Credit card reward points - Better to use one card or many? (payment, vehicle)

[oneasterisk]

Just got the 60k reward points bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Going to take a break for a little while and decide on what card to get the next bonus. Maybe the capital one venture? I have 5 cards currently with 820 credit score.

[Lowexpectations]

Originally Posted by oneasterisk

Just got the 60k reward points bonus on the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Going to take a break for a little while and decide on what card to get the next bonus. Maybe the capital one venture? I have 5 cards currently with 820 credit score.

Just be aware the chase sapphire cards you are only eligible for a bonus once every 48 months. Also chase will auto decline a new personal cc app if you have had 5 or more new personal cc in the last 24 months

[oneasterisk]

Originally Posted by Lowexpectations

Just be aware the chase sapphire cards you are only eligible for a bonus once every 48 months. Also chase will auto decline a new personal cc app if you have had 5 or more new personal cc in the last 24 months

Yes thank you I'm aware of that. My wife is going to open up one for herself next year so we can space them out to maximize the rewards. I already have a Chase Freedom card so I'll just transfer the UR over to it. Another thing to note, is adding her as an authorized user is the same as opening up a card for her but without the bonus so not going to do that

The Chase Marriott Bonvoy has something similar, but it's only 24 months. I had the old one and had done the 100K bonus previously. When the new one was released, I closed my card, waited a month and opened a new account to get the 75K bonus they were offering. I'll do it again in October when I'm eligible for the bonus again

I have a Google sheets to track my credit card reward churning. I've opened up 3 cards in the last 17 months to get 75K Marriott points, $300 from Capital One Savor and the 60K from the Chase Sapphire Preferred. The spending was all regular spending that I would have done normally and I've not accrued any finance charges.

[ChessieMom]

I use one card mostly. Chase Freedom. I do use Am Ex Blue only for dining out and as an “emergency” card (in the couple of times I’ve had fraud in my other card and had to replace it) but that’s it. I track all my expenditures so I’d rather keep it simple.

[JonathanLB]

It's by far best to Swiss Army Knife your cards, maybe not sign up for 10 cards in a year, obviously, but I've pieced together the cards to maximize my cash back. My Savor card is for dining out only, 4% cash back, I have a Bank of America card that gives 3% for gas so I only use it for that. Then I have the US Bank card with a few 5% categories, one of which is movie tickets and one is cell phones, so I put the cell phone plans on that and the movie plans (AMC A-list), and I don't use it besides those things. Then there's the all purpose card that gets most of the action, Citibank's Double Cash card, which is 2% on all purchases. Besides that I have an Amex Platinum for travel, because it does have a TON of travel benefits from resort credits and free breakfasts to $210 Uber credit per year, $200 with one airline, and the Centurion Lounge access which since I live in Las Vegas, I can and do use every single time I travel for free meals, free drinks, and a great place to hang out. It's $550/year but I get my value there easily as the money would have been spent anyway, it just would have been spent directly with Uber, directly with the airline, and with various airport restaurants. Then obviously the Amazon card for 5% rewards back, which was more than $600 last year alone because of house stuff and business stuff.

I'm at 3 hard inquiries the last 2 years or whatever it is, because of Amex Platinum I'm guessing and a new mortgage, maybe it was also this engagement ring, I don't know. In any case, I need to wait a while before I get anything else, but I badly want the Apple card because I make a ton of purchases on iTunes. After that, I'd like the Discover Vegas Golden Knights NHL card because it saves like 10% on the NHL.tv package, which is probably about all I'd use it for but it's still pretty cool. I probably will hold off, though.

I have a few cards out of rotation, like some RCI MasterCard that'll probably get canceled eventually, I won't do it, but they will, and I'm way too lazy to remember to put a charge on it. No thanks. There are one or two others that rarely get use, too.

There's also the fact that I don't think any of these companies would approve you for enough of a limit, like I have a bunch of $10K to $15K limit cards, but my total available credit exceeds $122K. I want to have a ton of available credit so that their stupid utilization algorithms won't mess me up. It's already bad enough my credit score is never that great despite 0 late payments in 8 years (and only 1 ever, accidentally) and paying the full balance every month. I wish there was a way to give them more transparency in exchange for higher scores. In other words, here's my bank statement, here's my asset list, clearly I can afford to put $30K on my cards in a month and pay it off, so figure it out and stop dinging me for nonsense.

[UNC4Me]

The ones I like the best for my circumstances are:

AAdvantage which gave me 60,000 free miles just for opening. $99 annual fee to get free baggage check for me and up to 4 companions and preferred boarding. Since I live in a city that’s an American Airlines hub, I get more than $99 worth every year.

BOA Preferred rewards card with no annual fee. Cash back on purchases (1.75%, 3.5%, 5.25% depending on purchase category). We get 75% more than the 1-3% because of other accounts we have at BOA. We run everything through this card and last year got right under 2k cash back.

[beachmouse]

I just managed to redeem my Delta Platinum SkyMiles Companion voucher when it would have cost $575 for that second ticket, making the annual fee for that more than worth it. Figure that since I just renewed my passport, I might as well sign up for Global Entry now and let AmEx give me another credit for that. Hopefully I can get that taken care of before September since I've got a lot of schedule flexibility over the summer.

[oneasterisk]

LOL credit score just dropped 43 points from all the charges I made to qualify for the chase card bonus. I'm doing home renovations so I knew this was the time to open the card to generate the spending to qualify for the bonus. It'll be back to normal in a few months after I pay it off at the end of this billing cycle.

[jencam]

Originally Posted by oneasterisk

Yes thank you I'm aware of that. My wife is going to open up one for herself next year so we can space them out to maximize the rewards. I already have a Chase Freedom card so I'll just transfer the UR over to it. Another thing to note, is adding her as an authorized user is the same as opening up a card for her but without the bonus so not going to do that

The Chase Marriott Bonvoy has something similar, but it's only 24 months. I had the old one and had done the 100K bonus previously. When the new one was released, I closed my card, waited a month and opened a new account to get the 75K bonus they were offering. I'll do it again in October when I'm eligible for the bonus again

I have a Google sheets to track my credit card reward churning. I've opened up 3 cards in the last 17 months to get 75K Marriott points, $300 from Capital One Savor and the 60K from the Chase Sapphire Preferred. The spending was all regular spending that I would have done normally and I've not accrued any finance charges.

I see you're going to get a ref. fee if I sign up for the C1 card this way. I might for the $300 bonus.

[oneasterisk]

Yup the bonus is nice. I'll probably switch to the Savor One before the annual fee hits. Doing the math the 4% versus 3% isn't worth it for my spending style and having to pay the annual fee.