Express:

• Starwood Preferred Guest American Express
  
  • Up to 25,000 points as a signup bonus
    
  • No fee the first year
    
  • Points can be used for hotel stays or transferred to airline miles, in most cases 1:1 and with a huge variety of programs. When you transfer points to 20,000 miles you receive 5000 bonus miles.
    
  • That means if you use this as an airline mileage-earning card you effectively receive 1.25 miles per dollar on all spend.
    
  • 2 stays and 5 nights towards elite status

• Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Business Card
  
  • Up to 25,000 points as a signup bonus
    
  • No fee the first year
    
  • Points can be used for hotel stays or transferred to airline miles, in most cases 1:1 and with a huge variety of programs. When you transfer points to 20,000 miles you receive 5000 bonus miles.
    
  • That means if you use this as an airline mileage-earning card you effectively receive 1.25 miles per dollar on all spend.
    
  • OPEN savings, I like it for domestic Hyatt spending because you earn the Starwood point for credit card spend and receive 3% cash back credited to the card as well.
    
  • 2 stays and 5 nights towards elite status

Citibank:

• Citibank American Airlines American Express
  
  • 50,000 bonus points and $100 statement credit after $3000 spend within 4 months
    
  • No fee the first year.
    
  • Links is direct to an application page, I’ve gotten no reports of the bonus having any problems however.

• Citibank American Airlines Visa
  
  • Many folks have success getting approved for 2 Citibank cards at a time, even similar cards, when submitting applications simultaneously via two different web browsers (e.g. Google Chrome for one, Internet Explorer for the other).
    
  • 50,000 bonus points and $100 statement credit after $3000 spend within 4 months
    
  • No fee the first year.
    
  • Links is direct to an application page, I’ve gotten no reports of the bonus having any problems however.

Barclays: US Airways Mastercard

• 40,000 points after first purchase and fee waived the first year.
  
• 10,000 more points after first year, which is worth the $89 annual fee.
  
• 2 club passes each year
  
• $99 companion ticket

Bank of America: Alaska Airlines Visa

• 25,000 miles on approval and then 15,000 more after $7500 in spend within 6 months of account open.
  
• $75 annual fee not waived.
  
• $99 companion ticket which is valid for use on any paid coach fare.

(Note that the Chase and American Express cards above over a referral credit to me if you use my links, which are the best available I’m aware of, and I truly appreciate it if you choose to do so. The Citibank links are better than any that would offer credit to me, so I suggest these as your best bet. I receive no credit for anything from Bank of America or Barclays.)