Background: Million Mile Madness is the fun and foolish quest to earn a million points in one month. Throughout March, I’ll do everything I can to earn as many points as I can while keeping within my ethical boundaries. I don’t expect that a million points will have been credited to my account by March 31st: points often take quite a while to get credited. Instead, I’ll track all of the points that I expect, and I’ll declare victory if the expected total is over a million. To keep things challenging, I will try to keep my net costs below $1,000. In case you’re interested, all points earned and expenses incurred will be tracked via this Google Docs spreadsheet. See all Million Mile Madness posts (in reverse order), by clicking here.
Today is credit card churn day!
My plan today is to spend the day signing up for credit cards and calling reconsideration lines. Below are the cards I plan to sign up for, in order. The expected signup bonus for each card is listed in parentheses:
- US Bank Club Carlson personal (85K bonus after $2.5K spend) and business (85K bonus after $2.5K spend) cards. For more details, see: Million Mile Madness, Credit card planning: US Bank and others.
- Barclaycard US Airways personal (35K bonus after first use) and business (25K bonus after first use) cards. For more details, see: Million Mile Madness, Credit card planning: Barclaycard.
- American Express Platinum Mercedes card (50K bonus after $1K spend) and Premier Rewards Gold (50K bonus after $1K spend). For more details, see: Million Mile Madness, Credit card planning: American Express.
- Citi AA business (50K bonus after $3K spend) and ThankYou Preferred (6K bonus after $300 spend). For more details, see: Million Mile Madness, Credit card planning: Citi.
- Chase Ink Plus business card (50K bonus after $5K spend) for each of two businesses, and either the United MileagePlus card (55K bonus after $1K spend) or the Sapphire Preferred MasterCard (40K bonus after $3K spend). For more details, see: Million Mile Madness, Credit card planning: Chase.
With the above plan, I could earn as many as 541,000 points & miles (not counting miles earned on spend).
In the post where I planned my Barclaycard card signups I said that I would also sign up for the NFL card ($400 bonus) and the Arrival World MasterCard ($220 or $440 bonus depending on which offer I get). However, when I see all of the planned applications lined up, I’m less inclined to push my luck with these. We’ll see how lucky I feel after I apply for all of the others.
Keep up with the results
As I go along, I’ll post results in the comments below and on Twitter. I’ll also post a summary at the end of the day.
Reader Participation
Are you signing up for cards today? If so, which ones? Comment below with your results as well!
Learn about Million Mile Madness:
- A crazy million mile idea. Should I do it?
- Million Mile Madness, it’s on
- Million Mile Madness: Strategy
- Million Mile Madness: Preparing to buy & sell
- Million Mile Madness: Tracking points and expenses