A credit card signup bonus is the best way of earning miles and points with the least amount of spend. In some cases, you can earn tens or even 100,000 points for only a few thousand dollars in spend in the first three months.
0:00 Introduction
2:10 Chase
3:17 American Express
4:11 Citibank
5:22 Bank of America
5:46 Capital One
6:01 Barclays & US Bank
6:20 Developing a strategy
7:25 Hitting minimum spend
So the answer is to sign up for as many cards as you can, as often as you can! This practice is called churning. And...that is a great way of earning a lot of points very quickly!
But...there are rules, rules that are bank specific and constantly changing. We'll cover the big ones here, but again these are all subject to change.
Chase
Any guide to credit cards will always start with Chase. Why? Because they have one of the most important and stringent rules in the game: 5/24
The 5/24 rule isn't a rule that is formally published, but Chase will automatically deny you for a credit card if you have opened 5 or more credit cards across any bank in the past 24 months.
This includes being added as an authorized user, and it likely the first rule that people run into trouble with.
Fortunately, in the prior video you pulled your credit history, so you know how many cards you've applied for the in the past 24 months. Subtract this number from 5, and that's how many chase cards you can get.
Chase also has added some additional rules on getting q bonus multiple times (you can only get it only every 24 or 48 months), and a limit to either the Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve but not both, but again that's all subject to change.
American Express
American Express has some really great cards. But unfortunately, they know this. Amex cards only give you a bonus once per "lifetime". A "lifetime" is about 7 years, though I've waited lounger on some cards and still been ineligible.
Sometimes a targeted offer gets around this, but plan on only getting a bonus ever once. This means, you should always wait for the highest possible bonus before applying for a credit card.
At the time of this video, Amex now limits you to 4 credit cards and 10 charge cards per person. This includes all the co branded cards like Marriott and Delta.
You can also only get 2 Amex cards every 90 days
Citibank.
They keep changing their rules, but here's how they stand today.
You can only get a bonus for a certain product family "once every 24 months".
So the Thank you points cards are a family, as are the American Airlines cards. Once you get one from a family, the 24 month clock starts.
But the countdown gets refreshed whenever you close or product change a card. So the best strategy is to sign up for a card, wait 24 months, then sign up for another card in the same family, and finally cancel or change the first card.
Some of the American Airlines cards have 48 month language.
You can only get one citi card every 8 days, and 2 every 65 days. There's also an unconfirmed 6/6 rule, where if you apply for 6 cards with any bank in the past 6 months they may reject you.
Bank of America
Bank of America has the 2/3/4 rule where you can have 2 BOA cards in 2 months, 3 in 12, and 4 in 24. Never been an issue for me.
Several of the cards now include 24 month language as well, so you can only get the bonus every 2 years.
Capital 1: you can only apply for one card every six months. Additionally, Capital one pulls from all three credit bureaus
Barclays and US bank aren't particularly friendly to churning. Not only will they deny you if you have applied for too many cards recently, they may shut down all your existing accounts.
There are some valuable cards, but you just need to be a bit more cautious.
So then, I've thrown a lot of arbitrary rules at you, but I haven't yet said what cards you should get, and it what order. The reason is...bonuses are always changing, and your needs are going to be individual.
The simplest resource I've found is a flowchartfrom r/churning. if you're lost, follow it and see what cards you would be interested in, just follow the order.
https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/comments/gjlb1p/credit_card_recommendation_flowchart_coronavirus/
So you've applied for you card(s) and been approved. Great! Now...you need to hit the minimum spend requirements. Normally, you have three months to meet the required spend. A few cards have an additional spend requirement that takes 6 months for even more bonus points.
Note that the annual fee if charged does not count toward the spend requirement (I've sadly made that mistake before)
Are the cards you've signed up for worth keeping? Well that honestly depends. Some of the airline or hotel cards come with a free checked bag or free night..that might be worth the annual fee itself and be worth keeping.
